S.Amdt. 3861

SA 3861. Mr. COTTON submitted an amendment intended to be proposed to
amendment SA 3695 proposed by Mr. Shelby to the bill H.R. 6157, making
appropriations for the Department of Defense for the fiscal year ending
September 30, 2019, and for other purposes; which was ordered to lie on
the table; as follows:

At the appropriate place in title VIII of division A,
insert the following:
Sec. ___.  It is the sense of the Senate that--
(1) the impending cut of $71,000,000,000 to the national
defense budget for fiscal year 2020 would have a disastrous
impact on military readiness and would force the Department
of Defense to choose between abandoning investments in weapon
systems and making significant cuts to military personnel;
(2) to avert this disaster, Congress must immediately begin
negotiating budget levels for national defense for fiscal
years 2020 and 2021 that provide funding levels necessary to
maintain technological advancements as well as current troop
levels;
(3) the longer Congress waits to give budget certainty to
the Department for fiscal years 2020 and 2021, the more
taxpayer money will be wasted through delays on strategic
decisions and critical programs; and
(4) Secretary of Defense James Mattis rightfully condemned
these destructive cuts when he testified before Congress that
``[n]o enemy in the field has done more to harm the
warfighting readiness of our military than sequestration''.
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