Authorization for Use of Military Force Against al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria

Mr. President, I rise today to oppose unauthorized, undeclared, and unconstitutional war. What we have today is basically unlimited war, anywhere, anytime, anyplace upon the globe.

My amendment would sunset in 6 months the 2001 and 2002 authorizations for use of force. What does that mean? This was legislation passed many years ago to go after the people who attacked us on 9/11. I supported that battle, but I think the mission is long since over. I don't think anyone with an ounce of intellectual honesty believes these authorizations from 16 years ago and 14 years ago--I don't think anyone with intellectual honesty believes they authorized war in seven different countries.

Not only is it lives we are losing, the American soldiers, the brave young men and women who are sent to distant lands and asked to give their lives for their country without the Senate taking the time to authorize the war--I think that is terribly unjust and should end.

There are some who argue that we don't even need to vote at all. Some of the Presidents, Republican and Democratic, have said they have article II--this is the second article of the Constitution--they say that by the Constitution, they can do what they want, when they want, where they want, and that Congress never has to approve their authorization and never has to give authority to go to war. These advocates of perpetual war argue that these powers are implicit and that no one can stop a President who wants to go to war.

This is diametrically opposite of what our Founding Fathers thought. Madison in particular disagreed. Madison wrote that the executive branch is the branch most prone to go to war; therefore, the Constitution, with studied care, vested that power in the Congress. Our Founding Fathers saw the

history of Europe as the perpetual history of war--brothers fighting brothers, Kings of two different countries who were cousins, brothers, uncles, fathers, sons. The history of Europe was perpetual war.

When we broke away, we said: We are going to have some checks and balances in place. We are going to make it difficult to go to war. We are going to vest that power in the Congress.

But somewhere along the way, we lost our way, and we now commit ourselves to war or one man or one woman commits us to war without any vote by Congress. This is not what our Founding Fathers intended.

Former President Obama, when he was a candidate, wrote that no President should unilaterally go to war unless we were under imminent attack. That is the understanding of the Constitution that most originalists take. Yet, once Mr. Obama was in the White House, he bombed seven different countries. He expanded the use of Executive power. He expanded the war-making power of the Presidency, even while all along saying that he was for a narrower interpretation.

Candidate Trump said that the war in Afghanistan had lost its purpose, that it was a disaster, and that it should end. He said that on maybe 15 different occasions. Yet, now that he is in the White House, the generals have said: We must fight on. We must continue to fight. If we leave, the Taliban will take over.

My question is, When will the Afghans stand up and fight? We have spent $1 trillion helping them. We spent billions of dollars trying to convince them not to grow the poppy that becomes the opium that addicts the world. Yet last year Afghanistan had the biggest crop of poppy they have ever had in recent history. The people who run Afghanistan, whom we put in to govern, the Karzai family--full of drug dealers, crooks, and thieves. You wonder why they are not popular in their own country. But my question is, Where did the $1 trillion go? Why can't they defend themselves? Why do we have to fight their wars for them?

One thing is certain: The war was not authorized by you, the people, and the war was not authorized by us, the Congress, and therefore the war is unconstitutional. The war is unauthorized.

You say: Well, do we ever get it right? Have we ever voted to authorize war?

Yes, we have. When we went to war in Afghanistan the first time--and I would have voted yes--there was a vote, and overwhelmingly we voted to go in.

Some have argued: Well, is 6 months enough time for Congress to do anything? Can they get anything done in 6 months?

When we were attacked in Pearl Harbor, do you know how long it took us to declare war? Twenty-four hours. When we were attacked on 9/11, how long did it take us to authorize the military force to go in? Three days. People say Congress will never get it done. Maybe it is because we are divided.

We haven't been attacked, we have no clear purpose in Afghanistan, and there is no clear route to victory. Realize that in 2011 President Obama put 100,000 troops into Afghanistan. Sure, he pushed the Taliban back. Where did they go? To our ally Pakistan, which has gotten billions and billions of dollars of American welfare and as we sit here is destined to get another half a million of your money in American welfare over the next month. Billions and billions of dollars we send to Pakistan, but where does the Taliban live? In Pakistan. They run back and forth across the border.

So we have to ask the question, What is our purpose? Are we nation building? We spend hundreds of billions of dollars building their roads, building their bridges, building their schools. They bomb them, we bomb them--somebody bombs them, and then we rebuild them again.

We have $150 billion worth of damage in Texas. Do you know how we should pay for it? Let's quit sending welfare to foreign countries. Let's look at our country first, the problems we have here, rebuild our roads, our bridges, our schools, and not borrow it, not add to a $20 trillion debt. Take the money we are sending in welfare to foreign countries and let's rebuild our own.

We are at war in seven countries--none of them voted on by Congress. Is it expensive? Yes, to the tune of trillions of dollars.

Today we will debate the issue of war and whether Congress is constitutionally bound to declare war. We will debate whether one generation can bind another generation to perpetual war.

We are at the point where we have been in Afghanistan so long that within the next year, there will be people fighting who were not yet born on 9/11. This war no longer has anything to do with 9/11, no longer has anything to do with any vital interest in our country. It has to do with us believing we could reshape the world and make the world safe for democracy--everyone is going to love America, and everyone is going to become a western style democracy. Guess what? It is never going to happen.

Afghanistan is not even a real country; it is a collection of five or six tribal lands that were stuck together by Europeans who had no knowledge of the local people. They don't even like each other, much less us. Do you know what they call the President, who resides in Kabul? They call him the mayor of Kabul derisively because he has no sway over them. They are interested in who their chieftain is in their local area. They speak five different languages. They are never going to be a country.

If you want to be at war there, you want to send your sons and daughters to Afghanistan, you think somehow it will make our country safer, let's vote on it. So what I am advocating is a vote. For the first time in 16 years, I am advocating that we should vote on whether we should be at war. It should be a simple vote, but it is like pulling teeth. I have been trying very hard to get this vote for 5 years now. I am this close. I am hoping to get the vote today or tomorrow, but it isn't easy because we have been obstructing and obstructing, and no one wants to be on the line. Yet that is why we are elected--to put our names, our John Hancock, on the line. Are you for the war or against the war?

