National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020

Floor Speech

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Mr. HOYER. Congratulations, Chairman Smith, on bringing to the floor an excellent bill. I want to also congratulate Mr. Thornberry from Texas, a responsible Member of this Congress, a responsible member of the minority, and a person who has been a strong voice on behalf of national defense.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of this year's defense authorization bill. It makes smart, strategic investments in our military to keep America safe and defend our interests overseas, and it reflects core values.

We are proud to fund the Department of Defense. I have been in this body for some 38 years. I have supported every Defense bill. Now, when I say that, very frankly, we have had some political fights back and forth and there have been political votes cast where we thought that there were things being done that shouldn't be done. But I have supported a strong national defense. I supported most of Ronald Reagan's build-up which was, by the way, started by Jimmy Carter.

I have supported making sure that we had weapons we needed and the personnel we needed.

We are proud as Democrats to stand behind our men and women in uniform. As a matter of fact, some of the great victories of democracy have been led by people like Woodrow Wilson in World War I, Franklin Roosevelt in World War II, Harry Truman in Korea, and John Kennedy confronting communism and authoritarianism, the people who want to rule by armed might.

This bill, the first written by a Democratic majority in 8 years, raises military pay by 3.1 percent and recognizes the contribution of our men and women in uniform. It supports a stronger military by prohibiting funding for discrimination against transgender, that denies us the talents and courageous service of patriotic Americans.

Now, that has happened before, and Harry Truman stepped in and said that, no, we are not going to segregate our services. We are not going to discriminate against those of color in our services. He said that in the 1940s, post-World War. And there were some who said that would destroy our military effectiveness. They are saying the same thing about gays and transgender. They were wrong then; they are wrong now.

This bill cuts $17 billion. The chairman, the ranking member, and I had discussions through the years. We need to make sure that we spend our money smartly and not just blindly spend money. We need to make sure that every dollar is spent effectively, but that our national security is not in any way undermined. I believe the savings that have been effected are focused and that we are taking that money and using it for effective items and taking it away from an expensive and ineffective wall on the southern border that the President wants to spend money on.

It also acknowledges the serious national security challenges posed by climate change. Surely, we know how critical to our national security the effects of climate change are showing. We experienced that just the other day here in Washington, D.C.

It requires the Pentagon to develop a plan, along with others in our government, as to how we can confront, effectively and on behalf of our national security, climate change.

This bill also accelerates the closure--long overdue--it is not the American way to hold people without finding out whether they are, in fact, guilty or not. I have been to Guantanamo. Nobody in America ought to talk about how much it costs to incarcerate somebody in America, because it is about one-tenth or one-twentieth of what it is costing us in Guantanamo. You talk about fiscal responsibility.

I am deeply disappointed that my Republican friends are bucking a long tradition. I did not like everything in your Defense bill. I disagreed sincerely with some of the provisions that you put in your Defense bill, and I voted for the Defense bills you offered on this floor because I thought they were in the best interests of our country--not perfect--but in the best interests of our country, of our military, and of our national security.

I am sorry that that is not happening today or tomorrow or Friday when we vote on it. This bill ought to have bipartisan support. It ought to have bipartisan support for our military, and if the situations were reversed, my Republican colleagues would be accusing Democrats of not supporting our national security, not supporting our troops, not supporting the men and women who are put at the point of a spear, in harm's way, many paying the ultimate price. That is what you would have accused us of.

How sad it is that some in this House are choosing loyalty to the President and their party over a common commitment to our troops--tough words, but I think true. Republicans object to this bill because they claim it does not meet their demands for $750 billion. Until March of this year, however, they were demanding exactly the number in this bill. Some on my side of the aisle think this sum is too high. Mr. Smith, the Speaker, and I urged our colleagues to adopt this number because it was a bipartisan number--not the perfect number.

More than 70 Republican Members out of your 194 wrote to the President citing the same number as their preferred figure for defense investment. That is the number the Pentagon used for the previous year around which it built its budget.

That is what Joseph Dunford--Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dunford, said was the number the Pentagon needed ``after scrubbing every account,'' $733 billion. That is the figure we included in this bill. That is the figure that you are prepared to vote against.

Ranking Member Thornberry, who is my friend and whom I respect and whom I have just spoken of, penned an op-ed that President Trump must ``move forward with the $733 billion budget he originally proposed for 2020.''

We took your number, and, yes, there are some things you don't agree with in this bill, but there were things we didn't agree with. Very frankly, there are very few bills that we consider on this floor that I agree with 100 percent. But we are a democratic body. We are a collective, collegial body, and we try to reach consensus.

We took your number. We took the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff's number. Indeed, at the same time that Republicans are arguing that $733 billion isn't enough, the White House is calling for a continuing resolution that spends far less. A former Member of this body originally suggested sequester which would devastate our national security and our domestic security.

As Chairman Adam Smith has stated, to claim that $733 billion is an abdication of our responsibility to fund our troops is patently ridiculous and contrary to the representations that have been made on your side of the aisle.

They claim this bill is partisan. That is absurd. The bill includes more than 53 percent of the amendments offered by Republican Members--a higher figure than Democratic amendments in the bill. Chairman Smith's staff worked tirelessly and collegially with Republicans for months to ensure that the defense authorization bill would be bipartisan as this legislation has been historically.

Of course, there are provisions in this bill with which Republicans disagree. I would be shocked if that were not the case. There are probably going to be some provisions in there that I disagree with. That doesn't mean they should vote against this entire bill, however, Mr. Chairman. Democrats supported this bill when we were in the minority over the last 8 years--check the record--even when Republicans forced controversial measures into it because we believed it was important to support our military. We voted for it over serious objections on policy because we viewed it as a must-pass bill.

Where has that bipartisanship on national security gone?

Is it just a strategy to defeat this bill?

I am convinced that we are going to have 218-plus Democrats vote for this bill, Mr. Chairman. I urge my Republican colleagues to reconsider their opposition and vote for their number and put country over party.

To my Democratic colleagues, I say: This is a strong Defense bill, as good as you are going to get. It protects LGBT rights and advances family leave. It loosens the heinous restrictions on transferring prisoners from Guantanamo Bay. Opposing this bill means we will be stuck with a Senate version that omits these provisions.

I thank Chairman Smith and members of the Armed Services Committee for their hard work, and I thank the ranking member. I congratulate you both on producing a very strong, very positive bill. You did that together.

Do not abandon your work. I hope that it will pass with resounding support from both sides of the aisle. Our troops in harm's way deserve that affirmation, that trust, that faith, that commitment. Let's not let them down.

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