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“National Defense Budget (Executive Calendar)” mentioning James M. Inhofe was published in the Senate section on pages S4890-S4894 on July 14.
Of the 100 senators in 117th Congress, 24 percent were women, and 76 percent were men, according to the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
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The publication is reproduced in full below:
National Defense Budget
Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, this is my fourth speech this year arguing how we are going to have to match our defense resources to our national defense strategy. And this is a reminder--this is the National Defense Strategy. People seem to be forgetting about this. It was put together in 2018. Here are the names of the individuals. One was a former colleague; it was Jon Kyl. So we had 12, 6 Republicans and 6 Democrats. Everyone agreed that this is what we need to do, not just for 2018 but for each year afterwards. For this year, for example, they actually have in here that we should be increasing the defense budget by between 3 and 5 percent. I show this because we all adhered to these, Democrats and Republicans, up until this year.
This is the first time I have had a chance to talk about this budget in the Biden administration where we now have a lot of the details actually released in terms of the budget and what it does to our military.
Remember, our expert, bipartisan NDS Commission Report said that we need 3 to 5 percent real growth in the defense budget each year to actually execute this strategy. The defense budget the Biden administration sent us does not achieve this goal. In fact, it is really a cut, in this administration.
Even worse, just last week, the Fed predicted that inflation next year will be bigger than predicted. If that continues, this budget will mean even bigger cuts than expected and will hamstring our troops even more than we thought.
A lower defense top line than last year is just the first problem. The details of this budget are also worse than we forecasted. We have a flow chart here that shows that the budget puts shipbuilding on a starvation diet. The Navy tells us that we need 355 ships, probably more than the 400 that we have--that we are talking about right now. Right now, we are under 300 ships, and the trend is down, not up. What is the administration's answer? They joke around about having a 355-
ship Navy with only tugboats, but we don't have the luxury of jokes.
The people don't know this out there. The people don't realize that China is ahead of us and that Russia is ahead of us in some of these areas. They assume that we are always like it was right after World War II for so many years.
The Chinese Navy already has 355 ships. They already have them. That is not something they are looking for like we are right now. We are at 300 ships and looking for 355. They already have them. Then there are the Russians to add to that. That is another 223. So we are talking about far more that they have right now than we have, and nobody understands that. It is as if we have only one opposition out there, one adversary. We don't. We have several. The two prime adversaries are China and Russia, and they are up right now to 595 ships, and we are at 300. So what does that tell you?
I am not the only one who is concerned about this. A lot of people say: Well, the Republicans are the only ones who are concerned about our military.
And that is not true. Democratic Congresswoman Elaine Luria said it well. She said: The Navy budget is not a serious budget for great power competition.
Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record her recent article about the Navy's fleet
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
War on the Rocks--Look to the 1980s to Inform the Fleet of Today
(By Rep. Elaine Luria)
When I was a naval officer, my ships always had a plan when we left port for where we were going, how we would get there, and what we would do when we arrived. While that remains true of individual ships in the Navy, it's not true of the Navy as a whole today. The Navy lacks a comprehensive maritime strategy that defines what the Navy needs to do, how it needs to do it, the resources required, and how to manage risk if those resources aren't available. The Navy had a strategy that did these things in the past. The maritime strategy of the 1980s articulated a clear vision for the Navy's purpose and how Navy leaders planned to achieve it. The nation would be well-served by the Navy's developing such a strategy again.
I entered the U.S. Naval Academy in 1993 and was part of a new generation of officers who assumed the watch after the fall of the Soviet Union. We were the beneficiaries of a nation that had a clear and defensible maritime strategy, an administration that provided the vision, a Congress that funded it, and a Navy that executed it. Throughout my career, I deployed on both the Navy's oldest and newest ships, but they were all designed for the Cold War against the Soviet Union.
With China, the world has seen the meteoric rise of a maritime power that threatens U.S. and allied interests as well as free access to the maritime common. The United States and like-minded nations are engaged in a new great-power competition. As the Navy focuses almost exclusively on future capabilities, it risks overlooking the immediate threats posed by that competition today. A Battle Force 2045 plan does little to ensure a ready battle force in 2025. Today, no longer in uniform, but as the vice chair of the House Armed Services Committee, I believe the constitutional role of Congress ``to provide and maintain a navy'' should be based on something more than future hopes in technology and budget expectations. We need to be prepared now for any contingencies that may occur on our collective watch.
