Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I am honored and privileged to come to the floor of the Senate today to talk about Michael Brown, appointed by President Donald Trump to be a district judge on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.

Mr. Brown is an outstanding citizen of our State. He is married to a wonderful lady and has three wonderful children. He is a graduate of Marist School, a graduate of Georgetown University, and a graduate of the University of Georgia Law School, magna cum laude, in 1994.

He has a record of practicing law in the private sector that is unparalleled, having worked for both King & Spalding and also Alston & Bird.

King & Spalding produced many of the judges on the bench of the United States of America with distinguished records, not the least of which is the Attorney General under President Jimmy Carter, Griffin Bell, an outstanding Attorney General from our State. They also produced Sam Nunn, an outstanding Member of the Senate. They produced many judges in our State. Many were also produced from the firm where he practices now, which is Alston & Bird.

It is a privilege for me to talk about Michael for many reasons. Most importantly, he comes with a background of experience in the private sector. He has been recommended by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as one of the great lawyers in the United States of America in business matters. One of the things our courts need is a tempered balance of business and consumers. There is no question that someone who is not a voice for business as a judge but has experience in business as a judge will make a tremendous difference. I know he will in the Northern District of Georgia.

I thank the President for nominating Michael and making this appointment. To the Members of the Senate, I urge you to join me in voting for Michael Brown for the Northern District of Georgia to be our next judge there. He will be a great judge on the bench. It will be a great decision for us, and it will continue the growth and improvement of outstanding jurists confirmed by this Senate in this year 2018.

I yield back.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I rise to talk about the tradition of New Year's Day, the beginning of a new year, our great country, and many of its great traditions.

I am sorry the minority leader left so quickly because I wanted to brag about how great the New York City Police and law enforcement were on New Year's Eve. Millions of Americans gathered to watch the ball drop in New York City and the new year to start. We all enjoy doing that in the warmth of our homes, particularly on days like today, but there is also the warmth of America.

There is a second great tradition that takes place on New Year's Day as well. It is called the college football season, which is capped off by the Rose Bowl, which is played in Pasadena, CA. This year, the Rose Bowl was played between the University of Georgia, my home State, and the University of Oklahoma. It was one of the greatest football games, I think anybody would admit, that has ever been played in that game before, and I am proud of both universities.

I am equally proud of the University of Alabama and Clemson University--the other two teams that played for the right to play in Atlanta, GA, on Monday night of next week, on January 8, to decide the collegiate national championship. My Bulldogs of Georgia will be one of those two teams. They defeated Oklahoma 54 to 48 in a great football game in California. Alabama made a decisive victory over Clemson in New Orleans, LA, in the Sugar Bowl. The two will meet this coming Monday night in the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, GA.

I don't know which is going to win. I know which one I am pulling for. I know which one I am on the floor bragging about tonight, but I am equally bragging about all of our collegiate athletics in this country and the great men and women who make it work--the coaches, athletic directors, and people who make it go.

In particular, with Georgia's victory, it prompts me to come to the floor and talk about Kirby Smart. Kirby is the head coach of the University of Georgia. For 9 years preceding his coming to Georgia, he was assistant to Nick Saban, coach for the University of Alabama. They will play against each another on Monday night for this year's national championship. It is ironic that the coach and his pupil will be the two coaches in that great game.

Kirby is a University of Georgia graduate. He was a great University of Georgia football player in his own right. He came to the University of Georgia with high hopes as an alumnus, hoping that he could be the person to take Georgia to new heights.

It took him only a year. The first season was 8 and 5. The second season was this year, 12 and 1--now 13 and 1--winning the Rose Bowl and playing for the national championship on Monday night.

Kirby Smart is not just smart because he knows football; he is smart because he knows how to be a leader. You saw an example of a man in the Rose Bowl who never took credit himself. He always gave it to his other coaches and to his other players. He never tried to be the winner. He always tried to be in the background. He put others ahead of himself, but deep down inside--and behind the great victory that was won that night--it was his spirit, his encouragement, his living the dream that all the Georgia players followed.

I want to talk about a couple of them. Sony Michel was the offensive player of the game, one of the greatest running backs ever to come out of the University of Georgia, and we had some good ones--Frankie Sinkwich, Charlie Trippy, and Herschel Walker. On defense, Roquan Smith, the Dick Butkus Award winner, played a great defensive game. Then, with the combination of leadership they brought to the team on the field and the quiet leadership and confidence Kirby Smart brought to the team as its coach, they won that game 54 to 48 in a double- overtime elimination of the University of Oklahoma.

My congratulations go to Oklahoma and their quarterback Baker Mayfield, who was the Heisman Trophy winner, on playing a great game.

I wish Alabama a lot of luck on Monday night, but not enough to beat my Bulldogs. This is going to be our chance to win a national championship for the first time in 38 years of football. We are going to be in my home State of Georgia in our newest athletic facility, the Mercedes-Benz Stadium. I think it is an appropriate place for us to win, so I am going to say ``Go Dawgs'' from the floor of the Senate.

On Monday night, I hope Kirby Smart remembers the reason I am bragging about him today on the floor is that he is going to be our leader Monday night. He is going to carry us to victory one more time. I am counting on him, just like all the Georgia graduates all over the country who watched with joy on January 1, and we will be looking on Monday night with anticipation and, hopefully, satisfaction.

I yield back the remainder of my time.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I am glad to join my colleague Senator Tester from Montana on the floor for a discussion of our Veterans' Affairs, our accomplishments over the last 3 years and our challenges for the future.

I want to start out my part of the conversation by saying this. Three years ago, the Veterans' Administration was making big headlines. Those headlines were that they weren't working well, our veterans were waiting too long for care, there were failures in our system throughout, and people were looking for an alternative to the VA system because it was in such a quagmire. Thanks to the work of our committee, which the Presiding Officer today is one of those members, we set out to fix a lot of the problems. No. 1 was the hospital in Denver, which is 40 percent finished. It was 3 years behind, and we closed in. That hospital is open today and operating because the Veterans' Affairs Committee of the Senate buckled its shoes, got to work, got the VA fixed, and got the hospital finished.

The most challenging thing we faced were long wait times for appointments for our veterans and veterans' services for healthcare. It was longer than 30 days just for a routine appointment, sometimes being as long as 6 months to wait, and sometimes they were dying before they got called up from the waiting list, which happened in the Arizona case in Phoenix.

