Announcement By the Acting Chair
Floor Speech
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, it is obvious to me that the Republican majority doesn't understand what diversity, equity, and inclusion is, so I am going to attempt to explain it this way.
We need to be intentional in recruiting from populations that have been historically discriminated against.
I will use myself as an example. I grew up in a neighborhood that was 95 percent White. My friends were White. My family was White. I moved into a responsible position. I started to hire people.
Typically, you either hire people you know, or you hire people who you know know. That is where you get it. I looked around, and I was hiring a bunch of White people, all right. That is who I knew.
What I did is I affirmatively reached out to groups that worked with Black people or Hispanic people or gay people. When I had openings, I said, okay, who have you got? I don't have those relationships, and I built those relationships.
That is what diversity, equity and inclusion is, and it is sorely needed in a country that at least until about 30 or 40 years ago was really racist, okay.
To correct that, we have to work with communities, diverse communities, to make sure that we recruit the people diversely.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. We are not missing our recruitment goals because we are trying to expand the people we are recruiting.
We are missing our recruitment goals primarily because of COVID, and also, by the way, because a lot of Republicans are running around talking about how terribly weak our military is. If they would stop spreading that message, maybe people would believe in our military and join.
That is what DEI is. Eliminating it is a huge mistake.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I claim the time in opposition.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I think it is important to point out in this amendment that our allies have very much stepped up in the war in Ukraine. This was about a week ago now. The stats may be a little bit different. The United States actually ranks 13th in terms of percentage of GDP that we have committed to help Ukraine. That means of our 53 partners, 12 others have been doing more than we have.
My biggest concern about this amendment is twofold. One, it undermines that level of support and seems to imply that our allies are not doing that. Second, along with several other amendments here, it can be interpreted as being anti-NATO. I am worried more about the other amendments than I am worried about this one, but make no mistake about it, the NATO alliance has served the United States' interests very, very well for its--quick math off the top of my head--roughly 75- plus years of existence, and we should not be undermining that.
This particular amendment, not as problematic, but the idea that our allies are not contributing or the idea that the U.S. doesn't benefit from our contribution, I think, is mistaken, based on our place in the world.
Right now, as we look to confront Russia and China, nothing is more important than our allies and partners. We need to work with them to build the coalition that is going to be able to stand up for a rules- based international order and for the peaceful resolution of our differences. I do not wish to undermine those alliances, and I hope we do remember the contributions of our allies.
That is basically all I have to say about this. I don't think I have any speakers.
Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I claim the time in opposition.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, this is part of a troubling battle that we have frequently on the Armed Services Committee.
As the military, whether it is the Air Force or some other branch, is trying to move forward, they discontinue different programs. There are always people who like those programs, and we step in and block it and make it difficult for the military to make the decisions they need to make.
At this particular moment in history, this is enormously important, because innovation, new weapons technology, is absolutely crucial. Our information systems, just to give one example, are not where they need to be in order to manage all of the information that is now flowing, make sure that it is protected, and it gets to who needs to get it in real time.
We need to upgrade all of those systems. We need to improve our unmanned systems, drones, develop counter-drone technology, missiles, and counter-missile technology. All of that is dependent upon new, innovative technologies that we need to adopt and implement.
That costs money if we can't discontinue previous programs. We have held onto many, many programs way past the point at which they are actually useful, because it impacted somebody's district somewhere. That is always going to be the case. I am basically opposed to us stepping in and blocking these things and tying the hands of the military to upgrade and innovate in the way that they need. I am in opposition to this.
Mr. Chairman, I also want to explain something just quickly. I am going to yield to Ms. Frankel in a minute. She is not going to talk about this. She is going to talk about something else. For everyone's information, she can do that. Basically, it is your time and you can talk about whatever you want. I think you can stand up and mumble gibberish for 2 minutes if you are so inclined. You have 2 minutes do it, it is their time, not related to this, but it is still a perfectly lawful way to handle this.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Frankel).
Ms. LOIS FRANKEL of Florida. Mr. Chairman, my, my, my, the Republican attacks on abortion never seem to end, and now they are targeting the servicewomen in the military.
After that extreme decision by the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, half of the States in our country are banning or severely restricting access to legal abortion. Take a look at this poster and this map. The dark-shaded States are where these abortion restrictions are now in place. Look at those black dots. Those are the over 500 military bases in our country. Many of them are in States that now ban or restrict abortion.
Mr. Chairman, that is why, last year, the Department of Defense established travel transportation allowances for servicemembers and dependents who need to travel to access abortion. Shamelessly, the Republicans are now seeking to block this effort.
Our servicemembers leave their homes, their families, their friends, and are willing to risk their lives to serve our Nation. They train hard. They have dreams. They have goals. We trust them with Black Hawks, intelligence operations, and special ops. We should trust them with their own healthcare decisions, including when it comes to deciding whether to start or grow a family.
