Conference Report on H.R. National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019

Floor Speech

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Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the chairman for his leadership of the committee. Our committee is committed to completing this process every year, and I think it is a great example of how the legislative process should work. It is bipartisan; it follows regular order; and the chairman deserves a great deal of credit for making sure that both of those things happened.

He has been very inclusive of all the members of the committee, Democrats and Republicans, and also all the Members of this House who have had interest in what goes into this bill to make sure that we have the strongest possible national security policy.

I really appreciate his leadership, but I also share with him the gratitude that we have for our staff and the incredible hard work that they do to pull this process together. As the chairman mentioned, this is the soonest we have completed the NDAA--knock on wood, assuming we complete it--in my entire time in Congress. That took a lot of people doing a lot of work, Members and staff alike.

The chairman mentioned some of the legislative counsel staff. These are the people who when at the absolute last minute we decide, oh, we prefer it done this way, they are the ones who have to go back in and rewrite the entire thing and redo the entire thing at all hours of the night. They do a spectacular job and are frequently unrecognized.

The chairman mentioned some of them. I want to mention the rest: Mark Synnes, Hank Savage, I am going to do my best on this name--Kalyani Parthasarathy, Tom Cassidy, Casey Ebner, and Paul Kubicki. These folks do an amazing job for our country and for the men and women in the military. I really appreciate their tireless work and the outstanding product they produce for us each year.

I agree with the chairman that we have a very strong bill this year. I also agree with the chairman that if any one of us were to write it, we would write it differently. There are things we would like to see in that were left out and things that are in that we prefer were not. But that is the nature of the legislative process. It is a compromise, an effort to work together to hopefully come up with a good product, and I think that is what we did this time.

The chairman mentioned a number of the highlights.

I am particularly focused on the fact that we do have language in this bill to take a look at the issue of civilian casualties as a result of some of our military action throughout the world, to get a better read on exactly what is happening and how we can minimize those.

There is also language for a review of exactly what our military is doing in Yemen, to make sure that it complies with the law and complies with the interests of the United States.

I am also pleased that, once again, we were able to avoid putting any environmental riders into this bill.

Also, I agree with the chairman that this bill really shores up our ability to contend with the adversaries that most threaten us.

On Russia, we have the largest increase in the European defense initiative that we have had in a defense bill. We also shore up our support for Ukraine and the rest of our NATO allies by reaffirming our commitment to NATO and our commitment to defending them from any Russian aggression.

Where China is concerned, as the chairman mentioned, we have very strict restrictions on ZTE and also on Huawei and other Chinese companies to make sure they can't do business with the U.S. Government or with companies that do business with the U.S. Government.

I do want to address one issue that I heard brought up during the rule. I think there is a popular misunderstanding that somehow our bill is responsible for the deal that led ZTE back into the U.S. market. That is not true. The President of the United States decided to undo what he had done previously, blocking ZTE from doing any business in the U.S., and basically fined them $1 billion. ZTE is paying $1 billion to get out from under the effective death penalty and be allowed back into the U.S. market.

For our bill to have undone that, as the Senate bill did, it would have required us to cut $1 billion in mandatory spending. Now, I don't agree necessarily with the Parliamentarian's ruling there, that the $1 billion that ZTE paid is something that we should have had to offset if we undid the deal. But we have to live by the law. This is also mandatory spending, so if we were going to get rid of the ZTE deal and get rid of that $1 billion, we would have literally had to cut retirement healthcare for the men and women who served in the military. I don't think that is something that anyone on this floor would have been willing to do.

So this bill does step up to confront our adversaries in Russia and China. I also think it reflects the values, as I mentioned, of dealing with the civilian casualty issue and trying to get a bead on what is going on with Yemen. And it reflects a reasonable compromise between the House and the Senate.

Mr. Speaker, I would just like to close by echoing the words of our chairman in being grateful that this bill is named after Senator McCain. I knew Senator McCain before I even got into politics, just as a prominent national figure, a war hero, and someone to be greatly admired. It is one of the great honors of my career that I have had the privilege to work with him on the Armed Services Committee process over the course of the last 5 years as ranking member.

John McCain is as tough, smart, and committed to this country as anyone you will ever find. It is truly fitting that this bill is named after him. He will be remembered as one of the great heroes of our country.

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Mr. SMITH of Washington. I want to particularly thank him for his leadership on climate change and alternative energy. He has done a great job of inserting those issues in this bill. I appreciate that leadership.

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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Tsongas). I note she is retiring from Congress this year, and I really appreciate her tremendous service on the Armed Services Committee and to this body.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Oregon for his comments because this is an issue we wrestle with in conference committee every year. We should be getting visas to those people who helped us out.

