Right now, men and women across all branches of the United States military and the federal government face crippling uncertainty. Thanks to the dysfunction in Washington, we narrowly averted a complete government shutdown and will limp along on a continuing resolution for the next 45 days until we face our next crisis. This means our service members will continue to be unsure about receiving their paychecks throughout the fall, and the lack of reliable funding puts our national security at severe risk.
While another shutdown was barely avoided, the reality is that American politicians have spent years embracing the chronic dysfunction of Washington, offering short-term band-aids to cover long-term wounds. For 13 of the last 14 years, the nation has started the fiscal year without an approved military budget, hobbling along through continuing resolutions and governmental shutdowns that erode our national security and hinder our global credibility. It is unconscionable political malpractice.
There are real, imminent threats to the United States that get swept under the rug every time we threaten a government shutdown or embrace another continuing resolution.
China has telegraphed a clear intent to disrupt and displace the United States as the global power by any and all means necessary in a strategy known as Unrestricted Warfare. Daily, they create hostile conditions on the surface of the South China Sea and the skies overhead. They recklessly provoke Taiwan by violating their sovereign airspace. They use economic bullying to force nations to do their bidding. They steal our jobs and technology and flood our streets with fentanyl that gushes through our porous southern border. They have Chinese communist clubs in American schools, underground Chinese police stations in our cities, and electronic spy stations encircling the United States.
Meanwhile, our political paralysis is a self-inflicted wound that seriously harms our national interests. China simply bides its time, tempted by a display of fragile American commitments, our perceived weakness, and a lack of resolve. They couldn’t write a better script telegraphing a narrative of self-induced American decline.
Importantly, we are also hurting those who have sacrificed to put their lives on the line for our nation and ideals. Instead of focusing on the threats around us, they find themselves distracted by the financial threats to their families. Our younger military members live paycheck-to-paycheck, working for pay well below the minimum wage. They are already strangled by inflation and on edge about how they will pay the rent, shop for groceries, and care for their children. Those same children are unknowingly burdened by each expensive national budget, creating an uncertain and unsustainable future. Additionally, financial uncertainty ripples through communities every time a government shutdown is even mentioned.
During my career, I genuinely and passionately cared for our team members and their families and relentlessly focused on the mission while slashing budgets and seizing efficiencies. As the commander of Edwards Air Force Base, we created a ground-breaking culture that dwarfed the innovation activity of the rest of the Air Force combined. Yet, every threat of a government shutdown or continuing resolution crushes morale, wastes time, and saps our resources. The military mission is distracted and derailed for weeks by political brinkmanship while modernization efforts are put on hold. By doing so, we entice aggression around the world.
We need leaders, not politicians. With decades of service to this great country, I am stepping up to answer the call to bring a new sense of leadership and responsibility to the people of Maryland and the United States Senate. We need leaders to reverse our weakness on the world stage. We also need leadership to solve a myriad of challenges we face at home, including strangling inflation, stifling taxes, and suffocating governmental overreach. We need leadership to resolve educational malpractice in our schools and crime-ridden streets in our cities. The China threat is not lessening soon, nor are the other issues described above. It is time to rise to the occasion as a nation and to secure the American Dream for subsequent generations through leadership, not politics. And it starts with the seemingly simple task of passing a budget on time to stop the perennial practice of burdening those who have volunteered to serve our great nation while eroding our security and diminishing our credibility.
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