NDAA

Floor Speech

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Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, we have at least one, I think perhaps two, if the gentleman can make it back in time.
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Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, we are still waiting for a speaker, but I would inquire of the gentlewoman if she is prepared to close, we will go ahead and close.

Mr. Speaker, before I get into my prepared remarks and close, just in response to my good friend's last remark, I want her to be aware, we don't have an appropriations bill or budget because my friends, frankly, have riddled what happened in the Appropriations Committee with poison pills, taking out the Hyde protections. We have been waiting to negotiate that. Our friends have refused to do that.

It has been extended now to February 18. I hope that we meet that deadline and that we actually do get an agreed-upon appropriations bill. If we do, I would be happy to support it, as I have so many years in the past.

Mr. Speaker, in passing a final, bipartisan, bicameral version of the NDAA, we are fulfilling our responsibility to provide for the common defense. This would mark the 61st year in a row that Congress has passed a final NDAA, and I celebrate that fact.

This year's bill increases defense spending to a level commensurate with our needs, unlike the President's budget. It ensures a needed pay raise for our troops and ensures that the warfighters of tomorrow will have the weapons and capabilities they need. It will also provide needed oversight over the President's debacle in Afghanistan and will ensure that the American people receive the answers they deserve.

I want to publicly commend Chairman Smith and Ranking Member Rogers for working so well together in a bipartisan fashion and also commend their negotiating counterparts in the United States Senate, Chairman Reed and Ranking Member Inhofe, for cooperating and bringing this important measure before us. I certainly hope we can pass it and move forward from there.

Today's rule, unfortunately, also advances a measure to address Medicaid sequestration. This is a bill that could and should have been bipartisan but instead must be used to address the Democratic leadership's failure to resolve the debt ceiling vote. That is sad. Democratic leaders have chosen to divide us when they could have chosen a different course that would have united us in a bipartisan agreement. Hopefully, they will learn from that lesson.

Finally, this rule also advances a highly partisan and unnecessary collection of purported government reforms, many of which are duplicative of measures that have previously passed the House. I urge the majority to rethink these measures.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the previous question and ``no'' on the rule, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

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