For some reason, it is a mandatory score in terms of what it costs; and as I mentioned on the other issue, we struggle to find mandatory money. But rest assured, this is a priority that we will continue to fight for because I know how important this issue is, and I thank the gentleman for raising that.

On the bill itself, let me say I intend to support the defense bill. I haven't always supported the defense bill. It is part of a collaborative process. We worked together and tried to generate a good piece of legislation, and I think, on balance, we did that this year.

Number one, when you start with the top-line number, the budget agreement that we got earlier this year for FY18 and FY19 helped a great deal because it put in place clear top-line numbers for defense and for the rest of discretionary spending. And that has been the battle.

Let me just say clearly that ever since the Budget Control Act was passed in 2011--and I know they have reasons for why that was passed-- the military and the rest of our discretionary budget has had to live under, I think it is, three or four government shutdowns, multiple threatened government shutdowns, continuing resolutions, and, in general, complete uncertainty on how much money they were going to have from one month to the next.

This is a horrible way to run the government. We need to come up with a fiscal policy that sets clearly what we are going to spend on discretionary spending and gets it done as close to October 1 as possible.

This has a devastating impact on our military's ability to be prepared to defend this Nation, to be prepared to fight the fights that we ask them to fight.

It is worth noting, it also has a devastating impact on all other aspects of the discretionary budget: on infrastructure, education, just to name a couple. So getting back to regular order on fiscal policy is enormously important.

I will also note--and I chose not to belabor the point this year, though I have talked about it in the past--that the Budget Control Act alone is not the problem. We do need to get rid of the Budget Control Act because it is a terrible way to budget and govern, but even once we do that, we still have a $22 trillion debt.

We just passed another massive tax cut, and when you project out where our budget is going to be, we are looking at trillion-dollar deficits for as far as the eye can see and the largest debt that we have ever had as a nation, even as a percentage of GDP.

The most important thing that we can do to give a guarantee of predictability to the men and women who serve in the military is to address the fiscal issues that we face as a nation. If we honestly address those issues, we are going to have a devil of a time paying for everything in the military that I know some on this floor would like.

So we need to get to a consistent fiscal policy if we are going to have the dependability that I know the chairman wants, that I know everybody in this committee wants going forward; and if we don't do that, that uncertainty is going to continue going forward.

Let me just say that to get the proper fiscal policy is going to require us to honestly assess the problems we face. And I will say just one more quick word about that before returning back to the bill.

Earlier this year, or earlier this session, we passed, as I mentioned, a significant tax cut. We passed a significant increase in spending. I think the tax cut was roughly $2 trillion. The increase in spending was $500 billion. And then the very next week, we put on the floor a constitutional amendment to balance the budget.

There were 134 Members of this body who voted for the tax cut, for the spending increase, and for the constitutional amendment to balance the budget. That doesn't make any sense. That doesn't add up. That is pure politics because, by and large, people want to see their taxes cut and they want to see their favorite programs increased and they would like to have a balanced budget. So we tried to do all three and wind up in a horribly inconsistent position.

I would urge all of us to continue to work to get to some fiscal policy that makes sense because the result of a fiscal policy that doesn't add up is budgetary uncertainty for the discretionary budget, the largest portion of which is the Department of Defense.

This bill does the very important job of setting defense policy for this country, and most important in all of that is it makes sure that the men and women who fight and serve in our military have the training and the equipment they need to carry out the missions that we give them.

Now, again, going forward, we have big challenges. We have never faced a more complex threat environment. We face Russia and China and Iran and North Korea and terrorist organizations spread out all over the globe. It is incredibly complicated and difficult, and it is going to be very expensive, unless we make some smart choices. So we are going to have a tough time meeting the budgetary requirements that we have, no matter what.

But in this bill, I think we addressed all those issues, and I think we addressed them very well and in a bipartisan fashion. As I mentioned in my opening remarks, we do work with our allies to confront the challenges in Russia and China, which are critically important to us going forward.

We also, thanks to the chairman's leadership, continue our effort at acquisition reform, because one thing is for sure: Given the budget reality that I just described, no matter what, we are going to need to make sure that every dollar we spend at the Pentagon is well spent. Acquisition reform is one of the keys to getting us to that point, to more efficiently spending our money.

I want to close by thanking the chairman, thanking Senator McCain, Senator Inhofe, who was also a big part of the process this year, and Senator Reed, and all the members of the Armed Services Committee and their staff.

Once again, I want to reiterate, in this committee, we do legislation the way it is supposed to be done: bipartisan and under regular order. This place can work. The legislative process can work.

We had a very long markup in the Armed Services Committee in which we considered a lot of issues, debated them, had votes, then we went to the floor, then we went to conference committee, and we produced what I think is an excellent product for the Nation.

Mr. Speaker, I urge support for the conference report and again thank the chairman for his leadership.

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