Mr. AKAKA. Mr. President, I rise today in support of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2006. Under the leadership of Chairman Warner and Senator Levin, Ranking Member, who have continued their tradition of strong and bipartisan leadership, the Senate Armed Services Committee was able to produce a very workable piece of bipartisan legislation. I would also like to thank my friend, colleague and subcommittee chairman Senator Ensign, for his cooperation and leadership throughout the process this year.

Mr. President, I think the bill before us goes a long way to supporting the needs of our service men and women. In addition to highlighting some positive areas the Committee focused on, I do want to highlight a few concerns. First, I am pleased that an additional $50 billion has been authorized for ongoing military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan for the first few months of fiscal year 2006. I am disappointed that the Administration's request did not include any funding to support our troops in their ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan for 2006, and that they have not yet done enough to provide the needed accountability for how funds in Iraq and Afghanistan have been used so far. I think Congress has done the right thing by taking the initiative to provide funding now for these ongoing operations, rather than making the Army and the other services absorb these enormous expenses until next spring. It is imperative that we include an authorization of additional funding in this bill.

But in the long term, we cannot continue to rely on supplemental funding. The President should start submitting budgets that recognize these enormous costs. The continued use of emergency authorizations to fund the Global War on Terrorism, and the Administration's continued failure to include the true cost of the war in the annual authorization request, are bad for our military and are bad fiscal policy. For this reason, in the FY05 Emergency Supplemental, we requested that the Secretary of Defense provide a report to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Majority Leader of the Senate, and the congressional defense committees that identifies such things as security, economic, and Iraqi security force training performance standards and goals. The report must also include an assessment of U.S. military requirements, including planned force rotations, through the end of calendar year 2006. Once the process needed to identify these requirements has been established, it should be possible for the Department of Defense to be able to identify funds needed for the Global War on Terrorism, and these costs should be able to be included in the FY2007 President's Budget in February.

On the positive side, I am extremely pleased with the provisions supporting the compensation and quality of life for the men and women in uniform. The budget includes funding for child care of military families and for increased death gratuity to servicemembers' survivors as well as increased Servicemembers' Group Life Insurance.

But these increases do not go far enough to improve the quality of life for our members of the military. The budget request did not include funding for the Citizen-Soldier Support Program, which improves and augments family readiness programs for families of the Reserve and Guard. The Committee recommends an increase in Operations and Maintenance (O&M) funds to expand the services of this program. The budget did not include funding for the Parents as Teachers Program. The Committee believes this program can provide a valuable service to military families by providing instructional assistance to parents of preschool children.

In the O&M accounts, the Readiness subcommittee did our best to support the readiness of our forces. Part of ensuring readiness is funding it. As then-Secretary of the Navy Gordon England wrote to our committee earlier this year: "Readiness is a direct function of Operation and Maintenance dollars available. Under-funding O&M adversely affects readiness."

I am encouraged by the support for O&M funding in this bill, because that translates directly into support for our men and women in uniform. The subcommittee also took actions designed to improve the Army's training and get them to produce a strategy for both training and for the basing of their forces as they convert to a modular brigade format.

I am pleased about our continued support for military construction and family housing needs that are so critical to quality of life for our servicemen and women. I also support many of the provisions we have included that will further improve the management of the Department. I particularly appreciate the bipartisan effort that the Committee made to address a wide range of procurement issues, environmental issues, and some longstanding DoD financial management problems.

I share with the Committee a great concern over the impact of the Global War on Terrorism on recruitment and retention. In order to address this impact, the Committee has recommended the payment of an incentive bonus not to exceed $2,500 to military members of the active and reserve components who transfer from the regular or reserve component of one service to the regular or reserve component of another service. The Committee also recommends increasing the amount of selective re-enlistment bonus for certain enlisted personnel and a retention incentive bonus for members of the selected reserve qualified in a critical military skill or specialty.

With regard to the end strength of the services, the Committee recommends increases for the Army and the Marine Corps. As the conflict continues in Iraq, the Army and the Marine Corps are suffering the greatest impact of prolonged tours of duty as well as multiple tours of duty. By increasing the end strength, the Committee believes that the use of the stop-loss practice will be significantly reduced. While we are already seeing a reduction in recruitment numbers, these increases are meant to alleviate some of the strain currently placed on the servicemembers deployed in the Global War on Terrorism.

Mr. President, this bill will provide needed funding for our servicemen and women and the future of our national defense. Thank you.