National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020

Floor Speech

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Mr. SMITH of Washington. 2500.

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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Madam Chair, I thank the gentleman for offering this amendment.

I do agree with the opponent on this issue, that we have tried to hold Saudi Arabia accountable. As the gentleman mentioned, we have countlessly showed them how to better target.

We have tried various things legislatively. We have introduced legislation. We have done a bunch of different things to try to say we don't like what Saudi Arabia is doing.

But we have never actually done any of it, because the Trump administration has decided--and, as the gentleman points out, it wasn't just the Trump administration--that we are basically all in on Saudi Arabia. We are simply going to support them no matter what.

The murder of Jamal Khashoggi was appalling, and the fact that Saudi Arabia felt that they could do it and get away with it is the most alarming thing. Well, it is not the most alarming thing. The thing that is more alarming is they were right.

They figured that this administration would do nothing, just like as they bombed the schoolbus, as they bombed the funeral, as they bombed all of those civilian targets. As many times as we told them that we didn't want them to do that, they knew there would be no consequences, that, at the end of the day, the U.S. was not going to hold them accountable for that.

And the consequences are grave. As the gentleman points out, it actually empowers Iran because it sends a message to the world that we are willing to bomb and kill civilians and participate, however good intentioned, in what has become the largest humanitarian crisis in the world.

And it drives people into terrorists' arms because, yes, Iran is a problem, but ISIS and al-Qaida, I would submit to you, are a larger problem.

And they use this. They use our blind support for Saudi Arabia and for this war in Yemen against us.

Madam Chair, this is a good amendment, and I urge its adoption.

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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Madam Chair, meanwhile, back to a world that actually exists.

Talking about Ms. Jayapal's amendment, I think it is incredibly important because there is a problem going forward from the military that we have seen on many issues. You take it piece by piece--you look at the nuclear enterprise; you look at the Air Force; you look at how many ships we want; you look at counterterrorism--and you add up all the money over the course of the next 20 to 25 years, and we don't get there.

And this is the worst thing that we can do to our troops is to set up a group of missions that we don't have the funds to prepare them for. That is the largest problem that I see. We here in Congress decide that they ought to be able to do more than they can do, and we don't have the money to provide for it.

That is why it is so important that we don't do what the minority leader just suggested we do, which is basically shut down as a body and say whatever the Pentagon wants, we just give it to them and hope that they figure it out.

We have a role to play in that process, to make sure that the money is spent well because--I know this is news to the other side--the Pentagon hasn't always been right. They haven't always spent their money well. And that is the understatement of the morning.

So we need to know: Where are they spending the money? How can we better understand that?

Where the nuclear enterprise is concerned, we are set to spend a lot of money. I know it is only 6 percent of the defense budget, but 6 percent of the defense budget is a lot of money. We need to better understand it.

I urge support for the amendment.

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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Madam Chair, pursuant to House Resolution 476, I offer amendments en bloc.

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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Madam Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Cunningham).

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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Madam Chair, it is just me.

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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Madam Chair, I yield myself the balance of my time.

First of all, I want to echo the comments of the ranking member and thank our staffs for the work on this.

I don't have the statistics in front of me, but there are literally thousands of proposals for this bill that are presented at the beginning of the committee process, working through to the full floor.

Both staffs, Republican and Democratic--I think we are the only committee in Congress, or in the House, at any rate, that actually shares staff. We share the budget. We don't just divide it up.

So, when I say thank you, I am thanking the Republican and Democratic members of staff. They do an enormous amount of incredible work to produce this product.

I believe, as I will mention later, that we upheld the bipartisan tradition of this bill, worked with Republicans and Democrats, and produced a very good product. But we must acknowledge the incredible hard work that is done by the people sitting behind me, a lot of people over in the building and a lot of people over there. I appreciate that.

I also appreciate the working relationship that I have with the ranking member. When I was the ranking member and he was the chair, we worked together on a lot of issues. We have continued to do so. I appreciate that leadership, and I appreciate his commitment to the defense bill.

I think this is a good bill. I just want to mention a few things in it that are positive.

First of all, at $733 billion--and, again, more on that later--this is the largest defense bill in the history of the country. But within this bill, we also focus on cutting waste and dramatically increasing accountability. I think the taxpayers, and, yes, the troops, want to make sure that the Pentagon doesn't just spend money, but that they spend it well.

We finally live up to the rhetoric and we give the widows the money that they have been asking for. Just about every single Republican Member of Congress is a cosponsor of this bill-- Joe Wilson is the prime sponsor--that fully funds widows' benefits. After cosponsoring it for 9 years, the Republicans were in charge and doing nothing about it, we actually put it in the bill and we are going to pass it. And yet, to hear them say that it is somehow a bad thing to basically do what they have been emptily promising for 8 years, I think, is a very big positive on the bill.

We have a tenant's bill of rights to protect families and the housing that we have heard so many complaints about. We step up to try to protect those families.

We have paid family and medical leave for all Federal employees, including all DOD employees.

We have provisions to protect our military and our communities from the dangerous chemicals in PFAS that we have learned so much about.

We make sure that troops get the pay raise that they deserve: a 3.1 percent pay raise.

And, yes, we also have provisions to try to make sure that the children who are being held by DOD within the migrant community are adequately protected.

I think that is all important. And yet, for all of that, the Republicans oppose the bill, and it raises the question: Why?