We had some tragic stories that came through. Our committee came together and said: We are going to fix this. We are going to put our shoulders to the grindstone, we are going to work out hard, and we are going to make it happen. Like always, fixing anything requires one element, and that is hard work.

This Committee has worked hard--Democrats and Republicans alike. They have been willing to get the new Secretary, Secretary Shulkin, confirmed. To all of his aides--Tom Bowman, who has been a great aide to our committee for a long time, and now is a direct aide to the Secretary. The committee has asked: What is it we need to do to get it fixed?

We started out this year with 11 bills introduced for the Veterans' Administration improvements in terms of healthcare. Ten of those eleven have passed. There is one left. We are going to have a perfect 11-for- 11 year, if we get the votes before the end of this year, we get the CARE bill passed for our veterans, but even if that doesn't make it, we have dealt with long waiting lines for determination of benefits for the VA. Those long waiting lines are beginning to dissipate.

We don't have hospitals being shut down because they can't be finished. We have CBOCs being opened because they are being finished. We don't have near as many cases of horror stories in a VA health facility because the facilities are being run better.

Do we have problems? Sure, we have problems. Anytime you have the second largest agency of the Federal Government--which the VA health system is--you are going to have problems, but we are meeting them head-on. We are not running away from them. We have a Secretary who is really willing to work to make it happen.

I cannot say enough about Secretary Shulkin. He has been fantastic. He has been a great worker. He has given President Trump the message, in terms of what our veterans need, the challenge that we need from the White House to join us, and the White House has substantially done so, to help make a lot of improvements.

Working with our ranking member, we decided we would do a number of things: We would end the long wait times for determination of disability, and we have done that. That is in process. We wanted to see to it that the modern access to healthcare was available to all of our veterans, one way or another. We wanted to make sure we came up with creative ideas by using telemedicine and other techniques to deliver healthcare to our veterans.

Most importantly, we knew the Choice Act we passed 3 years ago, led by Senator McCain--who is in our prayers and thoughts every day. I might add from the floor of the Senate today, we wish him the very best if he is listening. Senator McCain went to work and came up with the first aspect of Choice, which passed 3 years ago. I was on the conference committee. We had this crazy idea that we were going to let veterans choose where they want to go for their healthcare. We set up the system to do that. The system worked pretty well in some cases. Senator Tester will say in rural America it didn't work all that well, in some cases, but it was a good effort of ours to take the private sector in America and make it a force multiplier for the healthcare services delivered to our veterans and expand the access of healthcare to our vets.

Well, now we have before the Senate what we call the Care Act. It is the finishing touches of what was originally in the Choice Act. We are taking the things we learned and repealing what was wrong. We are taking things we learned are right, and we are enhancing them. I hope every Member of the Senate who can hear my voice today will join me sometime in the next few weeks ahead to finish the job and pass the Care Act. Our committee passed it out 14 to 1, with Democrats and Republicans alike, shoulder to shoulder, voting for it. It is the right thing to do for our vets. We are hopefully going to do the same thing on the floor.

The Care Act does a lot of amazing things, but it takes what we have learned in 3 years and applies it to the real world for our veterans. It says a veteran has a choice for his healthcare, public or private, VA or private sector. The veteran and his or her doctor may determine where they want to go. The physician providing the services who is outside the system will cooperate with the VA, so we have good medical records for that veteran, and they will work together to choose doctors who have the quality, the reputation, and the ability to deliver the service, whether they are in the VA or outside the VA.

The veteran comes first in Veterans Choice. In the Caring for Our Veterans Act, the veteran comes first, not Members of the Senate, not employees of the VA. The veteran comes first, which is what we need to do.

I hope everyone will join Senator Tester and me in seeing to it, when we get this to the floor--and we are trying every day--that they join us in helping pass the Care Act.

One last thing I want to mention about the Care Act is it also contains the funding necessary to complete the year for the Veterans' Administration in terms of health services. More importantly, it consolidates the stovepipes of funding in the VA so we no longer have this Mickey Mouse game, which we have all experienced for the last 5 or 6 years, where the VA is always running out of money.

The Congress has never cut off the VA. When we had the biggest shutdown 5 or 6 years ago--or potential shutdown for the government that we had, we passed bills that exempted the VA to demonstrate long and hard that we would never leave our veterans in need of healthcare coverage waiting because we couldn't act in the Congress, and that would happen today if that was threatening us.

I want to underline, this is not a matter of anybody threatening anybody. This is a matter of finishing the job for our veterans and seeing to it that the Veterans' Administration has the resources necessary to deliver the services to our veterans.

For those who can hear this plea--and it is a plea--understand I am coming before us today to say three things: One is thank you. Thank you to every Member of the Senate who voted with us to get us where we are today. We have passed 10 of the 11 bills we brought in this year for veterans' healthcare services. Thank you very much.

I say to Senator Tester, as the ranking member, thank you for your cooperation. We have worked together to find a solution to every impasse we confronted throughout the year.

To the Senator from Alaska, who is presiding today and is a member of the committee, thank you for what you did for those veterans in need in our States that have limited access to healthcare, like Alaska. We need to make sure the Alaskan veteran has the same access and the same benefits they signed up for as one does in Georgia or in any other State.

Senator Tester from Montana has worked so hard to see to it that rural America has the same type of access. There may not be as many doctors, there may not be as many VA facilities, but we can design a system that gives them the very best access and the very best care for that region where they choose to live.

That is our challenge. Our challenge in the VA is not to say: Well, you should have lived somewhere else. Our challenge is to say we should have concentrated more in the VA to see to it that where you live is the right place to be in terms of veterans' services, and we are going to do that.

Lastly, I thank Secretary Shulkin. He was approved 100 to nothing by the Senate. I believe I am right that he is the only Cabinet member who was confirmed by the Senate 100 to nothing. As everybody knows from watching us the last 8 or 9 months, we haven't agreed on much of anything. We haven't had any unanimous consent votes on hardly anything. We did with David Shulkin, and he has delivered, in response to that 100-to-nothing vote, time and time again, working for our veterans, helping to direct problems, helping to work with us together.

I look forward to next year, as we bring a close to the Care Act and pass it, moving forward with those new things we need to pay attention to.

I look forward to working with Senator Tester from Montana and the members of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party in our committee.

Remember, we are veterans first. We are Americans first. God bless our veterans. May God bless the United States of America.

