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WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made the following remarks on the Senate floor urging cooperation on the defense bill:

“Today, the Senate turns to consideration of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2016.

“This legislation, which authorizes funds and sets out policy for our military annually, is always important. But it’s especially important now, given the multitude of threats that challenge us as a nation: for instance, the aggressive rise of ISIL, Iran’s ambitions for regional hegemony and its accompanying quest for nuclear weapons, and both Chinese and Russian efforts to erode American influence and assert dominance over their neighbors.

“It's also important given the need to start thinking about preparing our armed services for the many global threats the next President will confront the day he or she takes office.

“The reality is, we’ve left behind the era when America could withdraw from conflict overseas and escape to the comfort and security provided by vast oceans and isolation. We’ve lost the luxury of building our forces years after a war has begun. And most important, the simple trade off of guns versus butter, drawing down our conventional forces—hollowing them out—and standing behind our nuclear arsenal—does not suit the strategic challenges we face. We can no longer ignore ungoverned spaces. We have left the Cold War long behind. Trade-offs have become more difficult to accomplish, and they require greater strategic thought than the President has provided. And we have seen the resilience of the terrorist threat.

“Senator McCain, the Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, is a man with the depth of experience to understand the need to modernize, refit and prepare our military for the threats and operations in the coming years. And thankfully for the Senate, he’s also a man with the vision to craft a bill that could put us on a path to address those challenges — legislation that could help equip the next President with adequate capabilities to address threats from adversaries like Russia, China, ISIL, and Al Qaeda, not to mention the unforeseen challenges that inevitably arise.

“That’s just the course this defense authorization bill proposes to put us on.

“And I’d like to commend Senator McCain not just for crafting this bill, but for working closely with members of both parties to steer it through committee with overwhelming bipartisan support.

“This legislation proposes to do a lot of things, but fundamentally it’s premised on a common-sense idea: that we should cut waste and redirect that authorized funding to where it’s actually needed — like meeting the needs of the men and women who put everything on the line to keep us safe.

“In a time when missions are in imbalance with resources for a military that’s already had to endure too many cuts in recent years, it just makes sense to do things like:

“Take on a growing bureaucracy at the Pentagon to make it more efficient and effective.

“Work toward reforming the way our military purchases weapons and equipment.

“And improve and modernize the military retirement system in order to secure greater value and choice for service members.

“Overall this bill authorizes about $10 billion in savings for actual military needs.

“These authorities will allow for improvements in the training and capability of our forces, and they’ll help us develop new technologies to maintain superiority on the battlefield.

“Our constituents stand to benefit from many of the provisions in this bill too.

“For instance, Kentuckians will be glad to know that this legislation would authorize a new special forces facility at Fort Campbell. They’ll also be glad to hear it will authorize construction projects and an important new medical clinic at Fort Knox — an initiative I’ve championed for years.

“It’s no wonder then that so many Democrats joined with Republicans to support this bill on the floor of the House of Representatives, and why they joined Republicans in the Armed Services Committee to pass this bill on an overwhelming bipartisan basis too -- which of course is the tradition both of that committee, and of the Senate as a whole.

“Now we need to keep that momentum going.

“Because this defense policy bill cannot fall hostage to partisan politics; too much is at stake.

“We just heard more partisan saber-rattling from the White House yesterday, which is now threatening to block a pay increase for our troops unless Congress first agrees to spend billions more plumping up bloated bureaucracies like the IRS.

“That’s despite the fact that the funding level in this bill is exactly the same as what President Obama requested in his budget: $612 billion.

“The Minority Leader appeared to go even further, essentially saying that voting to support the men and women who protect us is now just ‘a waste of time’ — because, we're led to assume, his party isn't getting its way on other partisan demands unrelated to this bill.

“Look: We understand that some of our Democrat friends might be so determined to increase spending for Washington's bureaucracies that, to achieve it, they'd even risk support for our men and women in uniform in the face of so many global threats. I certainly don’t love every aspect of the Budget Control Act, especially the effects we've seen on the defense side in hindering our ability to modernize the force and meet the demands of current operations.

“But to deny brave service members the benefits they’ve earned putting everything on the line for each one of us, for these partisan reasons — it would be profoundly unfair to our troops.

“Blocking this bill is not in our national interest.

“So let’s skip the partisan games and start working toward common-sense reforms, as this bill proposes.

“Let’s work together to pass the best defense authorization bill possible.

