National Security Act, 2024

Floor Speech

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Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, like my good friend from Iowa, Senator Grassley, I am going to come down to the Senate floor to talk about the national security supplemental we are voting on today. I commend the senior Senator from Iowa. He is a great U.S. Senator. It was a really good speech. I am going to reinforce some of what he just said on the importance of this bill, but, importantly, the broader context of how we actually got here and where we need to be going in terms of our Nation's defense.

In my view, the current occupant of the White House, President Biden, has gotten a free pass on his numerous huge national security missteps that have been undermining our Nation's security and have forced the Congress of the United States to actually take action.

That is the whole point. We are taking action. I am a supporter of this legislation, but we are doing it because of the failures of the current occupant of the White House. I am going to encourage my colleagues, particularly my Republican Senate colleagues, to vote in favor of this bill.

But I think it is important to put it in the broader context of what is going on in the world. I made a couple of speeches on this before. I am just going to reiterate some and add to some of the challenges we are facing because of the Biden administration.

First, I think it is pretty obvious to everybody--to anyone who is watching--that we are in a new era of authoritarian aggression led by this dictator, Xi Jinping. Look at him. He gets in his ``cammies'' every now and then, threatening his neighbors.

By the way, China is going through the largest peacetime military buildup in the history of the world. If that doesn't make you a little nervous about what is going on around the world, it should. This guy is a brutal dictator. But it is led by him, Putin, the ayatollahs in Iran, the terrorists in Iran--the largest state sponsor of terrorism--and the ``Mini-Me'' North Korean dictator. They are all working together. They want to undermine our interest. They want to undermine the interest of our allies. They are driven by historical grievances. They are paranoid about their democratic neighbors. They are more than willing to invade them, as we are seeing across the world--whether Israel, whether Ukraine.

Again, they are working together, and they are spending boatloads of money on national security issues, military buildups. This is actually led by this guy. He is the big one that we have to keep a close eye on. That is No. 1.

We are in a real, real dangerous era. This is one thing I do agree with the Biden administration on.

We have had the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs come and say: Hey, we are in the most dangerous time since probably the end of World War II.

Dictators are on the march. They are invading their neighbors. They are massively building up their military, and they are all working together. It sounds a little bit like the 1930s to me.

The second reason we need a defense industrial base supplemental is our own industrial base--our ability to produce weapons for us, for America--has completely atrophied. I could give a speech for hours. This, again, is part of the Biden administration's fault.

But we can't build Navy ships. We can't build Navy subs. Every component of our industrial base is shrinking. It is brittle. It has atrophied. Yet we are in this dangerous period. So that is pretty alarming.

By the way, it is our responsibility, in article I of the U.S. Constitution, for the Senate and the House to raise an army, to provide and maintain a navy. My view is it is the No. 1 constitutional duty we have--securing this Nation. Yet we are behind.

The Navy just put out, 3 weeks ago, this alarming report saying the U.S. Navy is behind on every ship platform that they are building--3 to 5 years behind--carriers, subs. Almost 40 percent of our attack sub fleet is in maintenance, not even out to sea.

He is scared to death of U.S. subs. What is this guy doing? He is cranking out 10 to 12 ships--high-end navy ships--a year. The Chinese Communist Party's navy is now bigger than the U.S. Navy. The danger is our industrial base can't produce weapons the way it could.

And then the third reason I think we need a national security supplemental is given how weak the Biden administration has been on national security. The current budget of this President shrinks the Army, shrinks the Navy, shrinks the Marine Corps. Do you think Xi Jinping is impressed by that? He is not--neither is Putin, neither are the ayatollahs. That is what they are doing.

By the way, this President, in every budget he submits to Congress for the military during these really dangerous times, what does he do? He cuts it. He cuts the military. I am going to get more into that.

These are the big three reasons that I have been supportive of this bill. But here is the thing. When you read the bill and look at it and dig into the details, it is less of a foreign aid bill and much more of a bill to enhance our industrial capacity. It is not a perfect bill, and I am going to get into that in a minute. There is no such thing as a perfect bill, by the way, but almost 60 percent of this national security supplemental bill that we are going to be voting on goes directly into our industrial base, directly into our ability to build submarines--like $6 billion for submarines, $6 billion with the AUKUS agreement, $5 billion for 150mm artillery shells, over half a billion for counter-UAS systems--Patriots, Javelins, Harpoons, Tomahawks, HARM missiles, TOW missiles--built by Americans for our own defense. That is in this bill. It is in the bill. That is a really important component. Almost 60 percent of this bill goes into that.

And it has other things in it: $3 billion for our troops in the CENTCOM area of responsibility, right now--who are in combat right now, taking incoming missiles from the Houthis. The USS Carney almost took 100 different missiles and drones. With sailors in combat, this replenishes their weapons systems and helps our troops in combat.

By the way, in my view, just that element alone is enough to support this bill. You have American troops in combat in the Middle East.