I yield to Senator Tester.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, it is a historic day for our country, for the Senate, and for the Congress.

As we speak, the President of the United States is about to sign the bill that we passed on the floor of the Senate last night, which was the agreement on the conference report--the largest tax reform in the history of our country or, certainly, the largest since 1986. It is historic in many other ways because we are fighting wars overseas, we are dealing with terrorism, and we are looking at the economic climate for the future and trying to inspire our country to be better and be everything that it can be. We are talking about all of those types of things, and we are getting ready for Christmas.

Mr. President, we are busy about lots of things, but there is one thing that you should never be too busy to do, and that is to pause and stop and say thank you--thank you to someone or some entity or some institution that has made a difference in your life or in the life of your country.

I don't often come down here on points of personal privilege. I do it, but I don't often do it. When I do do it, it is special for me, and I hope it is special for the people I am talking about.

A good friend of mine is retiring from the Southern Company in the next few months. His name is Jim McCool.

Now, most of you probably don't know Jim McCool. Jim is one of those people who some people refer to as a lobbyist and others refer to as a professional advocate. I refer to him as my good friend. I met him in the 1980s. He had started his own formal wear business. He then sold that business and went to work for Mississippi Power. It was later one of the Southern Company's companies. He then worked as a liaison to Washington for the Southern Company, for Georgia Power, for Mississippi Power, and for Alabama Power.

I got to know Jim in lots of ways. First of all, it was when I was in the Georgia State Senate and the Georgia State House. On the industry committee, we worked on issues that dealt with electric utilities. I didn't know anything about those, as I was a real estate broker. My knowledge of electricity was that when I threw that switch, I wanted it to come on. Once it got beyond that, I didn't have knowledge of it.

Jim was one of those people who didn't just come and say: This is my company's position. We want you to do it. He asked: What is it about my company's position that I can help explain

for you to make a decision? He never, ever asked me to do anything for him or anyone. He always offered to give me the information that I needed to make the decision myself. That is not a rarity in that profession, but it is certainly something that the average person doesn't think of when you hear of a lobbyist or a professional advocate.

Jim McCool is, has been, and, for me, always will be very special. He takes his job seriously, his company seriously, and his country seriously. Jim and his wife, Kathy, raised three great sons. They are proud of their dad, and he is proud of them. I have seen him in enough situations with his family to know that his family comes first for Jim McCool. Golf, unlike what most people think, is not first. It is only second. The Southern Company is third. I have played a lot of golf with Jim McCool, and that is why I put that in there.

Over the years, I have worked with Jim on many, many projects. Right now, we are working on a nuclear production tax credit, in addition to the tax extenders bill, which, hopefully, will pass the Congress within the next 2 weeks, after January 1, to continue the construction and the completion of units 3 and 4 at Plant Vogtle in Georgia. For me, ironically, this was such a special moment because I had worked on Vogtle units 1 and 2 when they were built in the early 1980s and when Jim was an advocate, at that time, for Mississippi Power. He later joined the Southern Company team.

Jim and I have watched Plant Vogtle go from a dream and an aspiration for the Southern Company to a reality in terms of units 1 and 2. If we get our work done here soon, units 3 and 4 will be online. For a long time after Jim McCool is gone and I am gone and all of you are gone, Georgia will have reliable, safe energy from a renewable source called nuclear, and we will continue to be a pioneer and a leader in the southern United States.

When I heard that Jim was retiring, obviously, I knew it was a special moment for him and his family. I wish him all the best, and I know that he is going to do great. I started thinking back over all of those times that we had worked on all of those issues that had such an impact on his job and his employer and, for me, on my State and his State. Jim never wavered in his commitment to doing the best job he could possibly do in always representing the best interests of his company while never losing the best interests of those who were served by his company--the customers.

On this day today, when the President of the United States signs major, sweeping tax reform and as we approach Christmas--a special holiday for all families--I rise on the floor of the Senate to take note of Jim McCool from the State of Mississippi, employee of the Southern Company, professional advocate, father of three, and husband to a great lady. Jim McCool has gone the long way down the long road, and he has done it with style, with class, and he has delivered every single time.

Washington doesn't have a better advocate working in this town than Jim McCool. We are going to miss him, but I am going to get to play a lot more golf with him in the years ahead because he is going to have more free time than he has right now. So I wish Jim and his family the best. I thank him for all he has done for us as Georgians.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, am I next?

I see the distinguished Senator from Washington on the floor. I ask unanimous consent that after I speak, she be recognized to speak.

Mr. President, I would like to take a moment to commend Senator Orrin Hatch. I listened to the debate over this bill not just today but for the better part of 3 years I have been a member of the Finance Committee. I have never heard a more dignified, deliberate, intelligent delivery on any subject than we all just heard from Orrin Hatch on the tax bill. Regardless of your politics, regardless of where you are from, it is good to know that America has dignified statesmen like Orrin Hatch to take the tougher issues, simplify them, get people to join hands, work together, and pass what is right for the American people. I am glad the American people are going to get to see that over the next couple of days.

I publicly want to thank Senator Hatch for all he has done and all I know he has done in Washington during the last 3 years. In the 3 years on this committee, I have seen us--Republican and Democratic committee and subcommittee alike--work on every facet of the Tax Code to try to simplify changes down to doable amounts and doable jobs. I have seen everybody have input. I have seen everybody work together. Sure, we have had differences. Senator Hatch has always kept the mainstream there, kept his hand on the tiller, and saw to it that we never lost sight of doing what we need to do, which is to reform our Tax Code.

I want to commend Senator Hatch and Senator Enzi, as well, for the work they have done on the Budget Committee to get us to this point and the unsung heroes that all of us know about, our staffs, whom we cannot do without. Jay Khosla and Mark Prater on the Finance Committee have been outstanding and have made this thing work, and I commend them for their work. On my staff, I could not have done what I have done without Amanda Maddox, Trey Kilpatrick, Monica McGuire, and Jay Sulzmann, who have all worked hard to see to it that we made the right decisions for the right reasons for the people of Georgia.

I am very proud to be a part of this Senate today and of what is going to prove to be a historic day in the future. There are a lot of naysayers saying that this is not going to work. There are a lot of people who have come up to me today and have asked questions that have bad connotations to them. Yet I want, for just a minute, to talk about what I think this tax bill really means for the American people--for the folks who voted for me to represent them--and for what is going to happen in the years ahead.

I had a reporter stop me today while I was coming up to the floor.