Understanding the 1980s Maritime Strategy During Great-Power
Competition
In August 1982, Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. William Small ordered the development of a document ``to connect national strategy with defense programming.'' Developed in just three weeks using briefing slides and speaking notes, this document birthed the Navy's first global maritime strategy, which was designed to inform the Navy budgeting process.
The authors developed the briefing using then-current war plans, contemporary directives on national defense policy, and intelligence estimates of the Soviet threat, brought together with Secretary of the Navy John Lehman's concept of a 600-ship navy. Over 18 months, the briefing evolved until it was finally signed by the chief of naval operations and issued as the Navy's 1984 Maritime Strategy. As Lehman noted,
``Once we had established the maritime strategy, we set about relating and conforming everything else we did in the Navy and Marine Corps to it.'' Because of the global reach and strength of the strategy, the Navy's stated need for a 600-ship fleet was defensible, and clearly tied to the numbers and types of ships needed to win in conflict. With the full support of the president, this strategy launched the nation on a trajectory to a massive Navy build-up, which nearly realized this fleet before the conclusion of the Cold War. The strategy clearly showed why the Navy needed 600 ships and indicated exactly where they would be deployed in global wartime operations. Additionally--and often overlooked when discussing the strategy--the strategy articulated the requirement for a peacetime presence to fill deterrent roles, reduce response times, and provide policymakers with naval crisis-response options. One-third of the ships needed for wartime missions in each theater would always be forward deployed under the strategy. Ensuing force-structure assessments have lacked this clear strategic vision for the role of naval forces.
Back to the Future
Lehman recently noted, ``In some previous and current periods, naval strategy (if you could call it that) has been derived from predicted budgets. During the 1980s, the process was reversed: first strategy, then requirements, then the
[Program Objective Memorandum], then budget.'' The difference between strategy preceding budget or budget preceding strategy is the difference between going to the store with a shopping list to make a specific meal, and going to the store, looking in your wallet, and asking, ``What could I buy with that?'' According to Lehman, a good strategy is a living document that must be tested, refined, and tested again. Most importantly, however, the strategy should be simple, logical, achievable and focus on the enemy's vulnerabilities above all else.
The Navy's most recent strategy document, the tri-service maritime strategy issued in December 2020 known as Advantage at Sea, correctly acknowledges the maritime nature of the United States as a nation whose security and prosperity depends on the seas, and highlights the great-power competition faced today. It acknowledges the current world environment and gives guiding principles for prevailing in long-term strategic competition. But this document is not a strategy. It is a vision. One cannot design a fleet to meet current challenges, develop a naval force structure for the future, or create a budget input solely from a vision--these require a global maritime strategy to fight and win against a peer competitor, while simultaneously deterring other malign actors.
U.S. maritime leaders need to answer the question: How would the U.S. Navy deter or defeat Chinese naval aggression, which may perhaps be compounded and complicated by other states such as Russia, Iran, or North Korea acting opportunistically while U.S. Navy forces are engaged elsewhere? How can the U.S. Navy make a strategic difference? Irv Blickstein served in the senior executive service in the Navy's programming office in the 1980s. In a recent interview, he said, ``If you look at the vision the Navy has today, nobody quite understands what they want to do . . . the Congress is not convinced, and they would like to better understand what the Navy's plan is.'' As Lehman noted, ``A critical lesson from the Maritime Strategy is that the Navy must restore credibility with Congress and the public that it knows what kinds of ships, aircraft, and technologies are needed.'' What is missing is a concept of operations, broadly stated.
Today's national security climate is different than that of the 1980s when the United States and Soviet Union faced off at the Cold War's apex. The Navy does not have the decades-long at-sea experience with China that it did with the Soviet Union after the World War II. Today, the Navy has fewer than half the ships that it had in the 1980s. While modern U.S. Navy forces are more capable than those of the 1980s, the same is true of America's competitors' forces, especially China's. In the 1980s, the F-14 program was less than a decade old, as new programs like the F-18, Aegis, Vertical Launch System, and Nimitz-class carriers matured. These were state of the art platforms and systems developed to counter specific Soviet threats and tactics. By comparison, the platforms the Navy has today are either (like the littoral combat ship) designed for a low-threat, post-Cold War environment, or designed to counter the same Soviet threats and tactics, as the Zumwalt-class destroyers are. Meanwhile, the Chinese have designed platforms and weapons, such as the DF-26 ``carrier killer'' missiles, to counter the heart of the U.S. fleet.
