00:00I will now turn to the subcommittee leaders to say more about their bill and
00:06we shall begin with Chairman McConnell. Thank you very much, Madam Chair, colleague
00:17Senator Coons and I work closely together and have similar views about
00:25the condition the country faces with the rest of the world. Before giving my
00:34prepared remarks let me just say again I think not only the prior
00:41administration but this administration as well have underestimated the level of
00:48challenge that we have. You've got authoritarian regimes coordinating with
00:57each other and North Koreans, the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians, Iranian proxies
01:07all communicating and the one thing they have in common, they hate us and they
01:15want to replace the role that America plays. And so we've tried as much as we
01:25can underneath the top line to do what the two of us felt was a better job of
01:33trying to deal with the reality of the situation. So I want to thank all the
01:43members of our subcommittee. This is a very very complicated effort to try to get
01:50beyond where we have been under this administration and the previous one. Year
01:58year after year, we've failed in many ways to provide for the common defense. This
02:10bill recognizes the administration's intention to restore peace through strength. The
02:20Department of Defense's desire to achieve drone dominance and the President's
02:27interest in having more missiles than any other country. It reflects the need to
02:34build more ships for a Navy that must compete with China. It acknowledges that
02:40America's adversaries are increasingly aligned and investing more heavily in
02:46undermining our interests and that America must take the risk of simultaneous
02:51conflict in multiple theories seriously. But ultimately, our top line allocation of $852.5 billion,
03:04which sits higher than either the President's budget request or the House
03:10mark, underscores that we cannot seriously address these challenges while artificially
03:16straining our resources. We can't build a Golden Dome or restock our munitions or bring back
03:27American shipbuilding without sustained increased investments in all of our national defense. And we can't
03:37treat reconciliation like a cure-off. I was glad to vote for the one big, beautiful bill, but let's not kid
03:48ourselves. It was not the additive defense spending some of us had hoped for. Moving must-pay bills for
03:56major long-standing programs from base to reconciliation still makes little sense to me. And somehow the
04:07process seems to have also allowed important programs to slip through the cracks. In fact, senior
04:15Pentagon officials have already come to me and my colleague Senator Coons to report that there's still billions of
04:25dollars short on programs that we were told reconciliation would address.
04:34So the point is, there's no substitute for robust full-year defense appropriations. And this is a strong
04:42bipartisan bill that proves we can do our job and keep our commitments to the men and women of the U.S.
04:48military. They deserve no less. Here are a few of the items we address. First, recent operations in the
04:59Middle East illustrate how quickly modern warfare can exhaust our arsenal of critical munitions. The
05:09administration's requested did not fully maximize production capacity for certain critical munitions. So we
05:19added $5.2 billion to buy larger quantities of air defense interceptors, long-range fires, and other key
05:28munitions. We also added $2.1 billion to expand production capacity of munitions and included the
05:38units and included some important initial investments in restoring America's organic industrial base. Second, we
05:49also added $4.6 billion to addressing growing demand for more extensive air and missile defenses. But developing a more
06:00layered missile defense shield that can protect the homeland and our forces abroad from growing threats is going to take years of
06:12sustained funding. Third, we've tried to help the department meet requirements that the final reconciliation bill and the fiscal year
06:23year 26 budget requests left unfunded. Including advanced procurement for Virginia and Columbia class
06:32submarines. Cost to complete. Compete or surface vessels. Major renovations to dilapidated Marine
06:44Corps barracks. And ship operation costs for Navy. We also included more funding for destroyer and
06:52destroyer construction. Shipyard infrastructure. And workforce development to help fix our ailing shipbuilding
07:01industry and get production back on track. Fourth, we invest in ally and partner militaries. We know that confronting
07:13Chinese aggression will require collective deterrence, helping grow our friends' capacity to defend themselves in
07:22the Indo-Pacific, as in Europe or the Middle East, actually enhances deterrence and helps our allies share more of the burden. It also means more
07:36investment in interoperable U.
07:39U.S.-made systems and lower risk for U.S. service members. These are investments that pay dividends and I'm not just
07:46talking about treaty allies. Secretary of the Army rightly calls Ukraine the Silicon Valley of warfare. The Navy considers the
07:59maritime fight the maritime fight between Russia and Ukraine as the Black Sea battle lab and recognizes the need for
08:09rapid innovation. So we added 216 million on top of the administration's request for drone and counter drone capabilities,
08:20consistent with the intention of achieving drone dominance. But abandoning the foremost experts of drone warfare would be
08:33strategic self-harm. Shutting off engagement with Ukraine would undermine our military's efforts to prepare for the modern
08:43battlefield. So, like our friends on the Armed Services Committee, we are restoring funding for the Ukraine Security
08:55Assistance Initiative and other security assistance programs that make America safer. So, Madam Chair, I'm proud of the work of the
09:07Defense Subcommittee in producing this bill for our colleagues' consideration. And I hope it'll earn the
09:12support of the entire committee. Allow me to close with just one more note. None of the challenges we're facing today can
09:24be solved by a single bill over the course of a single budget cycle. Readiness is not a box to be checked. It's a state to
09:41a state, to achieve, and to maintain. In this era of major power competition, security for future generations of
09:51Americans means the following. Steady, consistent, predictable, increasing investments in our common defense. Year after year,
10:09year after year after year. If we're tempted to treat successful fiscal year 26 appropriations like a finish line,
10:21we're thinking about our obligations all wrong. Thank you, Madam Chair.
10:27Thank you, Chairman McConnell.
10:29Thank you, Chairman McConnell.
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