He asked: Senator Isakson, where are you going to find the $1.478 trillion that you all are costing us by passing this tax cut?

I said: First of all, we have not lost the money. Second of all, that is a static score. Third of all, I will be willing to bet you that we will take in a lot more money because of our having a dynamic economy than we will ever lose with a single tax cut.

There are some people whose thought process is one of tunnel vision. They can't see outside the blinders. They don't understand that tax policy drives economic decisions.

There are companies that in the last few years had been thinking about leaving America because of our tax rate that are now deciding to stay because of the new change. Don't underestimate the power of the territorial tax change that this makes for American business.

A lot of CEOs who go to their annual stockholder meetings for C corporations in America have to go with a

game plan to raise the return on their stocks in order to have people invest in their companies. Unfortunately, the easiest way to raise the return on their stock today would be for a domestic American company to move their headquarters out of the United States to Ireland or to some other place that had a lower tax rate. If you put more money on the table for the stockholders, it will be bad for the country, bad for your company, and bad for the American people as jobs leave America.

Now that we have a territorial system that we are going to, there is an incentive to stay in America if you are located there and to come to America if you are not. We are not going to have any more fast food companies that are buying doughnut makers in Canada and then moving their headquarters to Canada to get a lower tax rate. We are going to have a lot of new companies that will think about becoming doughnut makers and will do it right here in the United States because the new tax system we will have will be fair and equitable for economic development and building growth.

On the personal side, you really cannot argue with doubling the standard deduction. You can't argue with doubling of the child tax credit. You can't argue with simplifying the tax process itself and the filing of taxes. You can't argue with lowering rates--having seven different rate categories that are all lowered. You can't really argue with all of that because you know that is better for the American people and their pocketbooks in the short run, but in the long run, it will be better for them and their children and their grandchildren in terms of employment.

I have eight grandchildren. My oldest just graduated from college, and the youngest is 9. In the years ahead--and I hope that I will get to see a lot of them--they are going to get jobs, and they are going to work. They are going to raise their families.

What we have done today is going to make it easier for them to find employment for their kids, opportunity to develop businesses, and peace of mind because they will live in a country that will be vibrant and true.

For those who want to ask what we are going to do about the money that we are giving up, I don't deal with static scoring; I deal with dynamic scoring.

When I ran a company for 25 years, I made investments where I knew I had a place to grow. I made business decisions where there was positive growth ahead if I made the right decision. This Tax Code--this change in the Tax Code, this opportunity that we have--does all of those things.

Do I know exactly what is going to happen? No, but I am willing to bet--and I have bet my vote already in committee and will later on tonight on the floor of the Senate--on the American people and the American worker and the American entrepreneur. I will bet on their taking advantage of a tax code that is fair to them and that gives them a chance to expand their personal opportunities. I will bet on them that they are willing to move forward with a better tax code for all of the country. I will make my bet on them that they will want to see to it that their children and their grandchildren will have the opportunities that they have had as well.

I thank Chairman Hatch for what he has done in the last 3 years to make this opportunity come about.

I thank the distinguished Senator from Washington and the Senator from Alabama, whom, unfortunately, we are losing in the next few weeks, for what they have put in this legislation. I thank them for what they have done in their looking out for their people.

Did we make any mistakes? Maybe, but you never make mistakes when you are trying to do the right thing. You never make mistakes when you are trying to do a good thing. You never make mistakes when you take a risk because when you take a risk, at the end of that rainbow is a reward. When you take a risk in lowering taxes, the greater reward is more jobs, more opportunity, and a better America for our children and our grandchildren.

I thank Senator Hatch for his work and for all that he has done to make America a better country and, in particular, for giving us the chance today to make our tax system fairer for all of the American people.

May God bless him.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, today I submit for the Record a poem written by one of my Georgia interns, Mr. Dalton Kane of Suwanee, GA, a student at the University of Georgia.

``Memoirs of a Senate Intern'' by Dalton Kane, a.k.a. ``Dolvin'':

The sound of footsteps echoes throughout the halls of the

Russell Building as senators hurry to and fro before a

salient vote. Chiefs of staff fervently address the concerns

of elite constituents while legislative staff assistants

frantically seek out last-minute details of the bill.

Meanwhile, back home in the district, case workers tirelessly

assist constituents with their government agency-based woes

and field reps travel all across the state to ensure every

voice is heard. Behind the scenes, an IT guy (who's probably

a die-hard liberal) labors ceaselessly to make it all happen.

This is democracy in action- the realization of a three-

hundred-year-old experiment that connects the government to

its people. Yet, there is one important link to this

Constitutional dream that has been forgotten. That link is

the Senate intern.

Located at the lowest echelon of power, the senate intern

watches his phone light up like a Christmas tree as the

constituency descends upon the office. He answers call after

call with the simple reassurance that it will be passed on.

Yet, as the mountain of the constituency begins to overwhelm

him, he may slowly start to lose hope. However, as he glances

at the Reagan portrait hanging before him, he knows that he

is the gate between the senator and his constituency, and he

must carry on. And I Dalton, aka Dolvin, have come to find

myself in this valued position fall semester of 2017.

Mr. President, today is America's lucky day. And we all know what the definition of ``luck'' is--luck is when opportunity meets preparation. We are very lucky as a country and we are very lucky as a Senate that our majority leader, Mitch McConnell, was where he is and is where he is at the time he is. It was his vision a few years ago that the tax issue was going to emerge as the central issue in the growth and development of our country and that unless we met the challenges of our Tax Code, opened up opportunity for our public, and expanded opportunity for our businesses, the American people could succumb to a high-tax system without productivity.

We also got lucky because Senator McConnell picked a man to be chairman of this committee--Orrin Hatch--who brought years of experience in the U.S. Senate and the compassion that Orrin Hatch has as a Mormon and as an American to a tax code that is by no means simple--it was always complex--to make it simpler and fairer, pro- family and pro-jobs.

Let me tell you something. There are a lot of disappointed people overseas right now because those who have been picking our pockets by inverting American corporations to foreign systems because their taxes were lower than ours are out of luck. Now those people are going to be incentivized to come to America, to make investments in our country, to expand opportunities and jobs in our country. No longer will companies want to leave America; companies will invest and be more American. That is fantastic, and that is why this is a pro-jobs tax bill. It is going to create a lot of opportunity, and opportunity is what Americans want and what Americans need.