Not only does the Navy have a problem with lagging technology, the Navy also has a numbers problem. China is outbuilding the U.S. Navy at a rate the United States has been unwilling as a nation to match. Three-quarters of U.S. surface combatants are more than a decade old, while three-quarters of Chinese naval vessels are less than a decade old.
In addition to growing in size, China's naval forces have grown their sea legs. Since 2009, more than three dozen Chinese anti-piracy flotillas have deployed to the Indian Ocean and elsewhere. These flotillas from the North, East, and South Sea Fleets have gained nearly as much experience as have U.S. Navy deployed strike groups over the same period.
The Lost Generation
Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy has lost a generation of shipbuilding to failed programs. For example, the DD-21 program office (which resulted in the Zumwalt-class destroyer) was established in 1998. Originally scheduled for a 32-ship production line, but pared down to just three, the Zumwalt and her two sister ships have not deployed. One of the game-changing weapons those ships were to use, the electromagnetic railgun--which had been under development since 2005--was abandoned in the Navy's current budget. Similarly, the CVN-21 program executive office, which was set up to produce what became the Gerald Ford-class aircraft carrier, was established in 1996. The USS Ford has not yet deployed.
To put this in perspective, I graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1997--between the years in which these programs were established. I retired four years ago after a full naval career and have since twice been elected to Congress. Yet in all of that time, neither ship class has deployed. America cannot afford for it to take multiple decades to design, build, and deploy the next generation of warships.
Even new shipbuilding programs that have resulted in deployed ships have been troubled. Multiple challenges with the Littoral Combat Ship program have resulted in some of those ships being slated for decommissioning only a few years into their intended lifespan. The Constellation-class frigates, intended to provide a more capable alternative to the lightly armed littoral combat ship, will not be present in the fleet in significant numbers for a decade or more.
In its Fiscal Year 2022 budget request the Navy proposes decommissioning almost twice the number of ships it plans to build this year. Among the ships the Navy wants to retire are seven cruisers, some of which were only recently modernized at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. The Navy has argued that the maintenance costs on these decades-old ships would be better spent on new, modern programs and capabilities. This is one example of the broader ``divest to invest'' strategy reflected in this year's budget, which does not instill confidence in the likelihood of fielding a capable fleet in a timely manner. Just as the planned railgun in the Zumwalt class did not come to fruition, history shows that reliance on hopes and dreams for ``game-changers'' is a poor substitute for forces and strategy.
With flat or reduced budgets, the Navy has no good options. It can sacrifice readiness, sacrifice research and development, or sacrifice fleet size. Those are the Navy's only options--and they are all bad. I empathize with the position that Navy leadership finds themselves in today, as they have inherited a scenario created by decades of their predecessors' failed shipbuilding efforts--a scenario that has no real solution without the commitment of significant additional resources. Regardless of administration, the United States has been unwilling as a nation to prioritize shipbuilding, much to its eventual detriment with regard to Chinese aggression and control of the maritime commons. China isn't waiting until 2045 to realize its fleet. Neither should the United States. America needs a ready Navy that can credibly deter a potential conflict with a confident and overwhelming opponent.'
A New Maritime Strategy
For the past three years--in numerous hearings and through information requests--I have sought to determine the Navy's current global maritime strategy. What I have discovered is that it does not exist. There is not a clear plan similar to the 1984 Maritime Strategy that can inform and clearly articulate the fleet needed today to deter Chinese aggression, fight and win a war with China if required, and also employ naval forces globally in response to other malign actors such as Russia, Iran, and North Korea. I have heard many buzzwords, acronyms, and platitudes, but as naval strategist Sir Julian Corbett said, ``Nothing is so dangerous in the study of war as to permit maxims to become a substitute for judgement.''
Former Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Madly confirmed as much to me when we spoke recently. According to him, We've had oscillating and unrealistic shipbuilding goals, and a variety of operational warfighting plans designed for fairly static contingencies. Neither of these have been the byproducts of a coherent national maritime strategy that addresses our biggest threats, the broader geographies we must protect, or the unpredictable nature of the future. The national maritime strategy we need today must be an agile one that allows for rapid development and adaptation. The force structure it defines should also have the same characteristics. The strategy must be developed with a sober look at our adversaries and global responsibilities. Further, it must be implemented with a national consensus because such implementation, without a doubt, will be costly to the taxpayers.
