On the recordOctober 28, 2015
If one takes into account the effects of inflation, we cut our military budget 21 percent from 2010 to 2014. Madam Speaker, I think everybody in this body will acknowledge the world is not 21 percent safer today than it was just 4 years ago. As a matter of fact, if you look around the world, whether it is the growth of ISIS into more countries or the continued challenge of al Qaeda and its various affiliates, to the morass of Syria with historic Russian re-insertion today, to China building islands in the South Pacific, to North Korea's saber rattling, to Iran intentionally violating an agreement it made on its missile testing just after the U.S. ratified the nuclear deal, to daily cyber attacks, the world is growing increasingly dangerous. Into that danger we send men and women who wear the uniform of the United States to meet that danger. Yet, we cut their budget 21 percent. We saw last week the President of the United States used them as a political bargaining chip to try to force Congress to comply with his domestic agenda. The bottom line for me, Madam Speaker, is our troops deserve better than that. That is the reason I support this Bipartisan Budget Act of 2014. It stops the cuts in defense. It increases the money going to our troops. It prevents them from being used as a bargaining chip in the future because it sets the military budget for fiscal year 2016 and fiscal year 2017 so that that is decided.…
