I am tremendously proud of the Senate Armed Services Committee's work on this legislation. This year's NDAA is the most significant piece of defense … - John McCain

Unnecessary tests and procedures are performed time after time after time. I was in Miami at the Palmetto Hospital, a fine institution. I asked one of the surgeons: How can you afford your health insurance premiums? He said: We don't keep insurance anymore. We can't afford it. We will probably not get sued because they know we only have so much in assets. Now we are putting physicians and care providers in a position where they basically cannot afford, nor can they get, malpractice insurance because the premiums are so high, and they are targets for the trial lawyers. We have a number of alternatives. Most of them are market based. Most of them have to do with preserving the quality of health care yet bringing down the cost, which should be our goal. Why don't we have insurance reforms to improve access? That means someone can go across State lines. If a citizen of Arizona wants to go to North Dakota and get health insurance there, why can't they? Why can't that family do that? Why can't they? They cannot today.

It's common knowledge and has been reported in the media that al-Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq. That's well known. We continue to be concerned about the Iranians taking al-Qaeda into Iran and training them and sending them back.... I am sorry, the Iranians are training extremists, not al-Qaeda, not al-Qaeda, I am sorry.

While the NDAA conforms to last year's budget agreement at present, I have filed an amendment to increase defense spending above the current spending caps. This amendment will reverse shortsighted cuts to modernization, restore military readiness, and give our servicemembers the support they need and deserve. I do not know whether this amendment will succeed, but the Senate must have this debate and Senators are going to have to choose a side. At the same time, as I have long believed, providing for the common defense is not just about a bigger defense budget--as necessary as that is. We must also reform our Nation's defense enterprise to meet new threats, both today and tomorrow, and to give Americans greater confidence, which they don't have a lot of now, that the Department of Defense is spending their tax dollars efficiently and effectively. That is exactly what this legislation does. The last major reorganization of the Department of Defense was the Goldwater-Nichols Act, which marks its 30th anniversary this year. Last fall the Senate Armed Services Committee held a series of 13 hearings on defense reform. We heard from 52 of our Nation's foremost defense experts and leaders. The Goldwater-Nichols Act of 30 years ago responded to the challenges of its time. Our goal was to determine what changes needed to be made to prepare the Department of Defense to meet the new set of strategic challenges. As Jim Locher, the lead staffer on Goldwater-Nichols, testified last year: "No organizational blueprint lasts forever...[T]he world in which DOD must operate has changed dramatically over the last 30 years."