I am done. I am done. I am ready to come home. I remember my father saying, in 2008, in one of the Presidential debates, when they asked ``How will you get the people home?'' he said ``We just marched in, and we can just march out.''

There is no more meaning or purpose in Afghanistan. We had 100,000 troops there in 2011. All of the Taliban scurried into Pakistan, and as soon as the troops diminished, they went back. Some people take from that lesson--they say: We need 200,000 or we need half a million troops or we need to stay there forever and police every corner for them. I take it to mean that the governments themselves over there do not have the popular support of the people.

Stand up and fight for your country. Half of the people in Afghanistan who were helping us over there came to our country. They fled. It is the same with Iraq. All of the good people in Iraq--our translators, pro-Western people--came to our country. I understand wanting to come to a good place, but it would be like having the people who signed the Declaration of Independence, after they had fought the war and America had won, going back to England and saying: Oh, it is dangerous in the new country. Yet that is what we have been saying year after year, so the people who have pro-Western values from Afghanistan now live in the United States and the same in Iraq.

The thing is that we need to have some tough love. They need to practice some responsibility, and they need to take ownership of their country. But as long as you coddle people, as long as you give people stuff, and as long as you fight their wars for them, they are not going to step up and fight.

We are going to debate whether Afghanistan is a winnable war.

We will also debate whether war in Yemen is in our national interest. Most of America does not know that we are at war in Yemen. Most of America does not know where Yemen is. We need to know why we are there and whether it is of any value to the United States.

We will debate whether our support for Saudi Arabia is exacerbating starvation and the plague of cholera in Yemen.

We will debate whether it is in our national interest to topple the Government of Syria. There are 2 million

Christians who live in Syria. Guess what. We may not understand it, but most of those Christians support Assad. On the side of the war that we have been funding and arming with the radical Islamists from Saudi Arabia and with the radical Islamists from Qatar are the people who hate the Christians. We are fighting on the side of the people who hate the Christians in Syria. Does that make Assad a good guy? No, but the thing is that maybe sometimes there is no good person in a war, no good side to a war.

For 5 years, I have been fighting to have a vote on whether we should be at war and where. I think there is no greater responsibility for a legislator than to vote on when we go to war. I tell the young soldiers whom I meet that it is my responsibility to discuss, debate, and think seriously about whether we send them to war.

One of the things that is most mistaken by politicians--even by some who are well intended--is that they think every soldier in America is jumping up and down to go to his eighth tour in Afghanistan. Go out and meet the soldiers. They are not allowed to be politically active, and they are not a political force on Washington, but I guarantee that if you were to ask our soldiers ``Are you ready to go back for your eighth tour of Afghanistan? Do you see purpose in Afghanistan?'' that they have lost sight of what that purpose is.

I met a Navy SEAL about a year ago. He had been in for 19 years--a tough guy, as they all are--and he said to me: Do you know what? We can defeat any enemy. We can kill any enemy. We can succeed at almost any mission that you give us. But the mistake is when you--Congress or a President--tell us to go somewhere and plant the flag and create a country. We are just not very good at nation building.

We have the world's most elite military. We can defend our country. We can defend, without question, against all invaders. Yet we are not very good at making countries out of places that are not.

What we should think about is that we have a $20 trillion debt. We borrow $1 million a minute. Even if you thought it was a good idea to try to create a country in Iraq or create a country in Afghanistan or create some sort of paradise in Yemen or Somalia or Nigeria or Libya or any of the places we are--even if you thought some paradise was a great thing--we have no money with which to do it. We are destroying our country from within. We are eating out the substance of the very greatness of America by borrowing $1 million a minute. We are flat broke. We cannot afford to be everybody's Uncle Sam. We cannot afford to be everybody's Uncle Patsy. We cannot afford to keep exporting our money and our jobs to the rest of the world. We need to look at our country and say it is time that we did things for our country, for our people, and it is time that we quit borrowing $1 million a minute.

The question is, Will the Senators--will those who gather to vote-- stand for the rule of law? Will the Senators stand for congressional authority for war? Will they stand for what the Constitution clearly says in article I, section 8, which is that Congress, not the President, shall declare war? Will the Senators sit idly by and let the wars continue unabated and unauthorized?

Some will argue that sunsetting the old authorizations is too soon, too dramatic. Really? So 6 months and 16 years later, we have not decided whether we should be at war or where we should be, and we cannot decide in 6 months? It took us 24 hours to decide with Pearl Harbor. It took us 3 days to decide with 9/11. I think 6 months is more than enough time.

Will Congress do its job unless it is forced to? All history says no. Why does Congress have an 11-percent approval rating from the people? Because it is not doing its job. How do we force Congress to do its job? Give it deadlines. How can we get a deadline? Let's pass this. Let's let the authorizations expire. Let's have a full-throated, deep, and heartfelt debate over whether we should be at war and where. Should we be at war in Afghanistan? Is there a winnable and foreseeable winnable future there? Should we be at war in Iraq? Syria? Yemen? Libya?

Today's vote can be seen as a proxy vote for the Constitution. Today's vote is not really a vote for or against any particular war. Today's vote is simply a vote on whether we will obey the Constitution. Today's vote is a vote on whether Congress will step up and do its job. Sixteen-and-a-half years is more than enough time to determine whether the war in Afghanistan or Yemen or Libya or Somalia has purpose or real meaning for our national security.

Often, it is said--very glibly--that, yes, it is in our national security interest. Realize when people tell you that they are giving you a conclusion. That is the beginning of the debate. We could debate for hours and hours. Hopefully, we will have some of that debate, but we have to debate what is in our vital national interest. Just to say it is so does not make it so.

Does anybody in America think the war in Yemen is in our vital interest? Most people do not know where Yemen is, much less think it is in our vital interest. Guess what. The war in Yemen may actually be opposed to our vital national interest. It may be making it worse. The war in Libya certainly did.

