I've found just the right partner to help me shake up Washington, Gov. Sarah Palin of the great state of Alaska. ... She has an executive experience … - John McCain

I say to my colleagues: This is an ambitious piece of legislation, and it is one that reflects the growing threats to our Nation. Everything about the NDAA is threat driven--everything, that is, but its top line of $602 billion. That is an arbitrary figure set by last year's budget agreement, having nothing to do with events in the world, and which itself was a product of 5 years of letting politics, not strategy, determine the level of funding for our national defense. Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs GEN Martin Dempsey described last year's defense budget as "the lower ragged edge of manageable risks." Yet here we are 1 year later with defense spending arbitrarily capped at $17 billion below what our military needed and planned for last year. I don't know what lies beneath the lower ragged edge of manageable, but this is what I fear it means--that our military is becoming less and less able to deter conflict and that if, God forbid, deterrence does fail somewhere and we end up in conflict, our Nation will deploy young Americans into battle without sufficient training or equipment to fight a war that will take longer, be larger, cost more, and ultimately claim more American lives than it otherwise would have. That is the growing risk we face, and for the sake of the men and women serving in our military, we cannot change course soon enough. The Senate will have the opportunity to do just that when we consider my amendment to reverse the budget-driven cuts to the capabilities of our Armed Forces that are needed to defend the Nation. I hope we will seize this opportunity. We ask a lot of our men and women in uniform, and they never let us down. We must not let them down. As we move forward with consideration of the NDAA, I stand ready to work with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to pass this important legislation and give our military the resources they need and deserve.

Our government has a responsibility to defend our borders, but we must do so in a way that makes us safer and upholds all that is decent and exceptional about our nation.<P>It is clear from the confusion at our airports across the nation that President Trump's executive order was not properly vetted. We are particularly concerned by reports that this order went into effect with little to no consultation with the Departments of State, Defense, Justice, and Homeland Security.<P>Such a hasty process risks harmful results. We should not stop green-card holders from returning to the country they call home. We should not stop those who have served as interpreters for our military and diplomats from seeking refuge in the country they risked their lives to help. And we should not turn our backs on those refugees who have been shown through extensive vetting to pose no demonstrable threat to our nation, and who have suffered unspeakable horrors, most of them women and children.<P>Ultimately, we fear this executive order will become a self-inflicted wound in the fight against terrorism. At this very moment, American troops are fighting side-by-side with our Iraqi partners to defeat ISIL. But this executive order bans Iraqi pilots from coming to military bases in Arizona to fight our common enemies. Our most important allies in the fight against ISIL are the vast majority of Muslims who reject its apocalyptic ideology of hatred. This executive order sends a signal, intended or not, that America does not want Muslims coming into our country. That is why we fear this executive order may do more to help terrorist recruitment than improve our security.

In America, we have always believed that if the day was a disappointment, we would win tomorrow. That’s what John Lewis believed when he marched across this bridge.