Mr. Chairman, they stand for our freedom; it is time to stand for theirs.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition, and I yield myself 2 minutes.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, this is my favorite amendment. It sort of drives home the point.
When we talk about history, you have to understand the history of how these bases were named. We had the Civil War. We got rid of slavery. We tried Reconstruction. Reconstruction did not go well.
Then there was a concerted movement in this country to make sure that we continued to establish white supremacy as the way we were going to approach this country. A lot of fascinating books have actually been written about this. It was a very well-coordinated effort.
There was an effort to rename all these bases after people from the Confederate war to celebrate white supremacy. The Ku Klux Klan grew up all over the place. I can't remember the name of the guy, but a guy from my area just wrote a fascinating book about the Ku Klux Klan taking over the State of Indiana and the battle and fight that went into that.
All of these bases that are named for our history, as you describe it, are monuments to white supremacy. If you don't support white supremacy, or if, God forbid, you are Black and not White, and you are going to serve at a base that is a monument, historically it is exactly why it was named that. It was named that as part of an overall concerted effort to establish white supremacy. But we are just going to let that go.
That is the kind of thing that undermines good order and discipline in the military. This is the kind of thing that makes people who aren't White feel like they are not included.
I do not believe for 1 second that the United States of America is an essentially racist country or that white supremacy is currently the policy that we are trying to advance. What I cannot understand is why so many people serving in this body don't want to stand up for that basic principle and want to continue to celebrate the worst parts of our history instead of the best parts.
These monuments are supposed to reflect our values. This is not a value we should be reflecting. Oh, by the way, this is why we still need diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, to try to educate people on these very fundamental facts that they ought to know.
Please, if you supported all the others, please oppose this amendment.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Virginia (Mrs. McClellan).
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I yield myself the balance of my time.
Mr. Chair, I actually agree with what the gentleman has listed in terms of what this great country has done.
What is beyond belief is why in the name of God would we choose to celebrate the particular aspects of our history that don't reflect those values that the gentleman just explained.
I want to talk about all the great things that the United States of America has done. I don't want to talk about our history of white supremacy. I want to understand it and make sure that we don't ever repeat it.
I have an enormous amount of respect for the chairman of the committee, but I want to make sure everyone understands what we are voting on here. This is to prohibit the use of Federal funds to carry out the recommendations of the base naming commission.
So to say, ``They are done. It doesn't really matter. This is going to block what they did. This is going to stop the ability to change those names,'' this commission was passed on a bipartisan basis to make sure that this is implemented. This amendment would gut that and go against that bipartisan agreement and the work that they have done.
Please understand what you are doing. As I said earlier, it is something we should not be doing.
Mr. Chair, I urge a ``no'' vote, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I can't say it any better than my colleague said it, so I will primarily associate myself with her remarks.
The bottom line is, we have interests in Afghanistan. She mentioned a lot of the humanitarian interests. There are also national security interests. ISIS is present in Afghanistan. We have considerable concern about what they might do in terms of posing a transnational threat. We have taken strikes against there.
There are many conceivable situations where we might need to work with Afghanistan in focusing on this issue, on humanitarian needs or national security needs. If it requires Congress to do it, it ties the hands of the President to basically be able to implement the policies that we will need to protect our interests. There is no need to have this requirement.
Mr. Chair, I join my colleague in urging a ``no'' vote on this amendment.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, let's be clear. There is no money in the authorizing bill for Afghanistan, so the gentleman's worries are misplaced. In fact, if he wasn't bringing up this amendment, we wouldn't even be talking about it. So that last little bit there was completely wrong, totally confusing, some big, impassioned plea about how dare we pass an authorizing act that funds the Taliban.
I assure all Members there is no money in this bill for funding the Taliban. This amendment has got nothing to do with the authorizing bill. It goes way beyond that. We are not doing what the sponsor of this amendment just said we are doing.
I don't know. Maybe he wishes to withdraw the amendment at this point since it is pointless to his argument, but I just want to be clear to the Members who will have to vote on this, it is not in the bill. This amendment has nothing to do with that.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Will the gentleman yield?
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, this prohibits the President from funding anything, including all of that other stuff, so it goes beyond what is in the bill. He implied that in the bill we are funding this. The executive branch is a different thing. His amendment would prohibit the administration from doing anything. That is the objection to it.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, the point of all this is whether or not sustainability should be an objective that we work toward in our building materials. What this amendment does is it undermines the ability to get to that goal of sustainability.
Now, sustainability can mean a lot of different things. Mr. Rogers focused on the aspect of how timber can be used. There is an aspect of sustainability that focuses on whether or not what you are building will enable us to sustain the planet. It is sort of widely accepted that the way we are using carbon-emitting--all kinds of different issues--is jeopardizing the health of the planet long term. That is something that we ought to think about and we ought to be concerned about.
