Mac Thornberry

Mr. THORNBERRY

Mr. THORNBERRY. Mr. Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Farenthold).

Mr. THORNBERRY. Mr. Chair, I urge the adoption of the en bloc package. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. THORNBERRY. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Wilson), the distinguished chair of our Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities.

Mr. THORNBERRY. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. THORNBERRY. Mr. Chair, I urge adoption of the amendments en bloc. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. THORNBERRY. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Illinois, (Mr. Kinzinger).

Mr. THORNBERRY. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Montana (Mr. Zinke), a member of the committee.

Mr. THORNBERRY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Chairman, just to be clear, the underlying provisions which the gentleman's amendment would strike are sense of Congress provisions. Basically, it is the sense of Congress that the ground commanders ought to make these decisions. Unfortunately, artificial troop caps and overly restrictive requirements on our military increase the danger that our military faces in Afghanistan. So if you draw down too low the number of people you have, for example, then you don't have enough to protect yourself. That is part of what we are seeing in Afghanistan. If you tie the military's hands and say, ``Okay. You cannot go after this enemy, even though they may pose the most deadly threat to you,'' then you increase the danger to our military. That is exactly what these provisions try to deal with. Mr. Chairman, the Afghans are doing the fighting in Afghanistan. They are advancing and getting more capable all the time, but they still need us to be there and to advise and assist them. Just to look briefly at some of the provisions that the gentleman would strike, one says that the commander in Afghanistan has the authority to strike the Haqqani network. They are the ones that pose, in many people's eyes, the biggest threat for big bombings and so forth in that region. Why would we not allow our military commander, if he wants to, if he thinks it is right, to strike them? Another provision the gentleman strikes is the one that says that we ought to have resources to go after ISIS. Remember, Mr. Chairman, that it is not just al Qaeda and the Taliban that are growing in Afghanistan. ISIS is growing there, too. This just says we ought to do something about that. The gentleman's amendment would strike it. On troop caps, part of what is happening in Afghanistan is that we are artificially limiting the number of people there. As I mentioned, that increases the danger to the troops we do have there. Otherwise, we are bringing some people in on a temporary basis or hiring contractors to do the job. So these artificial troop caps mean that commanders and the administration have got to find all these ways around it, but they still increase the danger that the people we do have there face. That doesn't make sense. There are still dangers in Afghanistan to our national security. These provisions the gentleman would strike just try to untie the hands of our military so they can deal with it on a military basis, not a political basis. Mr. Chairman, I oppose the amendment, and I urge Members to do likewise. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. THORNBERRY. Mr. Chairman, how much time do I have remaining?

Mr. THORNBERRY. Mr. Chairman, I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. THORNBERRY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Farenthold) to discuss an additional amendment he has.

Mr. THORNBERRY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds. Mr. Chairman, the reason these weapons have not been used since 1945 is that we have had a credible nuclear deterrent. The fastest way to have a more dangerous, destabilized world is for the credibility of that deterrent to erode, and I worry about that. Secondly, if you look at what is planned with upgrading the weapons and the delivery systems, at no point does it become more than 11 percent of the U.S. defense budget. That is a pretty good investment to make sure that they are not used, and I suggest that it is well worth the investment. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. THORNBERRY. Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition.

Mr. THORNBERRY. Mr. Chairman, pursuant to House Resolution 735, I offer amendments en bloc.