The United States needs a Navy capable of maintaining maritime superiority and preserving free trade and freedom of the seas for America and its allies and partners. The Navy immediately should develop a bold global maritime strategy, which will clearly define the fleet required today. This global strategy should focus on Chinese vulnerabilities, of which there are many, including dependence on access to shipping lanes to fuel their economy. The U.S. Navy should be ready to target critical mainland infrastructure and close maritime chokepoints to strangle the Chinese economy. American forces should be agile and unpredictable, using geography to their advantage with mobile capabilities. This type of strategy will require a larger Navy in concert with the other services. Day to day, the U.S. Navy should be present in the East and South China Seas, exercising with allied navies, testing the strategy, and refining it. From this new maritime strategy will flow an informed force structure that will compellingly spell out to lawmakers and the American public the essential and urgent need to invest in a larger Navy to deter Chinese aggression and hold at bay other malign actors who may seek to take advantage of any future conflict in the Pacific. As Lehman notes in discussing the development of the 1984 Maritime Strategy, 90 percent of the deterrent power of this buildup could be achieved in the first year. This was done by publicly declaring and explaining the strategy, especially its naval component, and taking actions that left no doubt among friend and foe that it would be achieved. Those actions included [the need] to submit a revised Defense budget to Congress that fully funded the buildup.
Today, U.S. Navy leadership should heed the words of Lehman: ``First strategy, then requirements, then the POM, then budget.'' The global situation and America's competitors and adversaries may have evolved, but the process by which the U.S. Navy designs and builds the fleet should take a valuable lesson from the 1980s. If the United States is to remain a global power, it needs a Navy fit for the purpose and the United States, as a nation, needs to make the commitment to prioritize national defense and make this investment.
Mr. INHOFE. This budget also fails to make any progress in a growing or modernizing Air Force. Instead, the Biden budget procurement actually decreases by almost 15 percent across the entire military. The Air Force is 20 percent. President Biden's own nominee for the Secretary of the Air Force told us that one of the best things that we could do is to accelerate the buying of additional F-35s, but this budget doesn't do that. The fleet just gets older and smaller.
Perhaps the greatest casualty of the Biden budget is the Army. I guess I am used to that by now. I was a product of the Army, and all my Army friends remember what happened back in 1994. I was in the House at that time and on the House Armed Services Committee. At that time, I can remember when someone who was in a hearing--an expert--predicted that, in 10 years, we would no longer need ground troops. Of course, we know what has happened since that time. The greatest casualty is always the Army. Instead of investing, it deeply cuts the Army across the board in its modernization, procurement, force structure, and readiness.
I can't understand why we decreased full spectrum training just as we have started to get healthy after the readiness crisis of 2017, and we all remember what happened in 2017. That was the last 5 years of the Obama administration, and they were the years that cut our military substantially. They actually did reduce our budget in the last 5 years by 25 percent, the military budget. At the same time, China was increasing theirs by 78 percent. This is the problem that we had back then, and it is still going on.
Don't take my word for it. General McConville told us last week that most of the Army's weapons systems are 1980s vintage. Yet the Biden administration is slow-walking the Army's modernization efforts while our adversaries are relentlessly advancing--and they are. Secretary Wormuth, who is the Secretary of the Army, said the service is still under stress in some areas, including defense, which is a critical priority, and that is unacceptable.
Additionally, while Secretary Austin kept his promise to fully fund nuclear modernization, this is an area I can't blame anybody for because this has been going on for a long period of time, since after World War II, that being that our nuclear modernization program has not been substantial. Others have been catching up with us slowly but surely, and that is where we are today. So he kept his word. His promise was to fully fund nuclear modernization.
I remain concerned about the $600 million cut in the NNSA's deferred maintenance budget. Now, with the NNSA, we are talking about nuclear now, our nuclear capabilities. It would have fixed crumbling infrastructure that is necessary to keep the nuclear weapons program on track.
