Announcement By the Acting Chair

Floor Speech

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Mr. PERRY. Mr. Chair, for nearly two decades, brave American servicemembers gave their blood, sweat, tears, and many made the ultimate sacrifice, to the U.S. mission in Afghanistan, fighting terror and ensuring our national security. In a few short days of abject incompetence from President Biden and his administration, those gains were erased.

After 3 long years, the Biden administration has yet to take any accountability for its despicable withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan. I still struggle to grasp the level of abdication of leadership and sheer dereliction of duty that occurred in Afghanistan on that day.

To this very day, it should infuriate every single American to see the hateful and terrorizing Taliban regime regain control of Kabul once again, touting our American weapons, aircraft, and machinery in a mockery of our longstanding fight for the freedom of Afghanistan.

While the underlying bill does have a section prohibiting the transport of currency to the Taliban, which I applaud, by the way, this amendment goes further by prohibiting any funding to the Taliban.

I mean, truth is actually stranger than fiction. We fought these people for 20 years. In their mind, we surrendered. In the world's mind, we walked out, abandoned the fight that Americans gave their blood, sweat, and tears for, and now we are paying them. It would be some kind of clown show if it weren't so sad.

I ask my fellow colleagues to support this amendment to refuse any kind of support to this hideous regime, especially since the special inspector for Afghanistan reconstruction recently confirmed to the Oversight Committee that he cannot assure that American taxpayer dollars are not going to fund the Taliban.

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Mr. PERRY. Mr. Chair, I yield 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from Florida (Mrs. Luna).

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Mr. PERRY. Mr. Chair, I remind everybody that this is the National Defense Authorization Act. It has to do with the military. If you want to keep spending money and sending money to Afghanistan, God bless you. Then do it in State and Foreign Ops or do it in Intel. Do it somewhere other than in the National Defense Authorization Act.

This is about the defense of our country, about what is important to us and our military, not spending money in Afghanistan that should be spent on troops from the United States.

Yes, we absolutely do want to tie the hands of this Commander in Chief. He has absolutely no clue what he is doing. He is the one that walked out of the battle, gave everything to Afghanistan, gave everything to the Taliban, gave premier weaponry to the number one terrorist organization on the planet.

You want to send them more money? If you want to do that, you can vote for that, but don't do it in the National Defense Authorization Act. People wear the uniform with the flag on their shoulder in defense of this country, in defense of our ideals, not so that you can spend money on whatever quixotic crusade that you are on in Afghanistan that you have already failed at and now you are trying to make amends for.

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Mr. PERRY. Mr. Chair, let me speak to that. If there is no funding in here and no authorization for spending any American tax dollars in Afghanistan, then you certainly won't mind an amendment that does nothing.

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Mr. PERRY. Mr. Chair, I yield to the gentleman.

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Mr. PERRY. Mr. Chair, reclaiming my time.

I don't think the American people trust this President to spend any of their money in Afghanistan on the Taliban. This is about the Taliban and spending tax dollars.

People get up in the morning, while it is still dark out, and they pack their lunchbox. They don't even see their kids before they go to school, and they go out to work to make a living and pay their taxes. They dutifully do that. They want to support their country, including the national security of their country.

I bet this is what they don't want to do: Spend their hard-earned tax dollars on the Taliban to persecute women and children and not let them go to school and hang up their adversaries on poles and crucify them and all of those kinds of things. That is what they don't want to pay for. They don't trust this President to make the right decision, because the last time he had the opportunity to do that, he screwed it up.

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Mr. PERRY. Mr. Chairman, that money is being spent right now on the Taliban and people are dying. Americans don't want this blood on their hands. They don't want to spend their tax money on the Taliban. Yet, 20 years to defeat the Taliban, and they walked away.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

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Mr. PERRY. Mr. Chairman, I have got an amendment at the desk.

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Mr. PERRY. Mr. Chairman, this amendment simply prohibits the obligation of funds for promotion of, or preference for, sustainable building materials, including low-embodied concrete or asphalt, or net- zero emissions in military construction.

Let me be clear: this does not prohibit the use of those materials. You can still use them. It ensures a fair playing field for all types of construction materials, including ones that we have a long history of knowing about and knowing what their integrity is without the government's thumb on the scale.

We don't need the government's thumb on the scale. We know what works, and we don't need to be experimenting with things that might be unsafe.

The Biden administration is already demanding so-called green concrete and asphalt standards across the whole of government. They have committed to a governmentwide effort to buy clean, including through construction materials. I don't know, buy clean? I don't know what you think is dirty about concrete, it comes out of the ground, there is aggregate in it--Portland cement.

I don't know what is unclean about stick-built construction made of wood grown all across the country. Hopefully, it is grown across this country and not coming from China.

Despite GSA issuing the first nationwide green concrete and asphalt standards, according to their 2022 sustainability plan, environmentally preferable paving hasn't saved any money at the initial six job sites.

Furthermore, it is unclear whether the technical changes in concrete mixtures, in other words, replacing Portland cement with things like fly ash and hemp, are durable enough for any and all scenarios.