President Obama, when he chose to act illegally and intervene in Libya, made the world less safe. It was not his intention. I will grant him that his motives were to make it more safe, but he made the world less safe. Why? Because when Qadhafi was toppled, you got chaos. You have two competing governments in Libya, and you have chaos. If you want to set up a terrorist camp, if you are ready to go find a good place in the world, Libya is one of the prime places to go now because the government is gone and there is chaos. So I would argue that the intervention--one of the wars that we fought illegally, without the approval of the Senate, under the unilateral action of the President-- made us less safe. That is why we are supposed to debate before we go to war. We are less safe because of the Libyan war.

How about the Syrian war? It is the Christians on one side and us on the other side. That is the first problem I have. The people on the side of the war that we supported are the radical Islamists. ISIS was on the side that we were supporting. In fact, one of the most famous, if not the most famous and important leaked email about Hillary Clinton from WikiLeaks was when Hillary Clinton sent an email to John Podesta, writing to him: Hmm, we need to exert some influence on Saudi Arabia and Qatar because they are giving financial and strategic assistance to

Mr. President, I rise to speak in support of the National Defense Authorization Act.

The Defense bill has a long tradition of bipartisan cooperation, and I was glad to join in that tradition as part of the Armed Services Committee. As with any far-reaching legislation, there are a number of provisions in this I support and some I do not, but, on the whole, this bill is a win for national security and a win for Massachusetts.

Massachusetts has a lot to offer our national security. Each of our military bases is unique in making vital contributions to our defense. The Massachusetts National Guard has a proud history, dating back to 1636, and it contains the oldest units of the U.S. Army.

Today we are proud of our military tradition, and we have a unique ecosystem of universities, industries, startups, and military labs, all focused on the next-generation needs for our warfighters. Research and development is critically important to this effort. It will literally save lives. I have made research funding a major priority, and I am very pleased we have secured an additional $45 million in funding for the Army's Basic and Applied Research accounts, for places like Natick, where researchers are doing cutting-edge work to better protect our soldiers. Overall, the bill increases funding for science and technology $250 million above the President's budget.

The bill also recognizes the critical role that MIT Lincoln Lab plays in national security research, and supports the construction of a new advanced microelectronics integration facility that will begin in 2019. It also fully funds the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental, or DIUx, which is doing

great work connecting DOD with innovative startups in Cambridge and around the country.

Our military bases, which are the lifeblood of their communities in Massachusetts, are also receiving much needed facility upgrades. Hanscom Air Force Base will receive $11 million to build a new gate complex that will dramatically improve its security. Westover Air Force Base in Chicopee will receive more than $60 million to construct a new maintenance facility and build a new indoor small arms range to improve readiness. Natick Soldier Systems Center will receive $21 million to improve family housing facilities, bringing our families working at Natick closer to the base.

All three of my brothers served in the military, and I know the demands of the military can be hard on families and on servicemembers. I have spent a lot of time over the last 9 months working hard with both Republican and Democratic Senators to do everything I can to help improve the lives of our military personnel and their families. I partnered with Senator Ernst, a Republican from Iowa, to introduce the Leadership Recognition Act, which has been incorporated into this larger Defense bill. Our proposal ensures that our servicemembers get the pay raises they deserve.

Over the last 15 years, Congress directed the Pentagon to raise military pay so it was more comparable to civilian wages, but it also gave the President the authority to waive the requirement to raise military pay. Unfortunately, that keeps happening, and military families who are already sacrificing so much don't get the pay raises they are entitled to.

Our new provision restricts the use of this waiver. We promised our military their regular pay raises in line with inflation, and they ought to get those raises, period. This one is a no-brainer. I am sorry it is taking Congress so long to get it done, but we are there now.

The Defense bill also includes my Service Member Debt Collection Reform Act. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has identified how unscrupulous debt collectors often take advantage of military personnel, for example, by alleging that servicemembers owe disputed or imaginary debts and sometimes even by contacting a servicemember's commanding officer to intimidate a servicemember into paying a debt they don't owe. This is outrageous. My provision requires DOD to review and update its policies regarding harassment of servicemembers by debt collectors.

Our military personnel are also entitled to educational benefits that can help them earn a degree or transition to civilian life. However, too often military members don't actually use these benefits because they can't navigate a frustratingly complicated and bureaucratic application process. That is why I offered an amendment to the NDAA to make sure DOD works with the Departments of Education and Veterans Affairs to automate the application of student loan benefits available to military borrowers. These Departments can use this information that already exists in Federal databases to expedite student borrower benefits for servicemembers, and there is no reason we shouldn't just do that right away. This will make life a little easier for our vets, and it will help put many of them on the road to a better education and higher earnings for the rest of their lives.

There is another problem in our military that we need to address. I was appalled earlier this year at reports that some male servicemembers shared nude photos of their fellow female servicemembers without consent, and harassed them on a website called Marines United. The military is not immune to the rise of so-called revenge porn online. Make no mistake, revenge porn is sexual harassment. DOD concluded in a May 2017 report that such harassment can lead to sexual assault.

Just last week, I sat with women in Massachusetts who had been sexually harassed and sexually assaulted during their time in the military. They volunteered for the military out of a deep sense of patriotism, and now they are struggling hard to come to terms with what happened to them. Their sense of betrayal--betrayal by their fellow servicemembers--ran deep.

Acts like these are deeply wrong, and they undermine unit cohesion and readiness. The Marine Corps and other services have taken some positive steps in response to the website scandal, but military prosecutors need the tools to combat this specific behavior.

Commanders have always had the ability to prosecute disorderly conduct, but the Uniform Code of Military Justice does not explicitly prohibit nonconsensual photo-sharing in all cases. To solve this problem, I teamed up with Senator Sullivan, a Republican from Alaska, to introduce the Protecting Servicemembers Online Act. Our proposal closes the revenge porn loophole, making it unlawful under the UCMJ for military personnel to share private, intimate images without the consent of the individual depicted. It does this by balancing privacy protections and survivors' rights, and I am grateful this year's Defense bill takes similar steps to address this revenge porn problem. There is more to do to make sure each person who signs up to serve our country is treated with dignity and respect, but this is a positive step.