Mr. THORNBERRY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Chairman, I think I made clear a few moments ago that I believe we need to have a better way to fund defense, a more predictable way. But, Mr. Chairman, I am not willing to wait to support the military until that is done. I am not willing to wait until we have tax reform and entitlement reform and all sorts of other things before I am willing to stand up and support the military. There are lives at stake today, and we have enormous challenges in the future, there is no question, budgetary and otherwise. But I think it would be a mistake if I were to say we have all these challenges coming down the road, therefore, I am not going to fix this problem that is affecting pilots, mechanics, others today. We can do something about it today. As a matter of fact, the gentleman talks about the Budget Control Act. We have made some alterations to the Budget Control Act for each of the last 4 years because of this problem. I think most people, at least on both sides of the aisle, realize that when you cut defense 23 percent since 2010, and the world is not 23 percent safer, we are not asking our military folks for 23 percent fewer deployments, that something has got to give. So there has been--it has been painful, it has been messy, it has not been ideal, but there has been some alterations to the Budget Control Act. I said a while ago that I am for doing away with these artificial caps. The Budget Control Act did not work as anyone, I think, intended. There was never the mandatory spending reform that was the goal. And what bore the brunt of the cuts? Defense. Fifteen percent of the budget has absorbed 50 percent of the cuts under the Budget Control Act. That is wrong. Now, I think if Members on both sides of the aisle committed to working together to fix that, we could. Now, that would involve not having a President use the military as a hostage to try to force more domestic spending, which is what this President has done. That would mean that we focus on trying to fix defense, and understand that all of us have other priorities that we need to also work on at the same time. But we are always going to have different budget laws and different circumstances. I still do not understand how a Democratic majority, in 2008, could use this approach, to give the new President the benefit of the doubt, the benefit of a fresh look; and when we try to do the same for the next President, who none of us know who it is going to be, but when we try to use the same approach, all of a sudden then you just can't do it. It is irresponsible, it is a gimmick, and all sorts of names. The gentleman mentioned that we are not making choices and mentioned specifically the A-10. Mr. Chairman, there are a lot more things that I would like to have done in this bill, lots of additional programs I would like to have authorized. We had to make difficult choices. But just to take the A-10 for an example, the administration has proposed eliminating the A-10 for the past several years. This Congress reached a different judgment on that. That is what the Constitution, by the way, says we are supposed to do. It is our job to raise and support, build and maintain the Armed Forces of the United States. On the A-10 program, we reached a different conclusion. We decided that, until you have something to take its place, we shouldn't get rid of it. And you know what? The Secretary of Defense has testified that it has been devastating in its use against ISIS today. If we had eliminated it, it wouldn't be there. So sometimes our judgment--and we have a long list of instances where Congress, under majorities of both parties, have exercised a different judgment from the administration and where we were proved right. So we make tough choices. Sometimes our choices actually turn out to look pretty good in hindsight. But the bottom line, Mr. Chairman, is we could all wait to support a defense bill until some far-off condition were met. It is easy to vote ``no'' unless something happens or unless some condition is met; but for this, if only that. That is easy. But that does not fix the immediate problems that face the men and women who volunteer to defend our country, the problems that they are facing today. That is what we are trying to do with this bill. We don't actually fix them. We just start to turn it around. I don't think there is an excuse that justifies opposing doing what is right for them, and that is the reason I believe that this bill should be supported. I hope Members will support this amendment. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. THORNBERRY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the gentleman from Colorado raising the issue that he just raised because it gives me the opportunity to affirm that many of the programs he was just mentioning like the Black Hawks, for example, have been requested by many of the Members on his side of the aisle. And they were included in the unfunded requirements list from the Army. So the way it works is we get all sorts of requests from Members on both sides of the aisle. Each of the services gives us a list of what they would like to have had in the budget request but the administration took out, and then where the two match up as Member priorities and service priorities, that is what these funds are. It is not that they weren't asked for from the military. It is the military wanted them but OMB took them out. And when you have many Members, particularly on the Black Hawks, the V-22s, the LCS, and a number of the items he just mentioned on his side of the aisle, asking for them as well as the service, then that becomes part of the modernization priority. Let me just make one other point. In the Black Hawk case specifically, these new Black Hawks will replace helicopters that were built in 1979, for which we cannot get parts, which have very restricted flight envelopes because of all the restrictions. They can't be repaired. They can't do everything the Army wants them to do. So the administration did not ask for any. Many Members on the Democratic side asked for some. We put them in here. And that is the way to fix readiness: by replacing a 1979 helicopter with a 2016 helicopter. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. THORNBERRY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes. This amendment cuts defense below the President's request, below last year's funding, and below what the last Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said was the lower, ragged edge of what it takes to defend this country. Let's just put in a little bit of context here. This bill, counting OCO and everything, is a whopping one-half of 1 percent over what we spent last year. One-half of 1 percent. Inflation is supposed to be 2.1 percent. So what it really means is this bill, even in real dollars, is a cut, even as it is. This bill is 23 percent less than we were spending on defense in real terms in 2010. Mr. Chairman, the world is not 23 percent safer now than it was 6 years ago. And yet the gentleman from Colorado's amendment would cut that even further. This bill stays within the amount requested by the President. It meets the need for base requirements and provides a bridge fund for deployments, just like Democratic majorities did for the last change of administration. And I think that is the most reasonable response. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. THORNBERRY. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. THORNBERRY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. LaMalfa).

Mr. THORNBERRY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Turner).

Mr. THORNBERRY. Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition.

Mr. THORNBERRY. I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Chairman, I want to speak about one of the amendments that is in this en bloc package offered by the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Mulvaney). My understanding of that amendment is that it tries to have a clearer process by which we fund the military, and that is a goal for which I have enormous sympathy. We clearly need to have more predictable funding for the military. That is true on behalf of our military commanders and all the troops. It is true on behalf of industry. It is true on behalf of budgeting in the government. I personally also agree we need to do away with the artificial caps that have caused such difficulty for the military in recent years. I also believe that it would be beneficial if administrations did not play political budgetary games. For example, in this year's budget, the President requests a very low number for Israeli missile defense, knowing full well that the Congress, on a bipartisan basis, is not going to let that go through. We are going to be more responsible. So they are counting on us to have to cut other programs so that we can do what they should have done to begin with. There are all sorts of tactics that are used in developing budgets. There has got to be a better way. Apparently, some administration political appointees have been urging Members of the House to call the approach in this bill a gimmick. Actually, I have heard that term used a few times on the floor over the last couple of days. Well, one question I have is: Was it a gimmick in 2008 when, under Democratic majority, this House used exactly the same approach in fully funding the base requirements for the year and then had a bridge fund that allowed the new President to evaluate deployments and the funding and to make adjustments, which President Obama took advantage of? That is what it was intended for. Now, why was it okay then, but it is a gimmick now? It seems to me, Mr. Chairman, someone would consider that a double standard. Would Members rather that we continue to cannibalize aircraft and deny pilots the minimum amount of training they are supposed to get? Are Members content to have class A mishaps continue to go up in service after service, or is the desire to score political points so strong that Members would rather let those trends continue rather than deal with them here in this bill before us? Mr. Chairman, my point is that I agree there has got to be a better way. But I also believe that we have a choice before us today, and that is whether we fund the training, the maintenance, the end strength, the modernization that starts to fix the problems that I have talked about or we stick with name-calling, we look for excuses to vote ``no'' and allow those problems to get worse. Lives are at stake. So while I don't know that I agree with all the particulars of the gentleman from South Carolina's amendment, I think he raises important issues. Therefore, I urge Members to support that amendment as part of this en bloc package and resolve to try to put partisanship and excuses aside and think about the men and women who serve and what is in their best interest. I urge adoption of the en bloc amendments. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. THORNBERRY. Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. THORNBERRY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Kelly).

Mr. THORNBERRY. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Royce), the distinguished chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs.