{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ID=6D1F91EB-F901-4308-B049-0148F042DE52", "McConnell Remarks Accepting \u2018Peace Through Strength\u2019 Award At Reagan National Defense Forum", "2024-12-07", "2024", "2024-12", "Republican", "Senate", "KY", "Mitch McConnell", "M000355", "www.mcconnell.senate.gov", "mcconnell", "https://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases", "scraper", "\u201cThe task before us is urgent. We can\u2019t afford to miss opportunities to restore American hard power and industrial capacity before conflicts ignite. We need to be investing \u2013 yesterday \u2013 in long-range fires, munitions, air and missile defenses, shipbuilding, and more. It\u2019s all well and good to spend time talking about grave threats. But our enemies care much more about what we do than what we say\u2026 We have an obligation to provide for the common defense.\u2019\n\nSIMI VALLEY, C.A. \u2013 U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) delivered the following remarks at the Reagan National Defense Forum. Below is the text as prepared for delivery:\n\n\u201cI\u2019m glad to be with all of you. And I\u2019m so honored by this recognition.\n\n\u201cI believe in American primacy and in the power of alliances. I make no apology for these beliefs, and I trace them directly to the example of our 40th president.\n\n\u201cPresident Reagan\u2019s leadership was a source both of professional wisdom and personal inspiration to me. I suspect the same is true for so many of you here today. Even in the climactic moments of a struggle that defined half a century, the consummate cold warrior spoke for posterity.\n\n\u201cPresident Reagan knew that the principles that guided the West\u2019s triumph were not to be discarded with the rubble of Soviet tyranny. He called our attention to the old adage that \u2018America is great because it is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.\u2019\n\n\u201cAnd just as greatness follows goodness, he reminded us of another principle, no less important: peace through strength.\n\n\u201cThe value of these lessons is timeless. But as we all know, their endurance is hardly certain.\n\n\u201cAt the Reagan Library, I\u2019m preaching to the choir. But in Washington, as we face down a new era of great power competition, influential voices want to leave the lessons of the last such competition, the Cold War, at the door.\n\n\u201cAt both ends of our politics, a dangerous fiction is taking hold \u2013 that America\u2019s primacy and the fruits of our leadership are self-sustaining. Even as allies across NATO and the Indo-Pacific renew their own commitments to hard power, to interoperability, and to collective defense, some now question America\u2019s own role at the center of these force-multiplying institutions and partnerships.\n\n\u201cWithin the party Ronald Reagan once led so capably, it is increasingly fashionable to suggest that the sort of global leadership he modeled is no longer America\u2019s place. But let\u2019s be absolutely clear: America will not be made great again by those who are content to manage our decline.\n\n\u201cSo how do we turn back this tide? How do we renew a firm American commitment to peace through strength? As I take on my next role as Chairman of the Defense Appropriations subcommittee, these are some of the questions I\u2019ll be focused on.\n\n\u201cThe answers will be rooted in the centrality of hard power and the importance of alliances and partnerships \u2013 things our 40th president understood well.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019ll mean standing with friends in need \u2013 whether they\u2019re resisting neo-Soviet imperialism in Ukraine, Iran-backed terrorist slaughter in Israel, or PRC hegemony in the Indo-Pacific.\n\n\u201cAnd we\u2019ll have to bring back into focus another lesson of President Reagan\u2019s leadership: the link between capability and credibility. The 40th Commander-in-Chief knew that changing Soviet behavior required both the military capability to prevent or punish hostile action and the will to exercise this power and follow through on threats.\n\n\u201cToday, the United States has given the world reason to doubt both our capability and our credibility. For years, we\u2019ve neglected our military readiness, the depth of our magazine, and our defense industrial base. We\u2019ve allowed our deterrent capabilities to atrophy. And we\u2019ve let hesitation and half-measures drain the potency of the capabilities we have maintained.\n\n\u201cRebuilding this mechanism of deterrence and influence begins with generational investments in the national defense enterprise. We are right to call out the growing alignment and coordination of China, Russia, and Iran. They represent the gravest combined threat to U.S. security since the Cold War \u2013 or even the Second World War.\n\n\u201cBut if we mean what we say, then we ought to invest accordingly. As the bipartisan National Defense Strategy Commission recently argued, a challenge this great requires an effort at least on par with that of the Cold War.\n\n\u201cPut that in perspective. In 1945, America had just finished pouring untold human sacrifice, and a material investment reaching 37% of our GDP, into winning the Second World War.\n\n\u201cOver the course of the Cold War, we invested nearly 14% of GDP during Korea, over 9 percent during Vietnam, and 6 percent in 1986.\n\n\u201cToday, we spend roughly 3% of our GDP on defense, barely half of the Reagan buildup that buried the Soviet Union. In this House of Reagan, I should point out that even Jimmy Carter invested more in defense than America does today.