On the recordSeptember 12, 2017
Mr. President, I want to discuss an amendment, and I am not sure when it will be offered--I understand it will be offered--and I think it is very significant. First of all, let's keep in mind what this is all about. The NDAA is the National Defense Authorization Act. It is one that we know is going to pass. It has passed for 55 consecutive years. If something happened and it didn't pass, the troops wouldn't get hazard pay or flight pay, and it would really be a traumatic thing that would happen. But it is not going to happen. It is going to pass. It is the most important bill that I believe we pass every year. As I said, we have passed it for 55 consecutive years, and it is important that we pass it right away. Sometimes it gets stalled until later in the year, but if it isn't done by the end of December, that is when everything falls apart. So we just don't need to do that, and I believe we have the momentum to go ahead and get it done. Now, we are facing a threat. I have stood at this podium so many times now to talk about how I look back wistfully at the days of the Cold War when we had two superpowers. We knew what they had. They knew what we had. Mutually shared destruction meant something, but now it is totally different. We hear that the two biggest threats facing us right now would be North Korea and Iran.…





