From Sen. Tim Kaine:
VIDEO: KAINE SPEAKS ON SENATE FLOOR BLASTING HOUSE REPUBLICAN FUNDING BILL, HIGHLIGHTING REPUBLICAN CONCERNS OVER HARMFUL NATIONAL SECURITY IMPACTS OF THE BILL
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), spoke on the Senate floor to express his opposition to House Republicans’ funding bill. Republicans in Congress did not negotiate with Democrats on the legislation, and House Republicans passed their bill on Tuesday and then left town in an attempt to force the Senate to vote for it. The House Republican bill includes several provisions that would harm Virginians and U.S. national security, including cutting funding across all of the military services for military construction and a variety of programs, including weapons systems, missile procurement, and research and development for new technologies.
“What’s the difference between a [continuing resolution] and a real appropriations budget? The way I describe it is this: if you’re driving a vehicle, you want to drive by looking through the windshield where you are going. That’s what the budget does. You budget for the year ahead of you based upon the facts on the ground, the realities in the world, the priorities that you’ve embraced, the challenges that you’ll face – that’s what a budget is supposed to do,” Kaine said. “When you operate under a continuing resolution, you’re driving by looking in the rear-view mirror. You’re instead embracing decisions that were made a while ago, and just saying, ‘well, we can’t even reach an accord about going forward, so let’s instead… do what we did last month. Let’s do what we did last year because we are unable to reach an agreement.’”
Then, Kaine discussed a Senate Armed Services Subcommittee hearing on the readiness of the Joint Force, in which military leaders and Senate Republicans publicly expressed serious concerns about a yearlong CR.
“All of the other vice service chiefs said the same thing – on behalf of the Marines and the Air Force and the Space Force and the Army. Operating under a full-year CR will hurt readiness, will hurt our national security. This is what the Pentagon is telling us about the bill we’re going to be voting on in the next day or so,” Kaine said.
“But it wasn’t just the military leaders who said that. The chairman of the readiness subcommittee, Senator Sullivan: ‘The CR, from a readiness standpoint, I think that none of this is helpful…’ He described the frequent use of CRs ‘a failure on the part of Congress,’” Kaine continued. “My friend and colleague, who is the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Wicker, here is what he said about the bill that we’re going to vote on in the next couple of days: ‘I will say this about the fact that this is the first year-long CR for the Department of Defense…This is a shame on our process, and it is not in keeping with what the Founders intended.’”
Kaine asked, “Why are we going to vote for it? Why are we taking it up and rushing to pass it when our military leadership says it’s a bad idea and when the Chairman of the Armed Services Committee says it’s a bad idea?”
“We should do our own jobs and do the right thing for the country,” Kaine concluded. “We have an opportunity to get it right…there could be a vote today or tomorrow on an alternative that I’ll call the ‘getting-it-right alternative.’ What is the getting-it-right alternative? We would extend the current spending level for 30 days and then finish the budget. We would decide we don’t want to drive looking in the rear-view mirror. We want to drive looking in the windshield, and we would get an appropriations deal that wouldn’t hurt our readiness.”
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