National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020

Floor Speech

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Ms. STEFANIK. Mr. Chair, I thank the ranking member for yielding.

First, I thank my colleague and counterpart, Chairman Jim Langevin, for his bipartisan work on this bill.

As ranking member of the Subcommittee on Intelligence and Emerging Threats and Capabilities, I want to highlight some broad themes that I am supportive of in this bill.

First, this bill is active in all areas of our subcommittee's jurisdiction. We continue our focus on emerging technologies, including manufacturing technologies that are fundamental to our advancements and scaling of hypersonic weapons and directed energy. We also include an emphasis on basic research and the important contributions provided by universities and Department of Defense labs. And we enhanced capabilities and support for our Special Operations Forces, including additional funds for the Preservation of the Force and Families program.

The bill also extends the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, which is a provision I sponsored in section 1051 of last year's NDAA that created this Commission to advance the development of AI. The Commission's recommendations will help us maintain global leadership in AI research and prepare our citizens for an AI-enabled future.

As a second broad theme, this bill continues the tradition of robust congressional oversight of sensitive military operations and activities, including cyber, counterterrorism, and intelligence. These are broad, bipartisan frameworks put in place several years ago by then-Chairman Mac Thornberry, as well as myself and subcommittee Chairman Jim Langevin. I am pleased that we continue to advance these frameworks.

As we move forward to debate and consider this NDAA, we should remind ourselves of our role in national security as a legislative body. It is our principal responsibility to protect our homeland and provide our men and women in uniform the tools and training they need to safely execute their dangerous missions on our behalf.

I am very concerned about where our colleagues in the majority are taking this bill and whether we are fulfilling that duty. Despite Ranking Member Thornberry's hard work in committee to restore funding to $750 billion, this bill remains $15 billion short of the recommendations from former Secretaries of Defense, current Acting Secretaries of Defense, and senior military commanders.

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Ms. STEFANIK. With the top-line of $735 billion, this bill would cut personnel accounts; limit programs that deter against great power competition, such as Russia and China; and severely regress all the efforts we have put in to recover readiness from the devastating blow of sequestration.

While I support portions of this bill, and I supported this bill in committee, I am deeply concerned that it is moving in the wrong direction as this comes to the floor, that it fails to support the needs of our men and women in uniform, and that it does not reflect longstanding bipartisan tradition.

Mr. Chair, I look forward to a full and fair debate on these issues, and I urge my colleagues to consider this lack of bipartisan support as they decide their vote on the final passage.

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Ms. STEFANIK. Mr. Chair, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

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Ms. STEFANIK. Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chair, I rise in opposition to this amendment. First, I know the majority feels this is just a technical fix to an administrative error, but it raises an important issue, again, for us to discuss now on the House floor, and we should debate the merits of the underlying provision.

First of all, the Secretary of Defense is already charged with compiling this information, and we have already put in place a full and transparent oversight framework with publicly available reporting.

As we debated in committee, the DNI is not the place to conduct such a review and report. We need the intelligence community focused on gathering and analyzing intelligence that is vital to our national security.

So, pulling our national-level intelligence staff and resources away from those important missions to conduct a review that is already taking place--done by the DOD--is a poor use of resources and is just bad policy.

I can say this, as one of the few members on the Intel Committee and HASC: The place we should be debating this is the Intelligence Authorization Act, not the National Defense Authorization Act.

So, there are jurisdictional issues here, which is one of the reasons why I am opposed to this amendment.

Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no,'' and I reserve the balance of my time.

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Ms. STEFANIK. Mr. Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Wenstrup).

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Ms. STEFANIK. Mr. Chair, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Bacon).

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Ms. STEFANIK. Mr. Chair, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Waltz).

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Ms. STEFANIK. Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

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Ms. STEFANIK. Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

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