For the average American family--and let me talk about my family for a second. I think I am pretty average. My wife and I are fortunate. We have three great children and nine great grandchildren. I was lucky enough to have worked in a small LLC--limited liability partnership-- real estate brokerage company, mom-and-pop brokerage company. My wife taught in public schools. Our children went to the University of Georgia and to the public schools of our community. We saved for their education. We did everything we could to invest in hope for them in the future, and today they are all gainfully employed. They are all happy, but they are all struggling, as everybody else is, with a burdensome tax system, with less opportunity than we would like for them to have. By simplifying the tax system, by making it fairer, as we have done here, we have given more opportunity to my grandchildren, my children, and more opportunity to America.

Lastly, I want to make this point: There are only two ways to raise taxes or raise revenue. One is to charge more. That means you raise somebody's taxes. The other way to do it is to create opportunity. So people create companies and jobs because the opportunity is there. When you create opportunity and when jobs are created, revenues increase. When people do better in their jobs, their incomes go up. When companies have people who do better in their jobs, they expand. When they expand, they produce more revenue that becomes taxable. So we raise our revenue not by lowering expectations but by raising opportunity for our people and for our children.

We are very lucky as Americans today. I am very lucky to be in this U.S. Senate today. We are lucky to have had leaders in place at a time that was right to address our country's biggest challenge and do it the right way.

When I was in the Georgia Legislature, I sat next to an oldtime rural-hat politician who ran the Ways and Means Committee of the Georgia Legislature. I will never forget that one day he and I were sitting side by side as we were listening to a gentleman make a speech in the well. The gentleman in the well paused a minute to try to make a point, and he said: Ladies and gentlemen, let me tax your memory. And my old friend, the rural-hat politician, said: Damn, I wish I had thought of that.

That is the way we have done taxes in this country for a long time-- just taxed people's memory, tried to look for an opportunity to tax something for us. What we are doing here is we are creating opportunity. We are raising revenue through prosperity. Americans will raise revenue for their pockets first before the country gets the revenue second.

So it is our lucky day--lucky to have good leaders, lucky to live in the greatest country on the face of this Earth. And if we do our job-- if we pass this bill before the end of this year and

change the Tax Code of the United States of America to a fairer, pro- jobs, pro-family tax code--then we will have made our contribution to history at a time when it was our opportunity. I hope it will never be said that we let our country down when that opportunity was available to us.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I wish to thank Senator Blunt, the distinguished Senator from Missouri, for his eloquent remarks on veterans and in support of all the things the Presiding Officer and I have tried to do on the Veterans' Affairs Committee and for pointing out the many reasons we in America are so proud of the veterans in service, who allow you and I to be here today. Were it not for our veterans, this Republic would not exist.

I was wondering how I would start out this speech. I did an interview with a reporter who wanted to ask me a number of questions about the current administration and what we were doing for veterans. It turned out to be a 35- or 40-minute interview.

I said I had to go, and he said: I have one more question for you.

This was by phone. So I couldn't look him in the eye, and he couldn't see me.

He said: I have one more question for you.

When you hear that from a reporter, that means the zinger is coming.

He said: Don't you think we could save a lot of money if we didn't fight in any more wars?

I thought for a minute. I said: We probably could, but there wouldn't be any reason for you and me to exist if we didn't fight any more wars, because

America is the place where everybody wants to be because we are safe and we are free and we are independent, because we fight and defend what we have as a country. I thought I would bring that up in my speech today because that is the reason we celebrate veterans today. So we give thanks to the men and women who volunteer, who served our country in the wars overseas, in the battles overseas, and, sometimes, in the challenges domestically to protect us and keep us free.

America is a great country. We don't find anybody trying to break out of the United States of America. They are all trying to break in and for a very good reason. It is a safe and free place to raise a family, to start a business, and to serve in many other ways.

So this year, on the 11th day, at the 11th hour and the 11th minute of November, when we celebrate Veterans Day, pause for a minute to say thanks for those who have come and gone and for those who are still here who fight to serve and protect us.

Always remember that the Congress, shortly after the end of World War I, decided that the 11th day--the day the armistice was signed--of the 11th month, November, with the 11th hour being 11 o'clock in the morning, would be the time the bell would toll to celebrate and pay tribute to those veterans. So at 11:11:11 this November 11, we are all going to toll that bell one more time to give thanks for our veterans for all they have done for us and for all they will do for us in the future.

It is best, when you talk about veterans, to talk about them as the people they were and the people they are, whether they are alive or whether they have passed on. I want to talk about two veterans whose paths have crossed my life to point out why we owe them so much and why we have so much to be thankful for. One of them is Jackson Elliott Cox, III of Burke County, GA, which is the Bird Dog Capital of North America. It has raised and trained more bird dogs than anywhere else in the country. It is the home of a nuclear power plant, the Plant Vogtle. It is a beautiful rural county in Georgia.

Jack was my best friend in college. We met in 1962; we graduated in 1966. I will never forget that the last time I saw Jack was when he was shipping out to go to OCS in the Marine Corps. Jack had decided when he graduated that it was more important for him to volunteer and fight for our country because of what was going on in Vietnam than do anything else, so he voluntarily joined the Marine Corps, went to OCS, got his commission as an officer, and became a captain in the U.S. Marine Corps. He fought and he died in Vietnam.

I will never forget the last words he told me when we put him on the bus from Waynesboro, GA, to Atlanta, ultimately, to be shipped out. What he said is: Johnny, I am sure I am coming back. Don't worry about me. Just pray for me. But in case I don't, make sure people remember who Jackson Elliott Cox III was.

I said: Jack, I will do that.

Sure enough, 2 years later he was shot and killed by a sniper in Vietnam. He lost his life at the age of 24. He was the finest human being I had ever known, the nicest guy I had ever met, and my favorite friend in all of my life. He was taken from me because he volunteered to serve and fight for our country.

I am going to keep today on the floor of the U.S. Senate the promise I made to him at the bus station. I want you to know who Jackson Elliott Cox III was. He was a good old country boy from South Georgia who volunteered to serve his country and risked his life and gave his life so that you and I could be here today.

There are thousands of Jackson Elliott Coxes all over the world. In fact, there are millions all over the country. There are hundreds of thousands of them, and we have so much to thank them for because less than 1 percent of our population has worn the uniform, been in the battle, and fought to save us and protect us as Jackson Elliott Cox did.