This year's Defense bill also addresses an issue which is very personal to me--how we care for victims of terrorist attacks. I had been a Senator for only 3 months when the twin explosions went off at the Boston Marathon finish line on April 15, 2013, killing three people and wounding hundreds more. I was on a flight from Boston to DC when the bombs went off. I didn't even leave the DC airport. I just caught the next flight back to Boston.

The next day, I met with Jessica Kensky and Patrick Downes. They had been recently married. When the bombs went off, they were both seriously injured. Each had a leg amputated at the scene. They were rushed to separate hospitals, where they underwent more lifesaving treatments and where Jessica lost her other leg.

When I first saw Jessica, she still had gravel and glass embedded in her skin--injuries the doctors hadn't yet cleaned up. She was grateful to be alive, but worried about Patrick. When I first met Patrick, he had the same question: How is Jessica?

The Boston hospitals at which they received emergency care are among the world's best, and they saved many lives on that day, but those hospitals don't specialize in the long-term recovery from such complex and serious injuries like limb amputation. For that, you need military hospitals, like Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, but right now, access to Walter Reed requires a special exemption from the Secretary of Defense. Jess and Patrick say they owe their recoveries to the doctors, physical therapists, and prosthetic lab technicians who treated them at Walter Reed and who have treated thousands of troops since 2001.

Earlier this year, Senator Collins, a Republican from Maine, joined me in introducing the Jessica Kensky and Patrick Downes Act, which would allow all victims of terror attacks to receive treatment at military medical facilities if there is space available. I hope we will never see another attack like the Boston Marathon bombing, but this bill will help us be ready if it happens.

I am glad the Defense bill includes language to implement the policy in our bipartisan bill, and I am particularly thankful to Senator Collins for working with me so other victims of terrorist attacks will be able to access our world-class military medical facilities if they need them the way Jessica and Patrick did.

The work on servicemember pay, GI student loan benefits, and help for civilian victims of terror made me proud to be in the U.S. Senate. At the same time, I worked hard this year to ensure the Defense bill contains a number of provisions that will strengthen our national security.

Like my colleagues on the Armed Services Committee, I am concerned about Russian aggression. Too often this year, this issue has been obscured by partisan sniping, and it shouldn't be that way. Russia's attempts to sow global instability are a major national security threat, and on the Armed Services Committee we have treated it that way.

Earlier this year, I introduced the Countering Foreign Interference with Our Armed Forces Act. This bill contains two provisions--one requiring annual reports on the new and disturbing trend of Russian efforts to target our military personnel with disinformation

campaigns and a second bill in response to the Michael Flynn scandal so DOD will be required to report to Congress when a retired general officer requests permission to accept payments from a foreign government. We need to protect our military and our country from outside influence, and these are two steps we can take right now.

Another area which concerns me is the money we spend to outfit our military. The DOD buys a lot of goods and equipment, which means it pays an extraordinary amount of money to government contractors. It shouldn't be too much to ask those contractors to provide high-quality products at a reasonable price, to treat their workers decently, and to knock off any efforts to extort extra profits out of the government. I am pleased the Defense bill also includes a number of my priorities to promote these kinds of reforms.

Step one in this process needs to be a full audit of the Department of Defense. DOD spending makes up half of the discretionary budget, and yet the DOD--unlike other government agencies--has never been audited. That makes no sense at all. Senator Ernst and I teamed up to fight for a provision to incentivize the Department to achieve audit readiness by mandating a pay reduction for the Secretary of each military service unit that does not achieve audit after 2020, and we got it passed.

Senator Perdue, a Republican from Georgia, and I joined together to press the Defense Innovation Board to study how we can improve the way the Department acquires software.

Senator Rounds, a Republican from South Dakota, and I successfully fought for a provision requiring DOD to open source software methods and open source licenses whenever possible for unclassified, nondefense software, in accordance with best practices from the private sector. This one is particularly important so contractors can't shake down the Pentagon for new piles of cash every time DOD needs to upgrade and improve its software systems.

Finally, after stories about contractors with terrible safety records continuing to get DOD contracts, one after another, I successfully secured a provision that will require DOD contracting officers to consider workplace safety and health violations when they evaluate a potential DOD contractor. I introduced the Contractor Accountability and Workplace Safety Act to address this issue, and I am very glad it has been included in the NDAA.

This Defense bill isn't perfect. I don't agree with all of it. In a Republican-controlled Congress, I wouldn't expect to agree with all of it. For one thing, I vehemently disagree with the decision to authorize funding for research and development for a new generation of intermediate-range missiles. Everyone knows the Russians have violated the INF treaty already, but that is not a reason for the United States to violate this core anti-nuclear proliferation treaty as well. Our military doesn't want it. Our European allies don't want it. Even the White House doesn't want it. We obviously don't need it. In a world of limited resources, spending tons of taxpayer money to build an unnecessary weapon that will make all of us less safe is a terrible idea.

I also disagree with the committee's recommendation to zero out the funding for the Warfighter Information Network-Tactical, otherwise known as WIN-T. I have listened to the critiques of this system, but WIN-T Increment 2 is the only tactical communications system the Army currently has that permits communications on the move. GEN Mark Milley, the Army Chief of Staff, has noted the importance of remaining mobile on the battlefield. ``If you stay in one place longer than 2 or 3 hours, you will be dead,'' he said. We should improve WIN-T, not junk it, and we definitely shouldn't abruptly cancel this program without having any earthly idea of what will replace it. Fortunately, this program is not zeroed out in the House version so I will continue to fight for this during the House-Senate conference.

Finally, I am concerned about the overall increase in defense spending contemplated by this bill, particularly when there is no real plan in place to pay for it. The Defense Department is not the only agency that is critical to our national security, and most of those other agencies are under attack in this Congress. Moreover, it is important for us to make the investments we need here at home, to do things like address climate change and promote resilience after natural disasters, to invest in scientific research and discovery, to improve access to healthcare and education, to build new schools, and to repair aging roads and bridges. We cannot support a buildup in military spending that leaves our country weakened and unable to build a strong economy going forward.

Fortunately, the bill we are putting forward today merely authorizes new defense funding. Actual dollar amounts for Federal spending will be determined later this year for all of our agencies as part of the appropriations process. At that point, all spending--defense and nondefense--will be on the table at the same time. If that process is going to serve the American people well, it must provide for significant increases in spending on education, infrastructure, basic research, and the other building blocks of a strong country with a vibrant future.

