Jim Inhofe: “I thank the Senator, and I appreciate that very much. I just want to make a brief statement about the vote that just…”

“I thank the Senator, and I appreciate that very much. I just want to make a brief statement about the vote that just took place. I tried to communicate this, and there wasn't time before the vote. Right now, we have more threats than we have ever had in the history of this country. I think we all realize that. General Dunford said that we are losing our qualitative and quantitative advantage over our adversaries. He was talking about Russia and China, in this case. We have adversaries out there that are actually ahead of us in terms of their capabilities in artillery and other areas. Here we are, and, quite frankly, we knew how this vote was going to come out. I have a list of the same vote that has taken place for the last 5 years, and it came out the same way it did before. The point here is that even though it wasn't going to pass, the problem is, it is sending a message to our kids who are out there in harm's way. We look and we see that we have started our road to recovery, and it has been an exciting thing because we came so close to being in a position where one-third of our brigade combat teams didn't work. The F-35s in the field--the Marines could use less than half of them. All of these things were going on because of what has happened to our military. Finally, we turned the corner. We turned the corner on the last vote--not the one we took today but the one we took a few months ago-- and we now are rebuilding our military.…”