And, of course, this bill does go to help our allies and partners-- Israel, Taiwan, Ukraine--who are facing existential threats, literally, from their very aggressive neighbors.

But, again, a lot of this is going to stay home. We are not sending subs to any of those countries. We are building submarines to be ready, if we have to, in a conflict with China. Xi Jinping--that dictator I was just showing you there--is scared to death of the nuclear sub capability of the United States.

This is mostly about us protecting our country and our industrial base to produce weapons for America. I think it is going to put a lot of workers to work. But this bill, primarily, if you read it, is about protecting our Nation.

As I said, it is not a perfect bill. There are a number of things-- there are some amendments we were debating a couple months ago here on the Senate floor. For example, I think the direct budget support, the economic aid--that should go to our European allies to help the Ukrainians with that, that should go to the Gulf Arab allies who want to support Gaza in terms of economic aid. We should be providing the lethal aid.

But, I will say, Speaker Johnson definitely improved the bill from what the Senate sent over a couple of months ago. I applaud him for his impressive leadership.

There are a number of improvements, like the direct budget support and economic aid are now in the form of forgivable loans. That was a President Trump idea. That was a good idea.

On the REPO Act, Senator Risch has been pushing on that hard. He has done a great job on that. That would enable us to seize Russian assets and use them to help pay for the Ukraine war.

There is a requirement that makes the Biden administration lay out a much more detailed strategy on Ukraine and forces them to provide Ukrainians ATACMS weapon systems.

It focuses on fentanyl. It focuses on TikTok and the improvements there, breaking the tie between the Chinese Communist Party and control of this popular app.

The House did try to take up some border security issues. I certainly wish those would have passed. I am not sure my Senate Democratic colleagues would have voted on it. That would have made it better.

But there are many improvements. The Speaker did a good job on it.

Mr. President, we had some critics on the left and on the right of this bill. I want to just address a few of those as we are getting ready to vote on this. Some are quite serious.

Some of my Republican colleagues have said: Hey, the Europeans need to do more, particularly when it comes to Ukraine.

I actually agree with that. No one in this Chamber has worked harder on the issue of making sure our NATO allies meet their 2-percent obligation in terms of defense spending.

I had an amendment to the Sweden and Finland accession treaties that we voted on here that said it is the sense of the Senate that all of these countries have to meet their 2-percent-of-GPD obligation on defense as a NATO member. That passed 98 to 0 here in the Senate.

I had an NDAA provision that is now law that says the Secretary of Defense shall prioritize training and troop deployments for countries in NATO with U.S. forces that meet their 2 percent obligation.

So I agree with those critiques, but some of the critiques from some of my colleagues--let's just say they weren't serious.

You might remember one--that this national security supplemental is some kind of secret trap for a future impeachment of President Trump. I am pretty sure that is not what Speaker Johnson was working on the last 2 months.

That this national security bill will ``strain our industrial base.'' Actually, it will do the opposite. I think that is clear. It is going to make generational investments in our industrial base that hopefully will continue for years. They will continue for years.

That the national security supplemental sends the ``wrong signal'' to what the warfighter in America needs for actual threats we face. Well, I find that really curious. Let me give one example. I worked directly with the INDOPACOM Commander, Admiral Aquilino, on exactly what he thought he needed to help American forces defend Taiwan and the Taiwan Strait. That is in the bill. The original bill from the Biden administration had very little on that. We made it a lot better, a lot stronger. But working directly with INDOPACOM and the admiral--there is no better expert in the world on what they need to fight in the Taiwan Strait. So, again, that criticism seems really off base and not a serious critique if you actually are one of the Senators doing the homework on what our warfighters need.

But the biggest issue I have with some of the arguments and critiques of this national security supplemental that are actually coming from the left and the right in the House and in the Senate is their claim that deterrence is divisible--deterrence is divisible. Now, what do I mean by that? Their argument, and I have heard it a lot, is that you can cut off aid to Ukraine, let Putin roll over them, roll over that country, move up to the borders of the Baltics and Poland--NATO allies, by the way--but somehow we can still be strong in the Taiwan Strait with regard to Xi Jinping and the ayatollahs in Iran.

So deterrence is divisible. You can kind of show weakness with regard to Putin but strength with regard to Xi Jinping and the ayatollahs. Well, that is not how the world works. Deterrence is not divisible. How do we know that? Well, I think we know that because of this debacle.

Joe Biden's failed approach to national security has shown us that deterrence is not divisible. What am I talking about? When this happened, the botched Afghanistan withdrawal--``Biden's debacle,'' as The Economist put it on their front cover--many in this Chamber-- Democrats and Republicans, by the way, myself included--predicted that, given this botched Afghanistan withdrawal, dictators around the world are going to be emboldened to press us other places. Stand by. Putin and Xi are going to invade somewhere else because of this. I didn't only hear that from people here; I have talked to world leaders who have said there was no way Putin would have invaded Ukraine if it hadn't been for this Biden debacle.

So deterrence is not divisible, and that is exhibit A, which brings me to my final point here.