\n\n\u201cThere is no escaping the fact that quantity has a quality all its own. The sort of great power war America\u2019s military must prepare for today would entail staggering requirements we haven\u2019t seen since World War II.\n\n\u201cThe Pentagon is not equipped to meet the demands of protracted or multi-theater conflict. Neither is our defense industrial base.\n\n\u201cBlame for this chronic deficiency is plentiful. It begins with anemic defense budget requests that encourage using critical munitions as bill-payers for other priorities\u2026 And, of course, Congress bears blame for the glacial pace of appropriations. Consistent demand signals for critical capabilities are a square-one requirement.\n\n\u201cAt the same time, the need for interceptors and long-range munitions is obvious. The demand from both American forces and our allies and partners isn\u2019t going anywhere anytime soon. Industry partners should recognize it and plan accordingly.\n\n\u201cPatriotic companies have more work to do to expand production capacity. And they need to do it today, rather than wait for contracts we all know are coming. We need to adopt new technologies more quickly and expand production capacity at the same time.\n\n\u201cThis is not the time for idle, abstract promises. The challenges before us require serious, sustained commitments and durable solutions. The threat of simultaneous conflict in multiple theaters is real. And half-measures are not enough.\n\n\u201cAs Admiral Harold Stark, CNO through the early months of the last war in the Pacific, put it: \u2018Dollars cannot buy yesterday\u2019.\n\n\u201cThe task before us is urgent. We can\u2019t afford to miss opportunities to restore American hard power and industrial capacity before conflicts ignite. We need to be investing \u2013 yesterday \u2013 in long-range fires, munitions, air and missile defenses, shipbuilding, and more.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s all well and good to spend time talking about grave threats. But our enemies care much more about what we do than what we say. Merely invoking \u2018peace through strength\u2019 is not enough. We have an obligation to provide for the common defense. And it calls us to actually build and maintain that strength.\n\n\u201cUnless we\u2019re willing to spend the necessary resources to address them, talk is cheap. And a defense authorization bill that fails to set topline funding above the President\u2019s request would be a tragic missed opportunity we would likely come to regret. A re-run of the Budget Control Act\u2019s harm to military readiness would be a devastating abdication of our responsibility.\n\n\u201cWe need to make the sort of investments in American primacy and hard power that the world hasn\u2019t seen since Ronald Reagan was calling the shots. And it\u2019s not just proud Reagan Republicans saying so. By the Institute\u2019s latest survey, the American people understand intuitively what this particularly dangerous world demands of its greatest military and the arsenal of democracy.\n\n\u201cA clear majority \u2013 seventeen points greater than just two years ago \u2013 agrees that America should be more engaged and take the lead. And \u2013 surely to the dismay of proponents of \u2018managed decline\u2019 or \u2018leading from behind\u2019 \u2013 when asked what objectives the U.S. military should be prepared to achieve if faced with simultaneous major-power conflicts, the largest share said: \u2018victory\u2019.\n\n\u201cThese citizens have it exactly right. America shouldn\u2019t play for a tie. And to accept decline is to invite defeat.\n\n\u201cThe American people\u2019s message echoes a chapter of history that Washington would do well to brush up on. Think back to 1940. Isolationism had already lost its grip on American public opinion. In the Nazi conquests of Poland and France, and in the blitz over London, Americans saw an aggressor who wouldn\u2019t stop at the water\u2019s edge.\n\n\u201cThey saw their own security and prosperity hanging in the balance. And they said so. Overwhelming majorities of Americans told pollsters they supported massive new investments in defense and even the institution of the draft. But as we know, their leaders didn\u2019t feel the same urgency.\n\n\u201cAt critical moments, their president waited for events to force his hand. Meanwhile, the anti-intervention bloc in Congress continued to protest equipping frontline allies and partners to fight back and scoffed at the notion that war overseas threatened America\u2019s interests.\n\n\u201cThat is\u2026 until 83 years ago, today.\n\n\u201cArthur Vandenberg, one of the Senate\u2019s staunchest anti-interventionists, confessed that December 7th, 1941 \u2018ended isolationism for any realist.\u2019 And thank God it did \u2013 American industry already had its work cut out for it after years of neglect for military might.\n\n\u201cIt is reckless to assume once again that we can buy readiness overnight. It is dangerous to pretend that America\u2019s credibility is divisible. President Reagan knew better than to wait for calamity to force his hand.\n\n\u201cSo should we.\u201d\n\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T19:07:19Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ID=6D1F91EB-F901-4308-B049-0148F042DE52"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.8845350239425898, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}