“I urge members of both parties who want to offer amendments to go ahead and do so, and then to work with the bill managers to get them moving.

“We have that opportunity this year because we returned to regular order and because we’re considering the NDAA at the appropriate time in the session--rather than at the very last minute, with little time for thoughtful consideration or amendments, as had become the unfortunate norm in recent years.

“This positive turn is another credit to Senator McCain’s leadership.

“Of course, no defense authorization bill will ever be perfect. But this is legislation that reflects a good faith effort to authorize programs in the political reality we live in. It’s bipartisan reform legislation that proposes to root out waste, improve our military capabilities, support the brave Americans who protect us, and make preparations for the challenges — both foreseeable and unforeseeable — in the years ahead.”

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made the following remarks on the Senate floor regarding the USA Freedom Act:

“Earlier this year I observed that President Obama’s national security policy has been noteworthy for its consistent objectives: drawing down our conventional and nuclear forces, withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan, ending the tools developed by the previous administration to wage the War on Terror and placing a greater reliance upon international organizations and diplomacy.

“None of this is a surprise: the President ran in 2008 as the candidate who would end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the War on Terror. And our nation has a regrettable history of drawing down our forces and capabilities after each conflict only to find ourselves ill-prepared for the next great struggle.

“The bookends to the President’s policies were the executive orders signed his first week in office which included the declaration that Guantanamo would be closed within a year, without any plan for what to do with its detainees, and the executive orders that ended the Central Intelligence Agency’s detention and interrogation programs. Some of those detainees are now in Qatar preparing to rejoin the Taliban, some are in Uruguay camped out in a park across from the American Embassy, and regrettably some are back on the battlefield in Yemen, Afghanistan and in Syria.

“And last year the President announced that all of our combat forces would be withdrawn from Afghanistan by the end of his term of office — whether or not the Taliban were successful in capturing parts of Afghanistan, whether or not Al Qaeda senior leadership had found a more permissive environment in the tribal areas of Pakistan, and whether or not Al Qaeda has been completely driven from Afghanistan.

“I will repeat: The President has been a reluctant Commander-in-Chief. And between those two bookends, much has occurred that has undermined our national security.

“There was the failure to negotiate a Status of Forces agreement with Iraq that would have allowed for a residual military force and prevented the assault by the Islamic State of Syria and the Levant. China is aggressively expanding its sphere of influence. There is the threat to veto funding for the troops and their equipment without similar increases at the IRS and EPA, which would diminish our military’s ability to respond to the myriad threats facing us today. And Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has doggedly pursued tactics and capabilities to circumvent all that we have done since September 11, 2001 to defend our nation.

“So while the President has inflexibly clung to campaign promises made in 2008, the threat from Al Qaeda has metastasized.

“ISIL — which has broken from Al Qaeda — uses social media to communicate with Americans, divert them to encrypted communications, encourage travel to the would-be Caliphate, and encourage attacks here at home. Al Qaeda and ISIL publish online magazines instructing individuals in terrorist tactics. And in the long run, the Al Nusrah Front in Syria may present the greatest long-term threat to the homeland.

“The President’s efforts to dismantle our counterterrorism tools have not only been inflexible — they are especially ill-timed. And today the Senate will vote on whether or not we should take one more tool away from those who defend this country every day: the ability of a trained analyst, under exceedingly close supervision, and only with the approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, to query a database of call data records based on a reasonable articulable suspicion.

“No content. No names. No listening to the phone calls of law-abiding citizens. We are talking about call data records.

“And these are the provider’s records, which is not what the Fourth Amendment speaks to. It speaks to: ‘The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects.’ And let me remind the Senate, the standard for reasonable articulable suspicion is that the terror suspect is associated with a ‘foreign terrorist organization’ as determined by the Court.

“The President’s campaign to destroy the tools used to prevent another terrorist attack has been aided by those seeking to prosecute officers in the intelligence community, diminish our military capabilities, and despicably, to leak and reveal classified information — putting our nation further at risk.

“Those who reveal the tactics, sources and methods of our military and intelligence community give a playbook to ISIL and Al Qaeda. As the Associated Press declared today, the end of the Section 215 program is a ‘resounding victory for Edward Snowden’. It is also a resounding victory for those currently plotting attacks against the homeland.

“Where was the defense of the National Security Agency from the President? Our chairman of the Intelligence Committee and his committee colleagues have worked with determination to educate the Senate concerning the legal, technical, and oversight safeguards currently in place. A CNN poll released today, by the way, states that 61% of Americans think that the expiring provisions of the Patriot Act, including data collection, should be renewed.