I commend the leadership of Senators John McCain and Jack Reed throughout this process. Our committee has a long history of bipartisanship, and Senators McCain and Reed have continued that proud tradition. This legislation supports our servicemembers and their families, promotes commonsense Pentagon spending reforms, advances cutting-edge defense research, and bolsters the Commonwealth's innovation economy. Most importantly, this NDAA will make a real, positive impact on the lives of Americans. For those reasons, I intend to support it, and I urge my colleagues to do the same.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise to speak about the pending NDAA. In particular, I rise to speak about an amendment that has been previously discussed on the floor that is being offered by the Senator from Kentucky, Mr. Paul, that deals with the current authorizations for use of military force that are justifying American military action in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and numerous other countries.

The authorizations that currently support military actions were passed in 2001 and 2002. About a quarter of us were here and voted on those. Three-quarters of us have joined either the Senate or the House since those authorizations have been voted on. What that means is that we have American troops who are deployed in harm's way, that thousands have been killed, that thousands have their lives at risk right now, and that three-quarters of Congress has never voted to support the military operations that are currently underway. Many of us support them or support them with recommendations or reservations or qualifications, but three-quarters of us have never cast a vote.

These authorizations are, respectively, 15 and 16 years old. The authorizations have, essentially, been interpreted in a very broad way--first, by the Bush administration; second, by the Obama administration; and now by the current Trump administration. I would argue that the current interpretation of the authorizations would essentially allow, without any approval from Congress, an American President to wage war anywhere against any terrorist group for however long he wants to.

That was not the intention of the authorizations when they were originally drafted. If you were to go back and talk to those who had been here and cast their votes in 2001 and 2002, they would say that it was completely beyond their contemplation that what they were voting for then, which was going after those who had attacked the Pentagon--9/ 11 was yesterday--and the World Trade Center, would 16 years later still be used to support military action in a total of 14 countries in 35 separate instances having been declared by the last three administrations.

Senator Paul has an amendment on the table, and the amendment is this: to sunset the 2001 and 2002 authorizations in 6 months as a mechanism for forcing Congress to finally do the job of having a debate and defining the legal authority of the military mission that we are currently engaged in and putting a senatorial and congressional thumbprint on the mission so that those who are risking their lives know that they are doing so with a political consensus by the American political leadership here in Congress. I am supporting Senator Paul's amendment.

I think it is way past time for Congress to take this up and for everybody to be on the record. I think that our allies need to know whether Congress supports the American military missions that are currently underway. I think that our adversary needs to know that there is a congressional resolve, not just an Executive resolve. Most importantly, I think that the American troops who are deployed in harm's way every day deserve an answer to the question of whether Congress is behind them.

I came to Congress being very focused on this and to the Senate in January of 2013. I gave my first speech about it on the floor in the summer of 2013, when President Obama expanded the military action against al-Qaida to also incorporate military action against ISIS, which did not form until 2 years after the 9/11 attack. I filed my first military authorization, seeking to get Congress on board and to send to the troops the message that we supported them. That was now almost 3 years ago. I was once able to get a vote on an authorization in the Foreign Relations Committee. It passed out of committee but died for lack of any action on the floor.

Since 2015, out of a thought that we should try to be at least as bipartisan as we could in putting support behind the troops and carrying out our article I responsibilities, Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona and I have worked together, first, in introducing in 2015--and then in reintroducing this year--an authorization for use of military force. We have a pending authorization that we filed in June, which has been pending in the Foreign Relations Committee, to set forth a military authorization with certain conditions to undertake and legally justify military action against al-Qaida, ISIS, and the Taliban. That has been pending in the Foreign Relations Committee, but there has been no particular motive or forcing mechanism that has made the committee take this up, bat it around, hear from experts, debate it, amend it, and send it to the floor.

I think, of all of the powers that Congress has, the one that we should most jealously guard is the power to declare war. James Madison was the drafter of the Constitution, and he gathered great ideas from others. The 230th anniversary of the drafting of the Constitution is this Sunday, September 17--Constitution Day in Philadelphia. The Constitution was a great collection of wonderful ideas, many that had been tried out in other nations, but the genius of it was the way in which we got the best of the best and tried to put them together in the document.

It has been said by many historians that there were only about two items in the Constitution circa 1787 that were truly unique and that we were doing for the first time. One was the protection of the ability of the people to worship as they pleased without preference or punishment, which had been drawn from a statute that had been passed in Virginia in 1780, the Statute for Religious Freedom. The second idea that was very unique to our country and was, really, an effort by the Framers of our Constitution to change the course of human history was the idea that war should only be initiated by Congress and not by the Executive.

The Framers of the Constitution knew in 1787 about Executives and Executive overreach, especially in matters of war. They knew Kings, Emperors, Monarchs, Sultans, and Popes, and they knew that that was how war started. Madison decided that we were going to do it differently, and the Framers and those who voted in Philadelphia agreed with him. The Constitutional Convention's minutes that were taken by Madison and others demonstrated what they were trying to do.

Madison explained it in a letter to President Jefferson about 10 years later, when Jefferson was grappling with questions of war. Madison wrote in the letter that our Constitution supposes what the history of all governments demonstrate--that it is the Executive that is most interested in war and, thus, is most prone to war. For this reason, we have, with studied care, placed the question of war in the legislature. Madison was trying to change it so that war could not be initiated without a vote of Congress.

In my view--and I was tough on a President of my own party about this--when President Obama decided to initiate offensive military action against ISIS in August of 2014, I said: You must come to Congress. When President Trump used military might--in this instance, weapons against Syria--to undertake the laudable step of punishing the use of chemical weapons against civilians, I said: I will support you with a vote, but you cannot do that without Congress. That is because there is nothing in the authorizations that are currently pending that allow the United States to take military action against the Government of Syria.