If this amendment passes, you are putting your thumb on the scale in a different way, saying the sustainability isn't important, you are going to focus on other issues.
Actually, Mr. Garamendi is very good on other issues. As the chairman of the Readiness Subcommittee, he always pointed out: Don't look at the upfront cost. Look at the sustainability costs.
What does it cost to maintain what you are doing? What is the long- term cost going to be?
The market may be very good at figuring out what is going to be cheapest right now today in this second, but then we pay over the long term.
This amendment basically guts our ability to contemplate that long term, to contemplate what sustainability would look like and what those long-term costs are.
It is good to be on the same side as the chairman on an amendment. I am with him. We should reject this amendment. Please vote ``no.''
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I really would just associate myself with Chairman Rogers' remarks. These technologies are crucially important to developing the capabilities that we need to be able to compete with China, deter our adversaries, and have a strong military.
I understand that there are controversial decisions that are made; what is the right technology going forward? We will never be perfect about this. We have gone through this in DOD in many instances.
Gosh, we spent a lot of money on the F-35 that didn't quite work out. We spent a lot of money on a lot of different programs that didn't work out perfectly.
Targeting electric, solar, new green energy I realize is being done because of the politics around it, but I would hope that we could put aside those political debates on that to recognize the crucial need that we have for these technologies in the military.
If the gentleman's amendment passes, I guess we would have to take down the satellites. I mean, how is this going to work, exactly? This is a really, really bad idea, and I hope we will vote ``no.''
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Crow).
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
The gentleman's amendment requires the DOD to generate a report and provide all documentation to Congress on the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan, the attack at Abbey Gate, in coordination with State, provide the number and immigration status of those evacuated from Afghanistan, and U.S. support or interference with nongovernmental groups assisting with the evacuation.
There is nothing particularly narrowly crafted about this. It is very broad. The larger problem, this is all information, as Mr. Crow indicated, that has been turned over repeatedly to multiple different commissions and multiple different entities.
I do not doubt that the families still have questions. To the extent they have questions, we should try to answer them. Those questions are not going to be answered in the documentation that the gentleman is asking for, and I know this because these documents have already been turned over, already been made available; and as the gentleman just said, the families still have questions. I completely respect that. We should find ways to answer those questions.
This amendment isn't going to do that. It is not going to answer those questions. It is simply asking for documentation that has already been provided in multiple forums. I will grant you that it depends on the forum, but we have got the inspector general. Mr. Crow went through the list of all the different people who have seen this.
And remember, right now, the Republican-led House Foreign Affairs Committee, which is not being remotely shy about pursuing this information, is leading an investigation on precisely that issue. Therefore, this is duplicative and will not answer the questions that the gentleman just raised, so I don't support this amendment. I agree with Mr. Crow that there is no apparent purpose for it. This information has been provided, and if we pass this amendment, it implies that it hasn't. That is wrong, dishonest, and we shouldn't do it.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I yield myself 30 seconds. The weight of law is important if the information hasn't been turned over. That is what the weight of law does. It compels them to do it.
Again, I will emphasize, the answers that the gentleman seeks--and I applaud you for having those conversations with the victims. I hope you can answer those questions. I hope somebody can, but this amendment does not advance that conversation at all.
I appreciate the fact that the gentleman has had some time to talk about this very important issue, but the amendment is simply seeking information that has already been provided.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I yield myself an additional 15 seconds.
As far as the opportunity to have it again, as I understand it, that subcommittee on Foreign Affairs is still going. They are very, very far from done, so those questions have a very obvious forum and multiple other forums in which to continue to answer those questions.
Again, this amendment implies the Department of Defense is withholding something. They are not.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I yield the balance of my time to Mr. Crow.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I claim the time in opposition.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Washington (Ms. Strickland).
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Alabama (Ms. Sewell).
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from Washington (Ms. Strickland).
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.
I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding of what DEI is, and there are certainly examples and there are many anecdotes of bad DEI, of DEI that goes too far in the opposite direction, as has been described over and over and over again.
But the basic idea that we need to make sure that our military is inclusive and focus on diversity and equity, as we have argued throughout the day today is inarguable.
There is a history of racism. There is a history of sexism. There is a history of bigotry.
As was pointed out, we wouldn't even allow trans or gay people to serve in many instances. Now that we have allowed Black people to serve in the military, they are not getting promoted at the same level.
If we are going to recruit from the diverse population that we have in this country, we have to at least focus on it. If folks want to focus on some minor bad aspect of it, we can talk about that, but what you are doing is you are completely eliminating like 10 times--talk about shooting a dead horse. We have now shot this thing like 15 times in the course of the day. You are completely eliminating any consideration of this Nation's history and how we are going to recruit and retain members of the military.
These amendments are terrible ideas for the national security of this country, and I, once again, urge a ``no'' vote on this amendment.
Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.
A recorded vote was ordered.
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