Mr. President, under the existing unanimous consent agreement, the Senator from Virginia is going to proceed for 15 minutes, I understand. Very briefly, I note the absence of a quorum. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order…
Mr. President, under the existing unanimous consent agreement, the Senator from Virginia is going to proceed for 15 minutes, I understand.
Very briefly, I note the absence of a quorum.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
Mr. President, first, I wish to thank my good friend from Virginia, Senator Warner. As he pointed out, he and I have been together in the Senate now almost 30 years. Hopefully, we could get this bill to the floor the way he and I and other chairmen before us have been able to get a Defense authorization bill to the floor and passed for, I believe, close to 50 years; somewhere in the mid 40s now we have had a Defense authorization bill. We have to have it under the law. There is mandatory spending in here. There are pay increases in here. There are benefit provisions in here. This is a must-do bill.
Senator Warner, in his great leadership over the years, has made it possible for many of these bills to get to the floor. I look forward to all our efforts to get this bill done in the very few weeks we have remaining. If we do get it done--and I am optimistic--it will be because Senator Warner, as always, brings his managerial skills and his good nature and his other skills to the fore. I look forward to trying to get this bill done the way we have been able to do it for all these years.
I thank my friend. I want to make another point. In the weeks we have remaining, we not only have to get this bill passed, but we have to get it to conference and back in probably a record period of time. It is going to take all of the cooperation of the Members of the Senate. We are going to succeed. There are 100 reasons to do it, and all of them boil down to the men and women in uniform and their families and the security of this country. The incentive should be there for us to do it. Because of the long delay, we have to do it in record time. We have had wonderful cooperation from members of the committee on a bipartisan basis. We have tremendous staff members who have worked over the recess to get the work done so we can get this bill passed in a very short period of time and so that we would have a reasonable chance of getting this bill done in the number of weeks we have left.
The committee approved this bill unanimously. More than 4 months ago now, on April 30, we tried to bring the bill to the Senate floor. At the end of July, we were unable to do so because we could not obtain cloture on the motion to proceed. There are many important nondefense legislative proposals that Members would like to bring before the Senate to get adopted. I am one of those Members. There are a number of things I would love to bring before the Senate and get adopted. But we cannot take out our frustration on our troops. I am prepared to give up a whole bunch of nondefense amendments that I hoped to be able to bring to the Senate's attention. I am willing to give them up. I hope other Members who feel the same way will ensure that we have a Defense bill this year.
This bill is simply too important and the time available to us is too limited to be sidetracked by unrelated amendments, as important as they may be. As my dear friend from Virginia said, we have enacted a defense authorization act every year now for 4\1/2\ decades. During that time, there have been years when we had to invoke cloture to get final passage, years when we have had to enter unanimous consent agreements to expedite consideration of the bill, years in which the bill was vetoed and we had to start over again. There have been years in which we have spent weeks debating the bill on the Senate floor and months in conference with the House. We have had to address serious disagreements over issues such as base closures and missile defense. But we have always had a bill because Members have always understood that we have to do what it takes to do the right thing for our soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, and their families.
These authorization bills, which come annually, contain provisions that improve the quality of life for our men and women in uniform and give them the tools they need to defend our Nation and provide critical reforms to improve the operations of the Pentagon. That is the case with this bill. The bill reported by the Armed Services Committee 3 months ago obtains many provisions of critical importance to our troops.
First and foremost, the bill would increase military pay by 3.9 percent, a half percent more than the President requested. It provides continued authority for the payment of enlistment and reenlistment bonuses, ascension and retention bonuses for servicemembers with critical skills who are assigned to high-priority units, and bonuses and incentives to reward our troops to make sure we can retain our people. It provides new incentives to military psychologists and the nursing students to address the ongoing shortages we have in these critical specialty areas.
At a time when thousands of our troops are deployed around the world and our voluntary military is strained to meet the requirements of ongoing conflicts, while remaining prepared for other contingencies these are steps that we simply must take.
When our men and women in uniform are in harm's way, there is nothing
more important for us to do. The bill would increase the end strength of the Army, Marine Corps, Air National Guard, and Army Reserve to reduce the incredible stress on our troops. It would establish and extend critical authorities needed by the DOD for current operations. For instance, it would provide the Department of Defense the authorization to use funds for quick turnaround construction projects needed to support our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. It will extend the DOD's authority to provide training and funds and stabilization in security assistance, which are so essential to the well-being of our troops.
The bill includes numerous other measures to improve the quality of life for our service men and women, retirees, and their families. For instance, the bill ensures that wounded and injured servicemembers will not be charged for meals received at military treatment facilities. It is so unbelievable that some of those facilities make these current charges, so I should repeat it. This bill will ensure that wounded and injured servicemembers will not be charged for meals received in military treatment facilities. It will provide supplemental impact aid for schools with large populations and military children. It authorizes funds for military construction projects, military family housing, and BRAC-related construction to ensure that our troops have the housing they deserve and our military has the facilities it needs for the national defense.