Yet we have gotten so sloppy about this. Frankly, we have been sloppy about it just about since 1787. If I can be blunt, throughout our history, regardless of party--Whig or Federalist, Democrat or Republican--Members of Congress have often concluded that a war vote is a very difficult vote and that, if we could allow the President to initiate it without a vote, we might be politically insulated from the consequences of the vote. That has been a uniform trend, and it has been a nonpartisan one. That is one of the reasons that we are where we are right now in Congress's being reluctant to take up war votes. These are difficult votes.

I have been on the Foreign Relations Committee since January 2013 and have cast two votes for military action--first, against Syria for using chemical weapons in the summer of 2013 and, second, in the matter that I mentioned earlier in voting for a war authorization against ISIS in December of 2014. I will say that there is no vote that you will ever cast that is harder.

I come from a State with a great military tradition. More people in Virginia are connected to the military--either as Active Duty, veteran, Guard, Reserve, DOD civilian or military contractor or military family--than in any other State. One of my children is a Marine infantry commander. Any war vote--if not immediately, then prospectively--affects him and the people whom he works with and cares deeply about.

These are very, very hard votes. They are supposed to be hard, but that is no reason to duck them. Congress is supposed to take this up, not hand any President of any party a carte blanche to go to war without a vote of Congress. Even against bad guys like ISIS or even against a Syrian dictator who is using chemical weapons against civilians, we are not supposed to be at war without a vote of Congress.

So I am here to support Senator Paul's amendment, which would take these old and outdated authorizations and sunset them within 6 months. I view his amendment as being an attempt to force Congress to do what it should do, which is to have a debate anew after 16 years and come up with a crafted legal authority and appropriate

strategy for carrying out military actions against nonstate terrorist groups.

I applaud my colleague from Arizona, Senator Flake, because he and I have worked together very hard on this issue. We have a matter that is pending. If Senator Paul's amendment passes, the result of his amendment will be that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and this body will have to grapple with what is an appropriate authorization circa 2017 to replace the authorizations from 2001 and 2002.

We shouldn't be afraid of that discussion. We should relish it and protect the power of Congress to decide when we will and will not be at war. I believe the version that Senator Flake and I have introduced, that was introduced in June, is a good-faith effort to listen to all and craft a compromise going forward.

I will close and say what I have said already. I think Congress should not only do this because we are constitutionally required to-- and waging war without an authorization poses all kinds of legal challenges that I think are significant; that it is constitutionally required should be enough--but I actually really like the reason. I like the reason for the constitutional provision.

Madison and the Framers concluded that we should not order men and women into combat, where they are risking their lives and their health, if there is not a political consensus by the elected leadership of the country that the mission is so worth it that we can fairly ask them to risk their lives. If we are afraid to cast a vote because, oh, it is too unpopular or it could be too challenging, how can we stand up and say we are going to duck that responsibility when the consequence of war is that volunteers are being deployed and potentially injured and killed?

I will close and just say it seems to me that the sacrifice of the millions who serve Active, Guard, and Reserve--of the thousands who are deployed overseas in theaters of war right now--their sacrifice should call upon us to have a debate and do the job we are supposed to do.

If the Paul amendment passes, I look forward to working especially with my colleague from Arizona and my colleagues on the Armed Services Committee and colleagues on this floor to have a debate, have a vote, and send a strong message to terrorist groups, to our allies--but especially to our troops--that the article I branch of the U.S. Government has a resolve and supports them.

With that, I yield the floor.

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. I stand on the side that it is North Korea because North Korea is run by someone with a questionable mentality, and they are developing--I have watched them over the years--the capabilities that they now have. I certainly agree that Iran also is a serious threat. But the fact is that our Armed Forces are now in a condition that they have not been in for a long time.

I chair the Subcommittee on Readiness in the Senate, and we had the vice chairs testify before us not too long ago. They testified that we are in worse shape now than we were during the hollow force of the 1970s, right after the Carter administration. Many of us remember that, and I certainly do. Our Armed Forces are smaller than in the days of the hollow force in the 1970s, and readiness in the form of personnel, training, and equipment have been degraded, I think, to a breaking point. All the while, we have witnessed an uptake in the training and operational accidents across the Armed Forces. While the risks posed by the readiness crisis are significant, Congress is already taking steps to correct the shortfalls.

Every amendment considered for the NDAA should focus on increasing readiness across our services. We owe it to

our troops and our Nation to help ensure that levels are acceptable. That is why it is disappointing and dangerous that we are considering an amendment that would authorize a base realignment and closure round, better known to all of us as a BRAC round. We have had five BRAC rounds since 1989, and I am familiar with all of them. I, along with many of my colleagues in the Senate Armed Services Committee, successfully have a provision that would include a prohibition against a BRAC right now. I think it is pretty obvious. Everyone knows what the threat is out there. At least those on the Armed Services Committee do. But they also know that any BRAC round that you do is going to have the effect of costing a lot of money that should be spent on readiness. No matter what a base realignment and closure, or BRAC, is, the amount of money that is spent when you first start is going to be very expensive.

Unfortunately, an amendment is pending that would enable a new BRAC round in 2019, and, at the same time, remove--this is critical--the nonpartisan commission that allows the input of both local defense communities and Congress into the BRAC process.

I will tell my colleagues why that is important. I remember because it was shortly after I was first elected. Prior to 1989, the Defense Department was the agency that made the decisions as to what was going to happen to our various installations around America. It was very, very political. There were rumors or some stories that they would agree for certain considerations to allow someone to continue to operate when they really shouldn't be operating.

Well, the Pentagon claims that a BRAC round would save money and would allow the military to invest that money into critical readiness shortfalls. It is just not true. Before the most recent BRAC round in 2005, we heard these same arguments from the Pentagon, that the BRAC would somehow save money and would allow the military to increase efficiency. With 22 major base closings and 33 realignments--that is what happened in 2005--the round was depicted to save, over a 20-year period, $35 billion, with costs of $21 billion. The reality is far different. The 2005 BRAC round cost taxpayers roughly $35 billion, and it is only expected to save $9.9 billion over the next 20 years.

Now, the other day I went back and looked up just to see what the GAO said about that. Keep in mind that it was a 2005 BRAC round, but the GAO study was actually in 2011, saying: We know what we said at that time; let's see how they performed.

