National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019

Floor Speech

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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, I, too, want to thank all the people who worked to put together this product. As always, our committee, I think, was a fine example, both of how to legislate and how to do it in a bipartisan way, starting at the committee process, starting with the chairman's mark.

As the chairman has mentioned, just about everybody in this House has contributed to this product, either in committee or once we got to the Rules Committee with the amendments that they offered.

It took an extraordinary amount of work on behalf of the Members, but, most importantly, on behalf of staff to sift through all of those amendments, to reach agreements where they could, to set up reasonable debate where they couldn't, and they did an outstanding job.

This is the best staff I have ever worked with. They do an amazing job.

And we all have to remember the baseline reason why we are doing this. As the authorizing bill for the Department of Defense, this is the bill that sets the policy that helps the men and women who fight and serve to protect our country. So it is an incredibly important task.

I want to particularly thank the chairman. It has been a great working relationship this year, as always. I think we have an excellent product. I look forward to getting it passed today and going to conference with the Senate.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

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