When you have your chance to meet and become friends with a veteran-- and all of you will--remember you owe them a debt of gratitude. At some time, when you get the chance to pay that debt back, do what I am doing today. Don't let their memory ever be lost or forgotten no matter where you go or where life takes you because you wouldn't get to where you are going, had they not allowed you to be safe and free to travel that route.

The second name I am going to mention is Noah Harris. Noah was from Ellijay, GA. Noah was a cheerleader at the University of Georgia. On September 11, 2001, he turned on his television to see 3,000 innocent citizens, most of them Americans, die in the Twin Towers when al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden and the axis of evil attacked our country, took our innocence, killed our people, and changed the world forever.

Noah was a cheerleader. We don't have a mandatory draft anymore. You don't have to serve, and he was not serving. He was going to graduate in a year and a half. He wanted to be an architect.

The next morning, after 9/11, when he left his dorm, he went to the Army ROTC building at the University of Georgia campus. He walked in and said: I want to go to OCS. I want to go. After what I saw on TV last night, I want to go fight and get the people who did that to my country and my friends.

They said: No, Mr. Harris you can't do that. OCS is a 2-year program at the university, and you are graduating next year. You don't have enough time to do it.

He said: I will double up on my studies. I will do whatever. I want to go. I want to fight for my country and fight the axis of evil.

They let him in, and he did. He graduated with honors. A few months later, he graduated as second lieutenant from the U.S. Army at Fort Benning in Georgia. Before too long, he was in Gazaria in Iraq, a suburb of Baghdad, handing Beanie Babies out of one pocket while the other pocket of his field jacket had his ammunition. He was trying to win over the hearts of the Iraqi children while he was fighting to preserve freedom for them and return their country to some form of a democracy or republic, away from the captives of Saddam Hussein.

I knew Noah casually. I know his parents well--Rick and Lucy Harris. I know they have mourned every day since they lost Noah in Baghdad when he died in an IED accident, but I know how proud they are of what he did and why he did it. I am proud he was my friend, and I am proud to have known him as well. I am proud to be able to stand on the floor of the U.S. Senate today and talk about Noah Harris and talk about Jackson Elliott Cox, who were exemplary of all the others who have served in the military--men and women, rich and poor, Black and White, who have gone and fought the battle and borne the battle for us so that we could be where we are today.

It kind of reminds me of the person who went to Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia shortly after the Constitution was adopted in Constitution Hall and said: Mr. Franklin, what have you given us?

He paused for a minute and said: ``A republic, if you can keep it.''

We have kept it. We have kept it because we have subscribed to the Constitution but also because we have a militia and a military. We are willing to fight for what we believe in, protect our citizens, and keep our country free. The country that our Founding Fathers gave to us, that was nurtured in the early days of this Republic, which now is hundreds of years old, is still there today for lots of reasons but, principally, the undergirding foundation is a strong and vibrant military.

When Veterans Day comes, give thanks for the veterans you know. Mention a couple of them, as I have done here, so their memory and their names never die, but also so we can lift them up at a time when we pause for just a minute to say thank you for the greatest country on the face of this Earth.

Senator Blunt talked about our committee and what we have done this year. I want to take just a minute to reiterate some of the things he said. There are no Democratic veterans and no Republican veterans; there are only American veterans. They don't go to the battlefield as a partisan; they go to the battlefield as an American, and they fight for us whether we are Republicans or Democrats. They risk their own life and sometimes sacrifice it so that we can do what Ben Franklin said: Keep that republic. We owe them a lot. In fact, in many cases, we owe them everything.

We have had a mess at the VA in the last 10 years. They have been the lead story on USA Today more than any other agency in the government for failures of the VA to do the job that should have been done. Under David Shulkin, the Secretary of the VA appointed by President Trump, under the leadership of our committees in the House and the Senate, and under a commitment to bipartisan service by all our Members--which means we do almost everything unanimously and, if not unanimously, almost unanimously because it is not about getting Republican credit or Democratic credit; it is about doing the right thing for the right people who have done so much for us--we passed the Whistleblower Protection Act this year to give whistleblowers in the VA the protection they need to go and turn in to the authorities those employees in the Veterans Administration who are not doing their job. We have given them the safe harbor they need to encourage them to help us root out problems, and we are doing that.

We passed the accountability bill to shine the light of sunshine on the employees of the VA and to give the authorities in the VA the ability to terminate and fire, if you will, for cause an employee who is not doing the job they should be doing for our veterans. So we hold a standard of accountability up a little higher for our employees in the Veterans Administration.

We are magnifying choice so that our veterans can have more choice in their healthcare. We can use the private sector as a force multiplier so that the government doesn't have to hire all the doctors and physicians and assistants to service the VA. We can get them in the private sector as well.

In the 21st century GI bill, we finally made sure that the GI bill applies to everyone, not just World War II or Vietnam war-era veterans but veterans of all conflicts and of all times.

We have done everything we can to see to it that the benefits, which we promised them would be there when they left the military, are there for them in retirement and in their later life. The sacrifices they make are great, and the sacrifices we have made to save our veterans are great.

Today veterans come home from the battlefield 90 percent of the time when they are wounded. They come home, whereas, in World War I, 10 percent came home, and 90 percent died on the battlefield. But because of the advancements we have made in armor and protection and healthcare services, a lot of veterans today live when they would not have lived just 25 or 30 years ago.

The injuries they sustain are far greater than any injuries we have known in warfare before. The signature illnesses are PTSD, post- traumatic stress syndrome, or traumatic brain injury or a prosthesis for an arm or a leg or an eye or some part of the body that is lost in battle. But the trunk of the body is protected by new Kevlar vests that are impenetrable by a bullet, so most of them succumb to IEDs and explosives and things of that nature.

We have the healthcare to provide them with the best possible rehabilitation we can, but you can never really replace a leg or an eye or a body part. Once somebody has sacrificed it forever, they wear the burden of the battle and of war.

We have an obligation, as the Veterans Administration, as the Congress of the United States in the House and the Senate, to see to it that we back up those promises our recruiters made when they came to join the military, to see to it that they get those services from their Veterans Administration.

Dr. David Shulkin is doing a phenomenal job. My ranking member, Jon Tester, Democrat from Montana, is doing a fantastic job. The House committee is doing a great job. The Members of the Senate are doing a great job.