Now, you can't see this very well, but when you look closely, it is worth coming up to look. We see some of the oldest equipment here, and it is obvious just by looking at it that it doesn't work. So not only are other countries catching up and passing us, but our equipment has not been modernized. That is what we were going to do, and this is what Secretary Austin wants to do, but we have not been able to pay for it yet. We have to get that done. It would have fixed crumbling infrastructure that is necessary to keep nuclear weapons on track.
The reality of this budget cut is on display in the unfunded priorities list that was put together by military services and the combatant commanders. No one knows more than the combatant commanders about our state of readiness. In total, we are looking at $25 billion in key equipment weapons--and more that our services could use--but this budget can't support it.
Many people call these wish lists. I call them risk lists. The reason we don't hear a lot about people who are talking about the risks, the military people, is that ``risk'' means lives. When military people talk about risk, they talk about losing lives. People don't like to talk about that, but we are now in the position whereby we have to talk about it. We can only kick the can down the road so far, generating more and more risk. We don't talk about risk. We never do. We just demand that our military do more with less. We keep divesting, but the investments never follow. This trend of increased risk has only accelerated. It is already clear that the administration is signaling they want to cut the military even deeper next year.
Earlier this month, I read in the press about a memo by the Acting Secretary of the Navy as he tried to minimize the damage and risk of his sailors resulting from the significant budget cuts. He was very sincere about this. He said the Navy is forced to choose between modernizing ships, subs, and aircraft. Does anyone in here believe that the Chinese are choosing between ships, subs, and aircraft?
Recently, our Nation's highest ranking military officer, General Milley, told us that the Chinese and Russians combined actually spend more than we on defense. Now, think about that for a minute. You don't hear that. Nobody is talking about this. We have been told for so many years that we don't need to spend more on defense because we already spend more than our competitors. It turns out that this is just not true, and the American people are not aware of this.
Now, part of the difference is that the Chinese and the Russians don't take care of their people. I have talked a lot about the fact that we don't do that. Do you remember all of the housing problems that we were all concerned about? Are we spending enough on housing for our people? Communist countries don't care about that. They just give them the guns and say: Go out and kill people. They don't care about people. The greatest expense that we have in supporting the military is the expense that we have for housing and for the quality of life of our troops.
By the way, I am drawing out a couple of Democrats when I talk about the problem and the fact that this is a concern. It is not just a concern of the Republicans. These are Democratic Members, and they are concerned. Democratic Congressman Anthony Brown made this point recently, and I agree with him.
He wrote:
We spend $1 billion more on Medicare in the defense budget than we do on new tactical vehicles. We spend more on the Defense Health Program than we do on new ships.
Now, that came from a Democratic Member of the House.
He concluded:
In total, some $200 billion in the defense budget are essentially for nondefense purposes--from salaries to health care to basic research.
Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record Congressman Brown's article because I think it gets it exactly right, and this is coming from the other side
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
The Case for a Robust Defense Budget
(By Rep. Anthony Brown)
The United States is confronting a multitude of complex domestic and global challenges brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic (https://www.defensenews.com/coronavirus/), disruptive technologies, severe weather events (https://
www.defensenews.com/smr/energy-andenvironment/), systemic racism, and great power competition with China and Russia. Now more than ever, Congress has a responsibility to ensure that we robustly fund our national security, even as the cost of doing so rises every year.
We maintain our national security not only by the military dollars we spend, but also by the resources we dedicate to international diplomacy and development, and the investments we make at home in infrastructure and education, in climate change mitigation, and in health care, public safety and our democratic institutions.
With ample defense and nondefense spending, we are better able to secure our nation, revitalize our economy, defeat the pandemic and restore U.S. global leadership.
The American Jobs Plan and the American Families Plan are bold initiatives that will strengthen our nation. They comprise long-overdue investments in infrastructure, innovation and our workforce, and they meet the equitable needs of our children and families. They promote American competitiveness and security. Yet, we should not irresponsibly cut defense spending as a way to offset the costs of these necessary investments. We cannot ``rob Peter to pay Paul.''
We need a well-funded military because we ask the men and women in our armed forces to do more today than ever before.
