Jim Inhofe: “China is a 360-degree threat. They are competing with us in every area--economics, technology, military, diplomacy…”

“China is a 360-degree threat. They are competing with us in every area--economics, technology, military, diplomacy, information warfare. You know, we operated for the better part of a decade under the idea that we should have parity in defense and nondefense increases. I mean, this is a bipartisan thing. This is Democrats and Republicans alike. We did this every year for--every 2 years as we did the Budget Control Act, and that was an agreement until all of a sudden, somehow, we are changing from that. So what Senator Shelby's and my amendment does is very simple. It says that for every dollar that we increase nondefense spending, we have the same amount of money that is going to increase defense spending. I talked about this yesterday at some length. How can you justify changing that policy when the greatest threat that we are facing right now is China? You know, they are competing in every area, and to leave that out conspicuously is not reasonable at all. So I think that the--I remember that the majority leader and the Speaker of the House back in 2019 said: ``Democrats have always insisted on parity in increases between defense and non-defense.'' So why would they change now? And I don't think that they will change now. So, again, I am unsure people understand what this is all about. This is a very simple thing. It says that--our amendment says that for every dollar we increase nondefense spending, we also increase defense spending by the same amount.…”