In a week and a half, we are going to have our final bill of the year which, when we pass it, will make us 8 for 8. We will have totally reformed the VA and worked with the VA to reform it in such a way that our veterans get better service, our taxpayers get more accountability for the dollars we spend, and America remains the great country it has always been--safe and free because of those who volunteer to fight and are willing to die on behalf our country.

So sometime on the 11th day and, hopefully, at the 11th hour and the 11th minute of that hour on November 11, you will pause for a minute and remember I told you that is when we celebrate Veterans Day because, at the time the armistice was signed in World War I, our country decided that would be the perfect time to remember all those who have fought in the past.

Let's look around, and every time we see a man or woman in uniform, stop and say ``Thank you for your service'' because those are the people who are risking their lives so that you and I can do whatever it is we choose to do in this land of the free and home of the brave.

There are lots of things to be thankful for but nothing more important than the men and women of the U.S. military. May God bless our country, may God bless our veterans, may God bless the United States of America.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that all time be yielded back on both sides.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Missouri. I make the point that I have enjoyed the last 19 years serving with him in the Congress of the United States. He was elected 2 years before me to the House of Representatives. I came a little bit later, but I preceded him in the Senate in 2004. He has been great to work with.

The Show Me State of Missouri is an awful lot like my State of Georgia. They are proud of their country. They are proud to be Americans. They are proud of the chance to have an opportunity to make an honest living and want to be a part of a country that continues to grow and have prosperity for the future.

We had a hearing in the Finance Committee yesterday where there was an interesting study I had not seen before. It had been done by a Harvard student, who I assume was correct. Ninety percent of the people born in the 1940s ended up making more than their parents did when they went to work. But only about 40 percent of the people born in the 1980s will end up making more than their parents did, meaning that as we have gone along the way since World War II, we have taken more and more away from the opportunity in the earning level and more money has gone to different places, like taxation.

Personally, I think the Finance Committee and the leadership of the Big 6, so to speak, have done us a great favor to open the debate on tax reform in America. Unlike some of the debates we have had recently, this debate is open-ended. We are starting with a framework, not an absolute dictate but a framework. We are talking about an opportunity we have to see if we can lower the burden of taxes on the American people, while incentivizing the American people to work more, to make more, and to earn more.

There are two ways to increase revenue to the government. First, you can increase the rate of taxation. But then you are not necessarily taking in any more money. You might incentivize somebody to go somewhere else. The other way is to improve the opportunity to make money and the atmosphere in which people make money so they invest their time and effort and they grow their revenue, which grows the revenue of the United States of America.

The proposal in the framework before us has any number of outlines and any number of targets. The four things I want to focus on are these. One is the middle class. I have gotten tired of hearing this reference to dividing us as Americans by class. We are all Americans. Regardless of our station in life, we are all important. The code ought

to be important to every single person who is an American and, if they can come to this country, to improve their life, raise their children, and live a good life.

I am not into a class society. I am into an opportunity society. If you take a look at this proposal, for those people you put in the middle class today, it proposes lower rates, less brackets, and more opportunity to gain wealth in the future through work, through investment, and through earnings.

Second, this framework encourages job creation. I know that people are always demonizing the rich. Most people who are rich are people providing people who aren't rich with jobs. I don't think it is bad to provide people with jobs. I think it is good to provide them with jobs. We need a Tax Code that incentivizes the creation of jobs.

The focus on the passthrough rate, which is talked about by the Big 6, may lower the passthrough rate to 25 percent. It is a job-creating proposal that works.

I have run a sub-S corporation. I have been a partner in limited partnerships. I have known people who have had sole proprietorships. I have known people who have had independent operations. They all pay their taxes at the regular, ordinary tax rate on the individual. They don't pay at the corporate rate. They pay at what is called the passthrough rate, where the profits at the end of the year of the partnership or the LLC or the sub-S corporation flow in a K-1 to the individual and are taxed at the ordinary income tax rate; whereas, corporations in C-corps, or stock-held companies, pay a top rate of 35 percent.

That rate is being proposed to go to 25 percent conceptually. If that goes to 20 percent and the 25 percent rate is applied to passthroughs, we will have a good environment in which companies can form investments, form new companies, make investments of those companies, build opportunity, and, in turn, build jobs. So it motivates America to create more jobs. With jobs come income. With income comes money. With money comes investment. At the end of that comes profit, which ends up being taxed, which is revenue to our country, and it increases.

We also need to recognize that we are not as competitive as we used to be, in large measure because of the code we have, not because we are not competitive people. America is the most competitive environment in the world in which to do business. Americans by themselves were explorers to get here. Americans by themselves are investors and inventors. Americans by themselves are risk-takers. We want to improve in every competitive opportunity we have, but the current code we have suppresses competitiveness.

This proposal by the Big 6 takes us to a territorial tax system. We are one of the few countries in the world that taxes the old-fashioned way. The territorial system is the way in which most of the world competes, and we are the biggest competitor within the rest of the world. It is time we put an end to a company making a dollar in Delhi, India, on a product they made there and sold there, pays the Indian tax, and then brings it back into America and has to pay the differential on the American tax as well. It is time we did what the territorial tax does, which is to tax the money where it is earned; therefore, you will never have to do repatriation again, and you will never have to talk about offshore tax havens again because the Tax Code will not induce those things to happen. Instead, people will pay the tax where it is earned, bring the money back here to hire people, invest, build new products, and then take them overseas and sell them. There is nothing more important than going to the territorial tax system. I am excited about this.

Have you ever thought about this?

If you were the president of a major American corporation and it was coming to the end of the year and you were getting ready to have your stockholders' meeting for the year and you were looking at ways to show how the stock could grow and how, next year, you were going to improve the profits of the company and, in turn, the net of the company and, in turn, the dividends to the stockholders--right now, if you have a home office in America, that is your principal office, and you are taxed at 35 percent in America. If you have a competitive company that is in Ireland and it is taxed at 12\1/2\, it just might cross your mind: If I move my headquarters from America to Ireland, I could take my stockholders and put 18 percent or 20 percent--or whatever the differential is--on the bottom line for them. When your Tax Code causes people to think about things like that, you are predicting a future for a country that is not as bright, as rich, or as important as it should be.