The press, our friends in the media, as usual are missing the bigger story on what is going on on this national security supplemental. All the focus has been on the House and how Republicans in the House have delayed the Senate bill for 2 months, that we Republicans in the Congress are not taking foreign policy seriously, and that this bill's passage is some kind of victory for President Biden's foreign policy leadership. But here is what I think is going on: This national security supplemental bill actually exposes even further the weakness of the Biden administration's approach to Ukraine on foreign policy that has only brought the world chaos.

I was at a Sunday talk show the other day and made the point--a very simple question: Is the world a safer place for America and its allies today relative to 4 years ago? I think everybody knows the answer is no, it is not even close. There is chaos all over the world.

I think what is really important is to focus on how we actually got to this point, why we need this defense supplemental in the first place. The reason we do is the failure of the current occupant of the White House's policies with regard to foreign policy and national security. That is the entire reason we have to bring this bill, this national security bill, to the floor and why it is so urgently needed now. This bill is not some kind of exhibit of Joe Biden's foreign policy triumph; it is a needed correction of Joe Biden's foreign policy failure.

First, as I noted, the Afghan debacle certainly emboldened Putin to invade Ukraine. I think that is a view that is commonly held.

Secondly, our own border debacle has been something that has made it so Republicans who would normally support strong national security were, with a lot of good reasons, saying: Hey, let's take care of our own open borders and national security at the southern border first. The President has not done that. We have an open border that is a humanitarian and national security fiasco in America.

Third, this President, with regard to Ukraine, has not been in it to win it. What do I mean by that? Every major weapons system that the Ukrainians have said they need, they have delayed and delayed and delayed because they were fearful of Putin. Let's just call it like it is. The list is long: HIMARS, Stingers, Javelins, tanks, Abrams tanks, F16s, even the ATACMS that are in the House bill, forcing the President to say that we are going to get these really important, long-range, accurate artilleries to the Ukrainians. This is the No. 1 issue we heard from President Zelenskyy a couple months ago when we were in Munich--that they are just not getting weapons they need.

Imagine if the Biden administration had gotten all the weapons systems I just mentioned to Ukrainians a year and a half ago. And what has happened every time? This body--Democrats and Republicans--has gone to the President, saying: Mr. President, give them these weapons.

Well, we are going to delay. We don't want to escalate with Putin.

Escalate with Putin? He invaded a country.

They are not in it to win it.

The President called an LNG pause on our allies. Our allies in Europe are apoplectic about that.

Not in it to win it.

Finally, this President has never explained the stakes of why this is so important. He has given two speeches on Ukraine. Two. Two major speeches. And do you know what he does? He attacks Republicans in his speeches. That is not leadership. That is not leadership. Especially on a big national security issue, you want to bring people together and explain the stakes. Speaker Johnson has done more to explain the stakes in a calm, reassuring manner in the last 2 weeks than President Biden has done in 3 years.

Finally, again, in terms of lack of seriousness on national security issues, I think the most damning issue is the lack of seriousness with regard to our national defense. As I mentioned, the President puts forward budgets to cut defense spending every year.

I have asked the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs--three hearings in a row in the Armed Services Committee--if this is the most dangerous time since World War II, why are you cutting defense spending? Why are you going to bring defense spending in America next year to below 3 percent of GDP? We have only been there four times since World War II. Why are you dramatically undermining readiness?

They don't want to do that. The Secretary of Defense doesn't want to do that. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs doesn't want to do that. So why are they doing it? The answer to that is, this is where our Democratic colleagues always are. Since Vietnam, just look at what every President who is a Democrat who has occupied the White House has done--Carter, Clinton, Obama, and now Biden. They come in, and they cut defense spending, and they cut readiness. This is in the DNA of the national party.

Republicans have a different tradition. It is this tradition: Peace through strength. Peace through strength--that is our tradition.

To my Republican colleagues and friends in the Senate, our tradition is much more serious, it is prouder, and I will tell you this: It is much more supported by the American people. Peace through strength, not American retreat.

As I am encouraging my Republican Senate colleagues to vote on this national security supplemental, this is in line with the peace through strength tradition we have in this party. Think about it--Teddy Roosevelt; Eisenhower; Reagan, of course; the Bush Presidencies; and, very much in the tradition of peace through strength, the Trump Presidency. I was here. Heck, I ran for the U.S. Senate in 2014 primarily because the second term of the Obama administration cut defense spending by 25 percent. Readiness plummeted--plummeted. Shocking how badly ready our troops were. When the Trump administration came in, working with Senate Republicans when we were in the majority, we reversed it. Peace through strength.

So through arguments, facts, understanding history, a serious view of the world, peace through strength--my Republican colleagues, we need to keep this tradition going, especially during these dangerous times. We certainly can't rely on our Democratic colleagues to support that. We certainly can't rely on this White House. President Biden cuts defense spending every year to support that. That is a really important reason why I encourage my colleagues to support this national security supplemental--imperfect bill, yes, but needed during these very dangerous times.

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