On the recordJuly 10, 2018
First of all, Mr. President, we are about to go to conference. The first three votes here are very, very significant. They are considered to be maybe the most consequential votes of the year. We have been working closely with the President on our John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act. It is going to be a reality. We have done this through regular order in a very effective way. The Senate Armed Services Committee has been in concert with our combatant commanders, with Secretary Mattis, with the service chiefs, with the President. We have had a markup, our committee markup. We actually had over 300 amendments. I am disturbed that we can't change this policy we have had for a long period of time that says that if one person on the floor objects when we are considering a bill--the NDAA, which we have considered successfully for 57 years--we are not going to be able to consider amendments. That is something we may want to address. To overcome that, we adopted 47 bipartisan amendments, both through the managers' package and the votes on the floor. Tomorrow, we are going to hold our first big meeting of the conferees. I have been through a number of these in the past. This is where Members of the House and the Senate meet each other, talk about their issues, and talk about their successes and what they want to accomplish in this conference report.…