Lastly, everybody thinks I am a city slicker because I am from Atlanta, but I did grow up working on a farm in Fitzgerald, GA, and Ocilla, GA. I love farmers and I love farms. I know one of the proposals of the Big 6 is to do away with the remainder of the estate tax that is still with us. A few years ago, we exempted all estates at $5 million or less from the estate tax. Now it is $5.49 million because the index has been used on inflation. The tax rate used to be 55 percent, and it is now 40. Yet, in my State of Georgia, with the effective application of the income tax, the tax is about 46 percent. So, for round figures and argumentative figures, for someone who dies in our State, after the first $5 million, he pays a tax closer to 50 percent.

A lot of people say that is rich people taking a benefit of the Tax Code. I don't call being dead in order to collect a tax benefit a good idea. I do not think that that is a benefit to me at all because the estate tax is on somebody's estate who passes away, who pays that tax for the people who would inherit the assets. Those are normally the children or the spouses or maybe the employees with whom they work in their companies.

Have you ever thought about this?

If somebody were taxing you at 50 percent or close thereto and you file your first estate tax return after you are dead, then if this were the value of your estate, you would be telling the government: OK, you get this half, while my children, my wife, my family get the other half. A year later, when you go back to the well--or a generation later--those kids who inherited the business will have to go back and pay taxes, and a quarter of it will be gone. So, in two generations, you took an asset that was worth a lot and reduced it to 25 percent of what it was worth. You are incentivizing people to liquidate something that was paying taxes on an ongoing basis and pay a onetime exit in terms of an estate tax. That is backward thinking.

What we should do is take those things people have worked for and striven for and tried their best to build and have an incentive for them to take that and leave it to their heirs and leave that company in a tax-paying mode or that farm in a tax-paying mode so America benefits and they benefit as well. Just because you are not taxing something does not mean you are not taking advantage of your company or the benefit of that item. By abolishing the estate tax, you will actually put more money, over time, in the Treasury of the United States of America in taxes than you ever will by taxing the one-time 50 percent.

So as we enter this debate--and I have been joined on the floor by a number of my colleagues who, I know, want to talk--let's talk about what benefits the American people, what incentivizes innovation and competition, what puts more money in the pockets of middle-class Americans today but also creates more people in the middle and upper classes in the future, not because we gave them anything except an opportunity, a fair place to compete, and that competitive drive that only people in the United States of America have, possess, and will always use to the benefit of our country.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise for two purposes--principally, to support this legislation and to thank Ranking Member Reed and Chairman McCain and the other Members of the Senate for the contributions they have made in the reauthorization of the National Defense Authorization Act.

In particular, I want to thank our men and women in uniform, our command and control, our military intelligence, our weather systems in the military, for the tremendous aid they have provided to us in Georgia, to the people of Florida, the people of Alabama, the people of Texas, the people of Louisiana, and the people of Mississippi during two tragic hurricanes that have taken place in the last weeks. We think of our men and women in uniform every day for what they have sacrificed for us to defend our country and to keep us safe, but sometimes we forget all of the things they do to help us when we have times of trouble. If there were ever times of trouble, Hurricane Harvey in Texas and what happened in Florida with Hurricane Irma are certainly that. Some of those assets are based in my State of Georgia, like the search and rescue mission that works out of Moody Air Force Base in South Georgia, which has been invaluable in rescue efforts in the State of Florida.

So as I come to support the NDAA reauthorization, I come also to pay tribute to our men and women in uniform for all they do for us in so many ways, not just to keep us safe but also in seeing to it that, in times of trouble, they are there for us.

I want to thank my Governor, Nathan Deal, for the advanced planning they did to lead up to the recovery from the hurricane. In Georgia we lost three lives, which is tragic. We are sorry for each one, and our hearts go out to those families.

Preparation by our leader, Nathan Deal, and others in the State saw to it that our reaction and our timeliness was excellent. I thank Governor Deal for doing that, as well as Georgia

Emergency Management, in coordination with FEMA. Everywhere in Georgia where we had danger, we also had response for our people and for our State.

I also want to talk for a second about something called JSTARS. JSTARS is an asset of our U.S. military and our intelligence agencies and a capability that is second to none in the world. JSTARS stands for Joint Surveillance and Target Attack Radar System, or JSTARS, and it is headquartered in Warner Robins, GA, at Robins Air Force Base.

In particular, since the Gulf war and everything that has happened in the Middle East and ensued since then, it has been invaluable in command and control capabilities on the ground. It is an intelligence system that is unmatched by any other military of our adversaries in the world.

We were informed a couple of years ago, when we started the effort to recapitalize the JSTARS, that there may be some movement to move away from JSTARS as a system to protect ourselves and have at our disposal for risk reconnaissance and recovery and battle management and battle control. I had a visit today, as a matter of fact, from the Secretary of the Air Force, Heather Wilson, a great lady and former Member of the House of Representatives, with whom I served, as well as an outstanding soldier and an outstanding person serving as the Secretary of the Air Force and part of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. She told me that the Air Force was looking at different ways that they might deploy recapitalization for JSTARS and other ways to deliver those services to our military personnel, which sends a signal to me that our JSTARS may be in trouble. The reasons for this are inexplicable when talking to anybody who is talking about doing it and inexplicable to me as an individual who knows that system well.

Our country and our soldiers and our warfighters have benefited greatly on the ground and in the air from JSTARS surveillance capabilities. It is an aging system, but it is a great system. It is a system that has coordinated and delivered the coordinated messages that we can get nowhere else. I would submit that, if the Air Force were to decide that, rather than recapitalizing the existing JSTARS program, as we have been working toward over the last few years, they go to an alternative delivery system, it is probably giving up security for our country, intel for our men and women on the ground, battlefield coordination you cannot replace in any other way, and an asset that we have taken for granted for far too long in this country.

So for Chairman McCain, whose service I appreciate, as well as his commitment to NDAA, I come to the floor to say I am with you and I will support you, but I want to make sure we do everything we can to ensure that the JSTARS and the capabilities of that mission are recapitalized and are there for our soldiers in the future and our military in the future. For us to fail to do so, to my way of thinking, would be bad for our soldiers, bad for our security, and bad for our country.

I thank Ranking Member Reed and Chairman McCain for the effort they have put into this. I thank members of the committee for all the efforts they have made.

I thank our men and women in uniform. I am glad we got a pay raise. It is not as much as I would have liked to see, but I am glad we got one. I am glad we are making a bigger investment in our military, but no investment that we give in money can match the investment of spirit, capabilities, and commitment of the men and women of the Armed Forces of the United States of America. I commend them today, praise them for their effort, and tell them: I am with you all the way.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.