So let me read right out of their report: The ``one-time implementation costs''--that is the cost of putting together a BRAC round--``grew from $21 billion originally estimated by the BRAC Commission in 2005 to about $35 billion.'' In other words, they said it was going to cost $21 billion, and it ended up costing $35 billion. That is an increase of 67 percent. It has been that way with the other rounds too.

Looking at their analysis of the value, it is very important that we understand what they are saying here. The GAO said that ``the 20-year net present value DOD can expect by implementing the 2005 BRAC recommendations has decreased by 72 percent.''

In other words, they were 72 percent off as to what great savings we were going to have in the future by making these closures.

They went on to say that ``the 20-year net present value--that is, the present value of future savings minus the present value of up-front investment costs--of $35.6 billion estimated by the Commission in 2005 for this BRAC round has decreased by 72 percent.'' It cannot be more specific than that, and this is the consistent pattern that we have.

So, clearly, those base closure rounds cost the American taxpayers an exorbitant amount of money up front and take years to recoup their initial investment, if they ever do. In this case, they haven't, and they don't expect to. With the history of previous inconsistencies between expected and actual costs, there is no certainty that any proposed base closures or realignments would be economically viable now or at any time in the future.

Now, we are at a point of uncertainty that makes it irresponsible to expend billions of dollars in downsizing our Armed Forces when we are currently facing some of the most volatile, unpredictable, and dangerous military threats that America has ever seen. Readiness can't wait, and our enemies around the world will not.

We must also consider the possibility that we will soon require the capacity that is presently considered excess if the current military threats materialize in a manner that would encourage expansion of our armed services.

I think that just stands to reason. We know the threats are out there, and we know the problems are more severe than they have ever been in the history of this country. So maybe the current size of our forces would not be adequate. Well, it is a lot cheaper to go ahead and keep something that is already there than it is to tear down something and start all over again.

So, anyway, as to the early years, everybody knows that the certainty is there that it will cost money in the early years. The high cost of a BRAC round would divert resources away from addressing immediate, tangible threats.

Just last week, North Korea tested what is believed to be a hydrogen bomb, its most powerful nuclear weapon tested to date, estimated at nearly seven times as powerful as the bomb detonated over Hiroshima. This came on the heels of North Korea's first successfully tested and more powerful and far-ranging intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM. We are familiar with that test, which began over the summer. Now, if fired on a trajectory, experts believe the ICBMs that North Korea tested could have reached the United States of America.

I can remember talking about this with our intelligence department years ago. At that time, we were saying that they could finally develop a bomb and a delivery system that could reach the United States of America. Well, that may be here today. If not, it is imminent.

A BRAC round now would also shortchange a response to the immediate readiness needs. Over the last 90 days, we have witnessed a spike in accidents across the military services, especially in the Navy and in some of the aviation mishaps. While these accidents are still under investigation--under investigation to determine the cause--it is not hard to correlate them with the readiness decline.

Our forces are smaller than the days of the hollow force in the 1970s. Our equipment is aging. Our base infrastructure requires critical maintenance and upgrades. Our Air Force is short 1,500 pilots, and 1,300 of those are fighter pilots. Only 50 percent of the Air Force squadrons are trained and ready to conduct their assigned missions. The Navy is the smallest and the least ready it has been in years. It currently can only meet about 40 percent of the demand for regional combat commanders. We are talking about the commanders in the field who make that assessment. We can only carry out less than 40 percent of them. More than half of Navy aircraft are grounded because they are awaiting maintenance or lack necessary parts. The Marine Corps' F/A- 18s, known as the Hornets, 62 percent are broken. We don't have that capacity. The Army has said about one-third of their brigade combat teams, one-fourth of their combat aviation brigades, and one-half of their division headquarters are currently ready.

Speaking in January about the Army readiness, then-Vice Chief of Staff of the Army General Allyn said:

What it comes down to . . . we will be too late to need. .

. . Our soldiers will arrive too late, our units will require

too much time to close the manning, training, and equipment

gap . . . the end result is excessive casualties to civilians

and to our forces who are already forward-stationed.

We are talking about lives. We are talking about American lives. That is a sobering assessment, especially when considering the gravity of the threats we face around the world, including, of course, the Korean Peninsula.

The NDAA's first priority has to be to rebuild our force and improve its readiness, which is what we are in the process of doing right now, and we need to get it done. A BRAC round would divert vast resources away from this end for savings we would not see for decades to come, if we ever did--and we

are growing, not shrinking. Now is not the time for a BRAC round.

I hope my colleagues in the Senate will join me in rejecting this amendment. However well-intentioned, now is not the time for a shortsighted BRAC round.

There are still Members--I have talked to Senators who are saying they really believe, and they have been told, that somehow we are going to have more money for readiness if we have a BRAC round. It is exactly the opposite. Again, straight from the GAO, they made the analysis of the 2005 BRAC, and said the 20-year net present value DOD can expect by implementing the 2005 BRAC recommendations has decreased by 72 percent. It always costs a lot more on the front end and saves much less in the long run.

With that, I encourage my colleagues to reject this amendment, if this amendment is indeed offered.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee had a very important hearing last week regarding the 2001 authorization for use of military force, the law that serves as the legal underpinning for the war against al-Qaida and the Taliban. I am grateful to our witnesses, Secretaries Mattis and Tillerson, for making themselves available to the members of the committee and for the straightforward and honest answers they provided to us.

As we have gotten further and further away from the September 11 attacks that resulted in the passage of the 2001 AUMF, I have urged Congress to take a fresh look at that authorization. When four soldiers died recently in Niger, I think most Americans--and even some Members of Congress--were shocked to learn that we even had troops in that country. Our troops were not there under the auspices of the 2001 AUMF, but considering that they were reportedly ambushed and killed at the hands of an Islamic State affiliate, questions have been raised about where our forces are and where they are at war with terrorists versus when they are simply conducting train-and-equip or other missions of that sort.

It was encouraging that nearly every member of the Foreign Relations Committee was in attendance at that hearing where the witnesses testified that the administration believes it has ample authority to prosecute the war on terrorism and does not need a new AUMF.