The bill will build on last year's National Guard Empowerment Act by requiring the Secretary of Defense, in consultation with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the Chief of the National Guard Bureau, to develop a strategic plan to enhance the rule of the National Guard and Reserves, taking into account the recent report of the Commission on National Guard and Reserves.
The bill will provide funding for critical initiatives, including $3 billion for the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization. That is the ongoing effort of that organization to defeat the threat of these explosive devices. There are over $100 million in investments in advanced energy and power technology to support defense missions, such as hybrid engines, military fuels research, and battery technology, and more than $120 million to combat the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and improve our ability to reduce and respond to threats of weapons of mass destruction, both at home and abroad.
Another thing this bill does is something I think every American who has heard about the fact that we are spending taxpayer dollars for the reconstruction of Iraq, while the Iraqis have about $80 billion in surplus funds in banks, including ours, drawing interest from the American taxpayers, to go to the Iraqi Government to build infrastructure in Iraq while they are charging us $120 a barrel and we are paying $4 a gallon for gasoline. When the American public focused on that a few weeks ago, the reaction was what we would expect. They were astounded that 5\1/2\ years later, $11 billion a month is going out of our taxpayers' pockets, while the Iraqis have a huge oil surplus based on the revenues they get from $120- or $130-a-barrel oil, and with all that money in the bank, we are still paying significant moneys for Iraqi reconstruction. It is unconscionable.
We have a provision in this bill that will require the Iraqis to use their own oil revenues rather than U.S. taxpayer dollars to pay for the large infrastructure projects and also for the training and equipping of their own military. We all remember Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz, at the beginning of the war, who said Iraq would be able to ``finance its own reconstruction through oil revenue.'' But that has not proven to be the fact. U.S. taxpayers, so far, have paid $48 billion for stabilization and reconstruction activities in Iraq.
Again, the Iraqi Government has generated more than $100 billion in oil revenue since the war began and spent only a fraction of that amount on its own reconstruction. Under these circumstances, it is inexcusable and unconscionable for U.S. taxpayers to have to foot the bill for projects that the Iraqis are fully capable of funding themselves. The bill addresses that problem. We should not have to have legislation on that. The President ought to call the Prime Minister of Iraq and say: Folks, you have $80 billion. Reimburse us for the reconstruction. Surely, the ongoing construction should be paid for by Iraq's surplus. But, apparently, that is not going to happen. So this legislation is needed.
The bill also includes a number of measures to ensure the proper stewardship of taxpayer dollars. These include provisions that would institute improved cost control for the acquisition of major weapons systems, require program managers to incorporate energy efficiency requirements and performance parameters for such systems, and ensure that private security contractors don't engage in combat and combat- related activities on the battlefield. This is a reform that has been needed for a long time. We have these contractors that are hired to perform Government functions, with combat-related duties. We simply have to make sure these private security contractors don't engage in combat-related activities in these battle zones. We have to increase oversight and accountability for housing privatization initiatives, and the bill does all that. Our acquisition system is in deep trouble. This bill addresses that issue.
Since the beginning of 2006, nearly half of the 95 largest acquisition programs of the Department of Defense have exceeded the so- called Nunn-McCurdy cost growth standards that were established by Congress to identify seriously troubled programs.
I wonder if I might inquire of the Chair about the time remaining that I control.
I will yield back.
I thank my friend. I am happy to share that with him. I am appreciative.
As I was saying, almost half of our largest acquisition programs have exceeded the Nunn-McCurdy standard to identify seriously troubled programs. These major defense acquisition programs are known as MRAPs. They have exceeded their R&D development by an average of 40 percent, and we have seen their acquisition costs grow by an average of 26 percent and experience an average delay of almost 2 years. The GAO tells us the cost overruns on these major defense acquisition programs--just on these programs--now total almost $300 billion over and above the original program estimates. This isn't the cost of these programs. This is the cost of the programs above what they were supposed to cost--$295 billion. That is true even though we have cut quantities in those programs and reduced performance expectations on many programs in an effort to hold costs down.
I want to put into context what the $295 billion cost overrun could buy for us. This is what we could buy at current prices: two new aircraft carriers at $10 billion each, eight Virginia class submarines at $2.5 billion each, 500 V-22 Ospreys, 500 Joint Strike Fighters, and 10,000 MRAPs--all of that, not either/or but all of it--and we could still pay for the total cost of our future combat system program, which is $130 billion.
That is just the overruns in those programs which have exceeded their cost estimates. These overruns happen because of fundamental flaws that are built into our acquisition system.
I will conclude because it is now time for us to vote. I am very hopeful that every Member of this Senate will vote to proceed to this bill. We cannot justify again delaying consideration of this Defense authorization bill. The men and women in uniform deserve for us to act. There is no way that we can look their parents, their families, their loved ones in the eyes and justify a failure to adopt this bill this month.
Again, I thank all the members of the committee and my good friend, Senator Warner, for everything he has done to make it possible for us to at least have a good chance to pass this bill.