U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, today spoke on the floor to urge the Senate to support the Inhofe-Shelby Parity Amendment to the U.S. Innovation and Competitiveness Act. 

Mr. Chairman, China is a 360-degree threat. They're competing with us in every area — in economics, technology, military, diplomacy, information warfare.

You know, we operated for the better part of a decade under the idea that we should have parity in defense and non-defense increases. I mean, this was a bipartisan thing. This was Democrats and Republicans alike, and we did this every year for two years, for every two years, as we did the Budget Control Act. That was an agreement, and all of a sudden, somehow, we're changing from that.

So what Senator Shelby's and my amendment does is very simple. It says that for every dollar that we increase non-defense spending, we have same amount of money that is going to increase defense spending. I talked about this yesterday some length. How can you justify not to changing that policy when the greatest threat that we're facing right now is China?

They're competing in every area, and to leave that out conspicuously is not reasonable at all. So I think that — remember that the Majority Leader and the Speaker of the House back in 2019 said — and this is a quote, Mr. Chairman — he said, “Democrats have always insisted on parity in increases between defense and non-defense.” So why would they change now? I don't think that they would change now.

So, again, I'm not sure people understand what this is all about. This is a very simple thing. It says that — our amendment says that for every dollar we increase non-defense spending by, we also increase defense spending by the same amount. It's called parity. We’ve lived with this right now for eight years. We've been in agreement, and somehow this has changed, as if the threat that we're facing right now with economics, technology, diplomacy, information warfare, are more important than military. Military is the number-one threat.