“The President may be satisfied that his years-long campaign to tear down the integrated capabilities developed after September 11th has inched further. I disagree.

“My view is that the determined effort to fulfill campaign promises made in 2008 reflects an inability to adapt to the current threat, an inflexible view of past political grievances, and a policy that will leave the next President in a weaker position to combat ISIL.

“I cannot support passage of the so called USA Freedom Act. It does not enhance the privacy protections of American citizens. And it surely undermines American security by taking one more tool form our warfighters at exactly the wrong time.”

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made the following remarks on the Senate floor today urging members to support FISA amendments:

“I wish we’d been able to move the cloture and amendment votes we’ll consider today to yesterday.

“I made an offer to do so because it was hard to see the point in allowing yet another day to elapse when everyone’s already had a chance to say their piece, when the end game appeared obvious to all, and when the need to move forward in a thoughtful but expeditious manner seemed clear.

“But this is the Senate. Members are entitled to different views, and members have tools to assert those views.

“It’s the nature of the body where we work.

“Moreover, it’s important to remember that it was not just the denial of consent that’s brought us to where we are. The kind of short-term extension that would have provided the Senate with the time and space it needed to advance bipartisan compromise legislation through regular order was also blocked in a floor vote.

“But what’s happened has happened. We are where we are.

“Now is the time to put all that in the past and work together diligently to make some discrete and sensible improvements to the House bill. Before scrapping an effective system that has helped protect us from attack in favor of an untried one, we should at least work toward securing some modest degree of assurance that the new system can, in fact, actually work.

“The Obama Administration already told us that it would not be able to make any firm guarantees in that regard, at least the way the bill currently reads. And the way the bill currently reads, there's also no requirement for the retention and availability of significant data for analysis.

“These are not small problems. The legislation we're considering proposes major changes to some of our nation’s most fundamental and necessary counter-terrorism tools.

“That's why the revelations from the Administration shocked many Senators, including a lot of supporters of this legislation.

“It’s simply astounding that the very government officials charged with implementing the bill would tell us, both in person and in writing, that if it turns out this new system doesn’t work, well, then, they’ll just come back and let us know. This is worrying for many reasons, not the least of which is that we don’t want to find out the system doesn't work in a far more tragic way.

“That's why we need to do what we can today to ensure this legislation is as strong as it can be under the circumstances. Here are the kind of amendments I hope every Senator will join me in supporting today:

“One that would allow for more time for the construction and testing of a system that does not yet exist.

“Another that would ensure the Director of National Intelligence is charged with at least reviewing and certifying the readiness of the system.

“And another that would require simple notification if telephone providers — the entities charged with holding data under this bill — elect to change their data-retention policies. Let me remind you that one provider has already said expressly, and in writing, that it would not commit to holding the data for any period of time under the House-passed bill unless otherwise compelled by law. So this amendment represents the least we can do to ensure we’ll be able to know, especially in an emergency, whether the dots we need to connect have been wiped away.

“We'll also consider an amendment that would address concerns we've heard from the non-partisan Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts — in other words, the lifetime federal judges who actually serve on the FISA court. In a recent letter, they wrote that the proposed amicus provision ‘could impede the FISA Courts’ role in protecting the civil liberties of Americans.’
I’d ask that the full text of their letter be inserted into the record at the conclusion of my remarks.

“The bottom line is this: The basic fixes I've just mentioned are common sense. Anyone who wants to see the system envisioned under this bill actually work will want to support them. And anyone who has heard the Administration’s ‘we’ll-get-back-to-you-if-there’s-a-problem’ promise should support these modest safeguards too.

“We may have been delayed getting to the point at which we’ve arrived, but now that we’re here let’s work cooperatively, seriously, and expeditiously to move the best legislation possible and prevent any more delay or uncertainty.”

Recent Press Releases

McConnell Urges Senate Democrats Not to Play Partisan Politics with Defense Bill

June 3, 2015

McConnell Opposes Bill that Weakens Counter-Terrorism Tools

‘I cannot support passage of the so called USA Freedom Act. It does not enhance the privacy protections of American citizens. And it surely undermines American security by taking one more tool form our warfighters at exactly the wrong time.’

June 2, 2015

McConnell Calls for ‘Sensible Improvements’ to House-Passed FISA Bill

June 2, 2015