{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ID=A0D0ABB9-45E4-42C8-B109-EB681A4CED8C", "Chairman McConnell Opening Statement at FY26 Defense Appropriations Markup", "2025-07-31", "2025", "2025-07", "Republican", "Senate", "KY", "Mitch McConnell", "M000355", "www.mcconnell.senate.gov", "mcconnell", "https://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases", "scraper", "WASHINGTON, D.C. \u2013 U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, delivered an opening statement at this morning\u2019s full Senate Appropriations Committee markup of the FY26 Defense bill. Below is the opening statement as prepared for delivery:\n\nI\u2019d like to thank Ranking Member Coons, and our combined staff for their dedicated, and often exhausting, work to produce the FY26 Defense Appropriations bill.\n\nAnd I\u2019d like to thank our fellow members of the Subcommittee, who I know share our sense of duty to provide for the common defense, year after year. Just briefly, I\u2019ll sum up the rationale behind this year\u2019s legislation.\n\nFirst, the Senate bill recognizes the Administration\u2019s intention to restore peace through strength, the Department of Defense\u2019s desire to achieve \u201cdrone dominance\u201d, and the President\u2019s interest in having more missiles than any other country.\n\nIt reflects the need to build more ships for a Navy that must compete with China. It acknowledges that America\u2019s adversaries are increasingly aligned and investing more heavily in undermining our interests\u2026 and that America must take the risk of simultaneous conflict in multiple theaters seriously.\n\nBut ultimately, our topline allocation of $852.5 billion \u2013 which sits higher than either the President\u2019s budget request or the House\u2019s mark \u2013 underscores that we cannot seriously address these challenges while artificially constraining our resources.\n\nWe can\u2019t build a Golden Dome\u2026 or restock our munitions magazines\u2026 or bring back American shipbuilding\u2026 without sustained, increasing investments in our national defense.\n\nAnd we can\u2019t treat reconciliation like a cure-all. I was glad to vote for the One Big Beautiful Bill. But let\u2019s not kid ourselves \u2013 it was not the additive defense spending some of us had hoped for. Moving must-pay bills for major long-standing programs from base to reconciliation still makes little sense to me.\n\nAnd somehow, the process seems to have also allowed important programs to slip through the cracks. In fact, senior Pentagon officials have already come to me and the Ranking Member to report that they\u2019re still billions of dollars short on programs that we were told reconciliation would address.\n\nThere is no substitute for robust, full-year defense appropriations. And this is a strong, bipartisan bill that proves we can do our job, and keep our commitments to the men and women of the U.S. military. They deserve no less.\n\nHere are a few of the items we address:\n\nFirst, recent operations in the Middle East illustrates how quickly modern warfare can exhaust our arsenal of critical munitions.\n\nThe Administration\u2019s request did not fully maximize production capacity for certain critical munitions, so we added $5.2 billion to buy larger quantities of air-defense interceptors, long-range fires, and other key munitions. We also added $2.1 billion to expand production capacity of munitions, and included some important initial investments in restoring America\u2019s organic industrial base.\n\nSecond, we\u2019ve also added $4.6 billion to address growing demand for more extensive air and missile defenses. But developing a more layered missile defense shield that can protect the homeland and our forces abroad from growing threats is going to take years of sustained resources.\n\nThird, we\u2019ve tried to help the Department meet requirements that the final reconciliation bill and the FY26 base budget request left unfunded, including advanced procurement for Virginia- and Columbia-class submarines, cost-to-compete for surface vessels, major renovations to dilapidated Marine Corps barracks, and ship operations costs for our Navy.\n\nWe also included more funding for destroyer construction, shipyard infrastructure, and workforce development to help fix our ailing shipbuilding industry and get production back on track.\n\nFourth, we invest in ally and partner militaries. We know that confronting Chinese aggression will require collective deterrence. Helping grow our friends\u2019 capacity to defend themselves in the Indo-Pacific \u2013 as in Europe or the Middle East \u2013 enhances deterrence and helps our allies share more of the burden.\n\nIt also means more investment in interoperable, U.S-made systems and lower risks for U.S. servicemembers. These are investments that pay dividends, and I\u2019m not just talking about treaty allies.\n\nThe Secretary of the Army rightly calls Ukraine \u201cthe Silicon Valley of warfare\u201d. The Navy considers the maritime fight between Russia and Ukraine as the Black Sea Battle Lab and recognizes the need for rapid innovation. So we added $216 million on top of the Administration\u2019s request for drone and counter-drone capabilities, consistent with the intention of achieving \u201cdrone dominance.\u201d\n\nBut abandoning the foremost experts of drone warfare would be strategic self-harm. Shutting off engagement with Ukraine would undermine our military\u2019s efforts to prepare for the modern battlefield.\n\nSo, like our friends on the Armed Services Committee, we are restoring funding for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative and other security assistance programs that make America safer.\n\nMadam Chair, I\u2019m proud of the work of the Defense Subcommittee in producing this bill for our colleagues\u2019 consideration. And I hope it\u2019ll earn the support of the entire Committee. But allow me to close with just one note:\n\nNone of the challenges we\u2019re facing today can be solved by a single bill or over the course of a single budget cycle.\n\nReadiness is not a box to be checked \u2013 it\u2019s a state to achieve and maintain. In this era of major power competition, security for future generations of Americans means steady, consistent, predictable, increasing investments in the common defense\u2026 year after year after year.\n\nIf we\u2019re tempted to treat successful FY26 appropriations like a finish line, we\u2019re thinking about our obligations all wrong.", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T18:48:13Z"]], "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=A0D0ABB9-45E4-42C8-B109-EB681A4CED8C"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.4666661154478788, "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"}