National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022

Floor Speech

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Mr. WITTMAN. Madam Speaker, I thank the ranking member for yielding.

I want to preface by saying that I do not agree with everything in this bill, but the committee-passed bill is worthy of support.

I want to especially thank Ranking Member Rogers and Chairman Smith for their attention to minimizing extraneous provisions in the markup that have little to do with our national security or supporting our servicemembers. Our struggle to close conference last year because of these issues were wholly associated with provisions that are not connected to national security. And these attempts, I believe, were offensive, and similar attempts to include these unnecessary provisions this year should be rebuffed.

Unfortunately, Speaker Pelosi has not listened to the lessons learned from last year's conference and has decided to add several non-germane bills to the NDAA at Rules that have nothing to do with defense.

I want to make this clear for my colleagues offering these amendments: We should not use servicemembers as a tool to achieve partisan gain. I repeat: We should not use servicemembers as a tool to achieve partisan gain. And I voted in opposition to the rule, but I hope that I can vote for final passage of this year's NDAA.

As to the committee mark, we started with an anemic budget request from the Biden administration that in the Seapower portfolio requested only eight ships, two of which were fleet tugboats. How the administration can set China as the pacing threat and reduce Navy force structure is simply baffling.

Fortunately, with the leadership of Ranking Member Rogers and others on the committee, we were able to authorize additional funds to the defense top line to provide the real growth necessary to dissuade future conflict. With this, we authorized 13 battle force ships and rebuffed the administration's request to retire three cruisers.

Additionally, we sought to expand the submarine industrial base by authorizing funds that enable a submarine construction build rate of three by 2025. The mark also includes critical capabilities to support our Nation's deterrence with continued strong investments in the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine and the B-21 Raider bomber.

I think this is a good bill in its current form, and it is worthy of my colleagues' support.

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