Earlier on, the chairman quoted me from a few years ago when we opposed the bill. As I said, opposing the bill doesn't mean you are against our troops, and I stand by that. Now, it is interesting to note that a large number of Members on that side at the time said that much and much more: that to oppose this bill means you are against national security and against those troops.

To his credit, the then-chairman, Mr. Thornberry, didn't say that. What he said was: Look, on the defense bill, you can always have a bunch of excuses for why you don't support it. But, at the end of the day, if you don't support it, you are not supporting funding our military and you are not supporting giving our troops what they need.

That is now what, en masse, the Republicans are going to do.

So the question is: Why? What is their list of excuses?

It starts with that top line. And this was their most brilliant political move.

It has been quoted that Chairman Dunford said that we needed to have inflation, plus 3 to 5 percent. That was in a newspaper article. I thought about that. That is not actually what they said. Secretary Mattis was very clear. Once we got the deal last year to get to $716 billion, he said we need inflation. That is what I remember. But how do we know that is true?

Chairman Dunford and Secretary Mattis, a year ago, proposed $733 billion. So if they believed we needed inflation, plus 3 to 5 percent, are they just bad at math? Did they not have a calculator available to figure out that $733 billion isn't that? No. It is what they said they needed.

I think we now know why the Republicans at the last minute said: No, we have to have $750 billion: so they can come up here and claim that we cut stuff. That is just ridiculous.

There are two great examples.

The distinguished minority leader--it is possible that he is just this stupid, but I don't think it is true--said that we cut hypersonic weapons. How much did we cut them by? We increased them by $300 million over last year.

But, yes, we reduced them. It wasn't actually a hypersonic weapon, but we made a reduction in the $750 billion request. So you create the $750 billion request and then you say you are cutting. We are not cutting, we are increasing. Which is why I say, if we had come in at $750 billion, they would have said $800 billion and then stood up there and accused us of everything else that we cut.

And the personnel account is another great example: a $1.2 billion cut. Last year, in their budget, they cut the personnel account by $1.7 billion because the Pentagon frequently asks for personnel funds that are not justified. That is our job.

So only in the minds of a Republican can a $733 billion defense budget, that is an increase over last year, be a cut. There are not cuts to this budget in that way. We fully fund the military.

And then we hear their argument about one nuclear weapon that we are not going to field. You heard what they said: it is unilateral nuclear disarmament.

To cut one weapon when we have thousands of nuclear weapons?

There was no way the Republican Party was ever going to vote for a bill put together by Democrats. And these people behind me, they worked their butts off to make this bipartisan. What the minority leader said is the biggest insult I have ever heard to the members of the staff in 23 years on this committee. To dismiss them as partisan, not interested in national security is an incredible insult to the hard work that they do, and nobody in this House, Republican or Democrat, should let a statement like that stand.

We have put together a good bill. The reason Republicans oppose it is for purely partisan reasons. And, that is, they want to be able to give speeches, like the one of the minority leader who said Democrats don't care about national security. We care about national security. In fact, I will tell you, our bill isn't just good, it is better than the ones that the Republican Party have put together.

We believe the Pentagon should be accountable. They said $733 billion. As recently as December of this year, the ranking member put an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal saying we had to have $733 billion. And now, all of a sudden, $733 billion isn't just not the right number, ``it is socialism,'' ``it is destroying the world as we know it,'' ``we can't support it.'' That is ridiculous. It is a partisan argument. It is what the minority does. But it has never been what we have done on this bill.

I believe in the bipartisanship of this committee. And as angry as I was, sitting there listening to the minority leader insult all of the people who have worked to make this bill bipartisan--and you can oppose it, that is fine--but to say that we don't care about national security, that we are a bunch of socialists who don't want to work with Republicans, is a bald-faced lie.

And the last statistic on that is the amendment thing--and I love this--we made more amendments in order on this defense bill this year than ever. The Republicans actually submitted a lot fewer amendments than we did. We submitted 480, they submitted 201. And then we actually agreed with the overwhelming majority of their amendments and put them in en bloc packages. They didn't agree with the overwhelming majority of our amendments, so we didn't put them in en bloc packages, which gives them the statistic that only one of their amendments was debated.

So by working with them and agreeing with them to include 50 percent of their amendments--the most amendments ever offered--that is partisan. And I can't help but feel like they were setting us up. They didn't want to work with us. No matter how hard we tried, no matter how many hours we spent working with them, they wanted to come to the floor today and say that Democrats don't care about national security.

That is shameful. I am going to get over it. We are going to work past it--I think national security is too important to get petty about these things--and we are going to keep working together.

The good news is that we have a very good bill. It is accountable. It doesn't just give the Pentagon money. Yes, we eliminate senseless discrimination by stopping the ban on transgender troops.

I will say the other side is wrong. They have voted against the defense bill before. They voted against it in 2010 because we repealed Don't Ask, Don't Tell. They were wrong then and they are wrong now. Discrimination in the military doesn't make us safer. Mindless bigotry doesn't make us safer.

I believe strongly in this bill. The good news is, we got this, we are going to pass it, even if the other side is going to decide to play partisan politics.

Madam Chair, I urge support for the bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Madam Chair, I move that the Committee do now rise.

The motion was agreed to.

Accordingly, the Committee rose; and the Speaker pro tempore (Ms. McCollum) having assumed the chair, Mrs. Demings, Acting Chair of the Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union, reported that that Committee, having had under consideration the bill (H.R. 2500) to authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2020 for military activities of the Department of Defense and for military construction, to prescribe military personnel strengths for such fiscal year, and for other purposes, had come to no resolution thereon.

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