Our military deters aggression from China and Russia. China seeks to exert more control over trade and resources (https:/
/microsites-livebackend.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/territorial-disputes- south-china-sea) in the Pacific and to challenge the security of our critical infrastructure (https://www.C4isrnet.com/ critical-infrastructure/ 2019/11/ 22/how-the-fccs-new-ban-on-huawei-benefits-the-miltary/) while investing (https://
media.defense.gov/2020/Sep/01/2002488689/-1/-1/1/2020-DOD-
CHINA-MILITARY-POWER-REPORT-FINAL.PDF) significantly in its military. Russia threatens (https://www.militarytimes.com/
flashpoints/2021/04/22/russia-orders-troop-pullback-but-
keeps-weapons-near-ukraine/) our European partners and allies, increasingly tests (https://www.airforcetimes.com/
news/your-air-force/2021/04/28/spike-in-russian-
aircraftintercepts-straining-air-force-crews-in-alaska-three-
star-says/) the boundaries of our air defenses and interferes
(https://www.npr.org/2021/03/16/977958302/intelligence-
report-russia-tried-to-help-trump-in-2020-election) in our elections.
Our armed forces defend the homeland against threats from North Korea, which has tested missiles (https://
missilethreat.csis.org/country/dprk/) capable of striking our capital, and Iran, which funds terrorism in the Middle East and attacks our institutions through cyber operations
(https://www.csis.org/programs/technology-policy-program/
publicly-reported-iranian-cyber-actions-2019). And through it all, our military maintains watch against terrorism.
The threats are real and increasing, and we must rise to meet these challenges--not simply because we have an interest in our own security and the international order, but because the United States has a greater interest than any other nation.
While we are less than 5 percent of the world's population, we generate 20 percent (https://ustr.gov/issue-areas/economy-
trade) of global economic production. We are the leader in international trade, with over $5 trillion in commerce crossing our borders annually, including smartphones, cars and the medicines that we need.
Securing the global economy on which we rely demands that we field an expeditionary force capable of deploying to where it is needed most. Whether securing the 60 percent (https://
chinapower.csis.org/much-trade-transits-south-china-sea/) of maritime trade transiting the Indo-Pacific region, or partnering in Africa to provide security for development, or checking Russia's Arctic expansionism (https://
www.defensenews.com/smr/frozenpathways/2021/04/12/russian-
military-buildup-in-the-arctic-has-northern-nato-members-
uneasy/) for newly accessible resources, our military must be able to operate anywhere and everywhere around the world.
Success in these varied regions and missions requires us to train and equip our forces to prevail over any adversary, both in competition and in conflict. It means investing in fighter jets that can counter Russian advanced aircraft and developing submarines to avoid detection by Chinese sensors; modernizing our Army so soldiers have 21st century technology to fight and survive; and ensuring sufficient troop levels to limit back-to-back deployments so our military has time at home with family to maintain morale and readiness (https://
www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2020/o2/14/why_we_
should_grow_the_active_duty_army_115042.html). Having a global force that is ready and lethal provides the necessary presence to deter war and maintain peace in the global commons.
At the center of this worldwide mission are the men and women who serve.
Two million service members and civilians devote their lives to our defense, and the Pentagon's budget funds the everyday needs for them and their families: health care to 10 million Americans (https://health.mil/News/Gallery/
Infographics/2017/05/01/MHS-Facts-and-Figures), child care for 200,000 children (https://crsreports.congress.gov/
product/pdf/R/R45288/7), retirement for 1.5 million veterans
(https://media.defense.gov/2019/May/14/2002131753/-1/-1/o/
MRS_STATRPT_2018%20V5.PDF#page=7) and K-12 education in about 160 schools (https://www.dodea.edu/aboutdodea/
demographics.cfm) worldwide.
The benefits of defense spending reach beyond the military and our contribution to the international order, returning the investment through domestic dividends. During Hurricane Katrina, the National Guard rescued over 17,000 people and airlifted almost 22 million pounds (https://
www.nationalguard.mil/Features/2015/Remembering-Hurricane-
Katrina/) of cargo to the flooded areas. The Pentagon's $8 billion annual spend on research invigorates our academic and tech sectors, resulting in technologies like GPS and Google Maps, which were first invented by Navy scientists. Defense innovations like radar are now in civilian use, and they power the weather stations that detect increasingly severe storms amid climate change. And the internet, the backbone of the global economy, began as a Defense Department program.
We spend $1 billion more on Medicare in the defense budget than we do on new tactical vehicles. We spend more on the Defense Health Program than we do on new ships. In total, some $200 billion in the defense budget are essentially for nondefense purposes--from salaries to health care to basic research.
