On the recordDecember 10, 2020
I sound a little redundant here because we have been talking about this bill for a long time now, for several months. People don't realize how long it takes to get a defense authorization bill all the way through the system. There is no doubt in my mind that this is the most important bill of the year, every year, and the importance, I think, is pretty well demonstrated by the fact that we have successfully passed a defense authorization bill every year for 60 years. And I feel we will do the same thing. It could be today, it could be tomorrow, but nonetheless, it is a bill that has to pass. Now, when President Trump came into office 4 years ago, we had a problem. He inherited a military that had serious problems. In fact, during the last 4 years of the previous administration--that would have been 2010 to 2015--the President depleted the budget or reduced the budget for military by 25 percent. I don't say that really critically of President Obama because he had different priorities. He was up-front about it and didn't consider this to be high enough of a priority. Now, the sad thing about this is that at the same time that he was reducing our military spending by 25 percent, Russia was increasing theirs threefold and China's was increased by 83 percent. So we dropped ours by 25 percent, and at the same time, China increased theirs 83 percent. That is really serious.…
