Conference Report on S. 2943, National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017
Floor Speech
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Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the chairman of the committee, Mr. Thornberry; the ranking member, Mr. Smith; and the members, my colleagues, for an exceptional piece of work here. This is an extremely important bill. I do support it; however, I do have some reservations. I would like to speak to at least one of them at the moment.
I want to bring to the attention of the Members section 671 of the NDAA concerning the ongoing bonus clawback issue affecting thousands of California National Guardsmen. While I am pleased that a permanent legislative fix is one step closer to the President's desk, I think some of the language needs to be clarified further to ensure that guardsmen are treated fairly.
First and foremost, I have concerns with the standard use to determine if a guardsman's debt should be waived or not. The current language says the DOD needs to produce a preponderance of evidence to demonstrate fraud on the part of the guardsman and withhold their bonus.
What does that mean in practice? We are not sure. This is vague and subject to interpretation. I believe this standard must be better defined, and we will continue to work on that in the future.
I am also concerned about subsection (c)(1)(B), which gives the Department of Defense far too much leeway in determining which cases warrant review. Though Secretary Carter has pledged to review every case, this gives DOD the option of ignoring about 2,000 cases. That would be a problem.
Our job isn't yet done. There will be a hearing next week on this issue. We will attempt to get further clarification to protect those men and women who accepted a bonus, went to war, performed their duties, and are now subject to a clawback. That should not happen.
One more thing to bring to the attention of the committee is the strategic arms portion of this bill, which continues a trillion-dollar project of recapitalizing our entire nuclear arsenal. We should pay attention to that in the future. It is extraordinarily expensive and dangerous.
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