I can't say I was surprised to hear that testimony. No administration, Republican or Democratic, will ever willingly cede the broad authority given to the executive branch 3 days after the September 11 attack. If they were to say that we need new authorization, they would be conceding that they haven't been acting with authorization all this time. So they are never going to say that we need a new AUMF.

What has surprised me is that there are Members of this body, the Senate, who are content to let this 16-year old authorization remain in place. Some have even suggested that any updates to the AUMF can be made using the appropriations process. Are we really going to start using policy riders on annual spending bills to approve of sending troops into harm's way? We rarely even vote on individual spending bills anymore, let alone controversial policy riders to those spending bills. Are we truly willing to leave it to the members of the Appropriations Committee to update a law that has put our servicemembers into harm's way, particularly those of us on the authorizing committee, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee? I hope that we more jealously guard our prerogatives than that.

Our inaction on updating the 2001 law has already relegated the role of the Senate in authorizing force to that of a cog in the feedback loop. I would submit that we in the Senate ought to aspire to be more than that.

For 16 years, Congress has been all too willing to let successive administrations use those broad authorities to address new threats and to deploy U.S. troops to new places. Beyond Afghanistan, our troops have deployed all over the world, to places such as Yemen, the Philippines, Somalia, and Libya to fight al-Qaida and its affiliates.

We have also sent forces to Syria and back to Iraq to defeat ISIS, a group that didn't even exist in 2001. We need to fight terrorism overseas, and I am not suggesting that the United States should shy away from these battles. To the contrary, I believe Congress should do its duty in supporting these missions by voting to authorize them.

In the 16 years since the passage of the 2001 AUMF, approximately 300 Members of the House who voted on it are no longer with that Chamber. In the Senate, of those Senators who voted on the original AUMF, only 23 Senators remain in their seats today. That leaves approximately 70 percent of the entire Congress that has never cast a vote to authorize military force abroad. Yet, over the years, deployments have continued to new places, combating new foes.

The United States is strongest when we speak with one voice. Therefore, Congress must have some buy-in on these missions. Our allies and other adversaries need to know that the war on terrorism has the support of Congress. More importantly, our troops need to know that Congress is behind them.

I know the concept of passing a new, updated AUMF is a tricky one. This is not a conventional war against a sovereign nation in which victory is easily defined. Instead, we are fighting an ideological enemy that has no sovereignty and which, over the years, has moved all over the world, resulting in many splinter factions that could change their name at any time with ease.

This new kind of war requires a new kind of authorization, one that allows Congress's continued buy-in and increases its oversight. Right now, we have neither of these.

After working on this issue for several years, Senator Tim Kaine and I have introduced legislation that we think gets us in the right place. Our bill would authorize the use of military force against al-Qaida and the Taliban

and ISIS. It authorizes force against affiliates of those groups and requires the President to report to Congress when he initiates force against a new group he designates as being associated with al-Qaida, the Taliban, or ISIS. Military operations can begin as soon as the President has notified Congress. There is no time-lapse required.

If Congress doesn't agree with the President's designation, our bill allows a 60-day timeframe during which any Member can bring a resolution of disapproval to the floor under expedited procedures, and adoption of such measure by both Houses would result in the end of military operations against that group.

Our bill adopts the same process with regard to geography to allow Congress to disapprove of military operations in a particular country. I recognize that traditional declarations of war and other authorizations of military force haven't referred to a particular geographic area in which operations can take place. But all of our previous military engagements were against sovereign nations with armed forces, not terrorist groups that can pop up in any country at any time.

If Congress is going to authorize the use of force, we ought to know in which countries U.S. troops are operating. Requiring the President to notify Congress when he begins operations against one of these terrorist groups in a new country is an important check on the executive branch to ensure there is no overreach.

The bar for disapproving the President's decision is high-- appropriately so. It would require two-thirds of the House and the Senate to disagree with the President on his decisions with regard to new associated forces or new countries.

Right now, Congress has very little to say over who or where our military fights. The only option available is to cut off appropriations, and history has demonstrated that simply is not realistic or appropriate.

The most recent example of this, as some of my colleagues will recall, was in 2011, when the Obama administration joined the NATO operation to help rebels in Libya topple Muammar Qadhafi. The administration never made the case to Congress as to what U.S. interests were served by U.S. involvement. As a result, many Members on both sides of the aisle publicly opposed our intervention in Libya.

Yet, when the clock ran out on the time constraints set forth in the War Powers Resolution, Congress did not turn off appropriations because we can't just pull the rug out from underneath servicemembers when they are in harm's way overseas. The ``turning off appropriations'' approach simply hasn't worked in the past and is not likely to work in the future.

We need real congressional buy-in and oversight over a conflict that has morphed considerably since 2001--and which we are now being told is morphing to a new continent. S.J. Res. 43 gives us just that.

I should note that the bill also includes a 5-year sunset. The sunset is not intended to serve as a notice that the war on terrorism will end in 5 years. It is there to require Congress to put its skin in the game by voting on authorizing force.

The administration has signaled its objection to this provision. They think that the war on terrorism could be undermined if terrorists think they just have to wait us out.

I worry more that the lack of congressional buy-in undermines the war right here at home. Seventy percent of Congress has no skin in the game at all. We are free to criticize the President, whether the President is Republican or Democrat. That is not right.

We ought to have responsibility here. We are the article I branch. We are the branch tasked with declaring war and authorizing use of force. We shouldn't shirk our responsibility. We can't let history repeat itself and go for another 16 years without voting for the use of force against terrorists. That is why I support a sunset on any new or updated AUMF.

Perhaps the best feature of the Flake-Kaine measure is that it is bipartisan. That is an essential feature. I think we can all agree that passing an updated AUMF along party lines is perhaps the only thing worse than letting the status quo remain. I commend the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Corker, for signaling that we will move ahead with the markup of the new AUMF.

I think Flake-Kaine is a great start, but I am under no illusion that the process of putting a bill together that can garner widespread, bipartisan support will be an easy one. But the longer we wait, the higher the risk becomes that we will render ourselves irrelevant when it comes to authorizing force. That is a risk the Senate and Congress should not take.

I yield back.