Even the loudest voices advocating these technologies worldwide acknowledge the inability for the free market to adopt these technologies on its own.

I am going to quote the World Economic Forum because we love them so much, they are for America. In their 2023 report, it said: ``It is a chicken and egg situation: If . . . firms and their clients as well as policymakers don't prioritize''--put their thumb on the scale for-- ``the use of low-carbon concrete in buildings and infrastructure projects, many manufacturers will be loath to allocate capital expenditures for materials production. And until low-carbon cement and concrete products are produced at greater scale, their availability and cost will be a concern for the industry.''

You know what the answer is?

The Federal Government is going to demand it. That is the answer.

Again, if green construction materials somehow become more cost effective than traditional building materials, they will be used in private and public projects alike.

I am going to give you a scenario in my hometown where they used fly ash underneath the asphalt at new government construction. After about 6 months, when the asphalt on top of it all cracked because it was expanding and contracting due to heat and moisture, they tore it all back out and put the old stuff in that works.

I am not saying that we shouldn't endeavor to find new things that are better. What I am saying is that the market will figure these things out without the Federal Government forcing us to accept things that we don't know about, cost more, and we are unsure about the long term viability.

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Mr. PERRY. Mr. Chairman, this amendment doesn't prohibit the use of any of this material--not what the chairman said and not what my friend from California is going to state. It doesn't prohibit any of that. All we are saying is that the Federal Government shouldn't put its thumb on the scale and demand and require that we use these products. The market will work it out. The engineers will work it out.

The sustainability over time of using these products will ensure the cost effectiveness and the integrity of the construction. We can't wait, we are going to force this on everybody whether they want it or not, and when it fails, they are going to come back to this place and say: Well, we need more money to fix these things that we screwed up 10 years ago by using this stuff that wasn't ready for prime time. I am going to remind you when the time comes because I am going to be voting against all that funding.
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Mr. PERRY. Mr. Chairman, I know my good friend is from California so I have to restate things over and over again, but this prohibits the obligation of the preference--the preference--for sustainable building materials. It does not prohibit the use of these materials. They can be used. It just doesn't say that the government is going to put its thumb on the scale.

By the way, all we are doing in this NDAA without this amendment is saying the taxpayers are going to bear the burden. You folks up there are going to bear the burden of seeing if this stuff works, how long it works, and how expensive it is.

The railroads, yes, absolutely, because there wasn't a railroad. Nuclear energy did not exist without the government. That is a little different from things that already exist and things that already work.

Mr. Chair, I urge adoption of this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. PERRY. Mr. Chairman, this amendment prohibits the use of research development, testing, and evaluation funding for electric vehicles, electric vehicle charging, and photovoltaic technology in the NDAA.

For the past decade, the Department of Defense RDT&E funding has been squandered on wasteful, ineffective green technologies at the expense of enhanced readiness and lethality.

This misguided push by the left and this administration has only worsened this misallocation of resources in their dangerous efforts to force the American people to abandon the forms of energy and transportation that allow for our prosperity and security.

This effort has now moved in a dangerous direction toward the procurement of electric tactical vehicles without regard to the numerous drawbacks of EVs compared to the internal combustion engine vehicles.

What happens when the batteries die on the battlefield and our soldiers, sailors, and marines are stuck for hours while the battery is recharging in a sandstorm? How does prioritizing the green energy cult over the safety and lethality of our warfighters promote our national security?

More concerningly, the component minerals necessary for these technologies are almost entirely controlled by our enemies in Beijing. That is great. The supply chain for our military comes from China, giving our literal enemies complete control over our military supply chains and our ability to disrupt the defense of our Nation.

Mr. Chair, I urge support of this amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. PERRY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

As someone who did serve and did use the vehicles for over 3 decades, I rose from the bottom to the general ranks, so I would say at some level, when you are a GO, you are in top leadership.

Not one person in those over 3\1/2\ decades ever told me--not one--we are not going to be able to win this fight without an electric tactical vehicle. Not one.

As for the first prisoner in Iraq who made a wrong turn driving a fuel truck, it wasn't because they ran out of fuel. It was because they made a wrong turn. I know where the wrong turn was made because I served in Diwaniyah. It has nothing to do with the issue at hand.

The issue at hand is that we shouldn't be spending our R&D money from the military on things that can be bought off the shelf once they are proven.

If the military does want to buy this stuff, let the contractors prove it to them so that the taxpayers don't have to pay for all the failures along the way, and even more importantly, so the servicemembers in contact don't have to pay with their lives for the failures along the way.

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Mr. PERRY. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the chairman's remarks, and I certainly live better because satellites exist in space. Unfortunately, I have to live with the fact that the satellites in space are powered by Chinese-made solar panels.

When the chairman can tell me that the solar panels are all going to be made in America without slave labor from the Congo or from East Turkestan, then maybe this wouldn't be germane, but I don't think we should be dependent on our enemy for our power or our satellites.

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Mr. PERRY. Mr. Chairman, I urge adoption of the amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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