1. Short title This Act may be cited as the Preparedness Before Parades Act . 2. Findings Congress finds the following: (1) President Donald J. Trump has ordered the Department of Defense to carry out a large-scale military parade. (2) There have only been a select handful of large-scale military parades in the United States in the last 100 years, including in 1946 following the victory in World War II and in 1991 following the victory in the Persian Gulf War. (3) Estimates place the cost of the military parade in 1991 following the Persian Gulf War around $8,000,000 to $12,000,000, including some funding having come from private sources. (4) A large-scale military parade costing millions of dollars will divert essential funding desperately needed for investment in military readiness. (5) Budget uncertainty and continuing resolutions have had a severe negative impact on the Armed Forces, as demonstrated by the following statements: (A) In December 2017, President Donald J. Trump stated that In recent years, our military has undergone a series of deep budget cuts that have severely impacted our readiness, shrunk our capabilities, and placed substantial burdens on our warfighters. . (B) Congressman Mac Thornberry, Chairman of the Committee on Armed Services of the House of Representatives, stated in September 2017 that it is hard to remember a time when our military readiness crisis has been on such sharp display. . Thornberry further stated, We have too few planes that can fly, too few ships that can sail and too few soldiers who can deploy. . (C) In February 2018, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis said, Let me be clear: As hard as the last 16 years of war have been, no enemy in the field has done more to harm the readiness of the U.S. military than the combined impact of the Budget Control Act’s defense spending caps, worsened by operating in 10 of the last 11 years under continuing resolutions of varied and unpredictable duration. . (D) In January 2018, Secretary of the Navy Richard V. Spencer said in regard to