National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024

Floor Speech

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Mr. RYAN. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I rise in support of the NDAA as it was reported out of committee under the strong bipartisan leadership of Chairman Rogers and Ranking Member Smith.

I proudly served two combat tours in Iraq and sadly and personally know the human cost of conflict. The landscape we face is as serious as ever, from a land war in Europe to the significant threats from China.

This body has a crucial decision in front of us, one that will have ramifications for my two young boys and for many generations of Americans to come. Will we choose to be patriots, continuing the 60- plus year precedent of coming together in a bipartisan manner as Americans to keep our Nation safe? Or will we give in and give up, ceding the ground of our democracy to a small group of extremists willing to hijack our Nation's security for their own narrow, selfish political gain?

So many of the foundational challenges our military faces, from declining trust in the institution to significant recruiting challenges for all of our services, can and must be directly attributed to this introduction of inherently partisan, divisive rhetoric into what should be a sober and bipartisan discussion.

If I hear one more colleague, especially one who never served a day in uniform, use the W word--which I won't use here on the floor--then struggle to define what the heck they even mean by it, I am going to lose it.

Every time I hear that, I think about the faces of our soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, and guardians currently in harm's way as we speak. I think about the 4,000 young cadets I have the privilege of representing at West Point. I have only been here a little less than a year, but in my time, I have never had a single military family, veteran, or servicemember ever bring up the issue of wokeness in the military. Zero times, never.

What they do bring up over and over, our veterans and military families, is that they are proud of their service that they have done and the service they are doing. They are proud of our military today. They are proud of our work to make it better, and they are proud of our country. It is our job to remind them here in Congress that we are proud of them and that we will have their backs.

Our men and women in uniform deserve that 5.2 percent pay raise. Our female servicemembers deserve access to quality reproductive healthcare. A diverse force, critical to solving diverse problems, deserves to be welcomed into our ranks. These men and women in uniform deserve Senate-confirmed senior leaders--something that one of these extremists is currently standing in the way of.

We must rise above this division. We must come together as a Congress, as Americans, as patriots to do the right thing. I trust that we will ultimately do so.

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