In no place are these domestic benefits of defense spending clearer than in the current pandemic. The Moderna vaccine, developed in record time, was originally seeded by a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency investment in 2013, and a subsequent Pentagon request to rapidly produce a human ready antibody contributed to the delivery of multiple vaccines in under a year. And 50,000 National Guard members are assisting
(https:/ /www.cnbc.com/2021/01/08/covid-vaccination-crisis-
national-guard-is-being-mobilized.html) in coronavirus testing and vaccinations across the country, strengthening our nation against a grave threat to our collective health.
We should neither view the nondefense and defense budgets as opposite sides of the same coin, nor accept them as a false choice between two competing options.
This nation was founded to form a more perfect Union, and in doing so to provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare. For 233 years, Congress has endeavored to balance these responsibilities, and in doing so has often found a way to secure our democracy and freedoms while at the same time investing in America as the land of opportunity. It is imperative that we in Congress meet these challenges and fulfill our responsibilities.
Our national security depends on it.
Mr. INHOFE. We can disagree sometimes about how we compete with China on nondefense areas. It is important. That is an important debate. We want to do that, but we have to be on the same page when it comes to national security.
Some people would say that my criticism of cutting the military is because President Biden is a Democrat. I want to be really clear that this is not about politics; it is about protecting this Nation and making sure our men and women in uniform have the training and the resources and the equipment they need to compete and complete their missions and come home safely. I mean, this is what we are supposed to be doing, and that is what we are doing.
I told President Trump, back when he sent his initial budget up when he became President of the United States, that it was not adequate at that time. I called up Secretary Mattis, and we met the President at the White House. We showed him why it was inadequate, and it was inadequate. So we were able to get something done at that time, and that is something that we are concerned about today.
I happen to think President Trump wanted to spend even more on his troops, but I think he got some bad advice from his advisers. I think the same is true with President Biden. I think he wants a strong military when he is up against our adversaries. I know this President believes that a strong military underpins all of our other tools and national power, including diplomatic efforts. I know the President believes in America's role in the world and in the value of deterrence. I know the President believes in the importance of our allies and the partners who look to us for commitments and for investments to know that we are very serious. Our President knows that. President Biden knows this, but we don't have the budget to support it.
The President needs to be coming forth with adequate budgets to take care of the problems that we are faced with today. We all know how painful Obama's readiness crisis was as flight training hours were slashed, and we didn't know all of the things that happened during the last 5 years of his administration. This administration should remember how dangerous that was not just for our deterrence but also because there was a human cost. That is one of many reasons I am struggling to understand the administration's cuts to the defense budget.
One thing we have been told is that anything more than this defense budget is just not affordable. We have been told by the Pentagon that we have to live more fiscally. That is one way to tell the military that you don't care about them. This administration wants to spend trillions in taxpayers' dollars on everything you can think of except on the military, and this comes through very clearly when the amount of increase they are having right now is between 16 and 20 percent and ours is 1.6 percent.
In reality, the investments we need to strengthen our military in the decades to come are minimal when compared to overall Federal budgeting. Defense spending compared to our GDP is half of what it was in the Cold War, and we live in a much more dangerous world now. We have been told that the Pentagon must make hard choices as if hard choices are a substitute for strategy-based budgeting. Yet we are not making hard choices; we are just making bad choices.
All of our current military and senior DOD officials agree that we have a good military strategy for China and Russia, but the budget doesn't support that strategy. As a result, I am worried that deterrence will fail maybe today or maybe 5 years from now, and when it does, the cost will be much higher than any investment we would make today.
We have made a sacred compact with our servicemembers. We tell them that we will take care of them and take care of their families. We do that very well, but we also tell them that we will give them the tools to defend the Nation and to come home safely, but we are not holding up that end of the bargain. With this proposed budget and the prospects of further cuts, we are failing to give them the resources they need.
We can't simply spend our way out of our military problems, but we can spend too little to give ourselves a chance. We have seen the high cost of underinvesting in the military. Underfunding in the military tempts our adversaries, raises doubts in our allies, and makes war more, not less, likely.
So we need to make a generational investment in our defenses so that our children and grandchildren don't have to, and we are not doing that now.
We have a lot of impatient people right now who want to vote.
I yield the floor.
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