National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. ROY. Mr. Chair, the House Armed Services Committee adopted an amendment to repeal the statutory requirement that the Department of Defense have a chief diversity officer, a senior adviser for diversity and inclusion. I applaud that. It is a good thing. That is getting rid of the requirement. I also believe that we should prohibit the ability of the Department of Defense to have said position.
My amendment No. 30 seeks to amend section 904 to prohibit Federal funds from being used to establish anything similar or any position that is comparable to the chief diversity officer or senior adviser of diversity and inclusion.
People say, well, why is that? The fact of the matter is we have a situation right now where we are not even able to pay the kinds of bonuses that are necessary.
We are not able to pay to retain our men and women in uniform. The Air Force has been having budgetary problems, and we have got positions that are being put out there, for example, that will pay $183,500, multiple positions scattered all over the country in the name of diversity.
The fact is the United States military is one of the few institutions where the skills of the men or women on either side of you could mean the difference between life and death.
The Department of Defense should be focused on one thing only: securing the defense of the Nation. It is not in our national security interests to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for diversity training that continues to try and divvy us up by race.
That is the opposite of the direction we should be going, and in fact, it sows constant division into the Department of Defense.
Does a person's race or skin color help them overcome hostile forces? Does it allow us to win the next battle? Do rainbow bullets and flags scare away folks?
Yet, that is what we are spending our time on, and we can't even pay our men and women in uniform. Literally, the Air Force is saying sorry, we can't give you bonuses right now because they have mismanaged their budget, and they are having to spend money on positions like this.
China and our other enemies do not care about feelings. Why are we funding divisive programs and divisive positions rather than positions focused on advancing and training the strongest and best military in the world?
That is the purpose of the amendment. It is great that this bill eliminates the statutory requirement that we have such a position, but we ought to end this divvying us up by race.
It is, in the words of the Chief Justice, a sordid business to divvy us up by race rather than to ensure that we have the best trained and finest fighting force in the world.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. ROY. Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
The fact is these positions are consuming precious dollars that our Air Force can't even use currently to pay their own personnel. Many in the military are struggling to even find a way to pay the bonuses for our current personnel and can't even meet their own recruiting needs right now, falling woefully short in all of their recruiting needs.
The fact is we are struggling in recruiting, in significant part, because we are turning the Department of Defense into a social engineering experiment wrapped in a uniform. That is the truth.
Instead of focusing on killing people and blowing stuff up and having the finest fighting force in the world, we are focused on dividing people up by race. That is what we are doing.
If you look at all of the training materials at the Air Force Academy, the training materials at West Point, the training materials at the Naval Academy, they are chock-full of this, spending time on that, and it is driving people away from wanting to serve.
It is driving people of all races away from wanting to serve because we are focusing on race and division rather than unifying our United States military behind the flag of the United States.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. ROY. Mr. Chair, in closing, a recent story indicated: Servicemembers forced to pay back signing bonuses after being removed after COVID vaccine. They see it as a kick in the face.
The Air Force delays bonuses. Higher-than-projected personnel costs are driving a shortfall in FY 2023 military personnel appropriation. Meanwhile, we have jobs and notices under the chief diversity officer and myriad other positions at $183,500. Why?
Why can't we get it right? Why can't we do the right thing and use the dollars that we have appropriated to fund the men and women in uniform to do their job? That is the question.
The fact is what we are doing is we are funding things like a professor at the Air Force Academy posting about her desire to make students learn how to ``identify the structural racism and inequality that has been endemic in American history.''
A West Point slide obtained by FOIA stated that: ``White people and people of color live radically different structured lives, and that in order to understand racial inequality, it is first necessary to address Whiteness.'' That is what we are paying for rather than paying for men and women to defend this country.
Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. ROY. Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. ROY. Mr. Chair, the Department of Defense Education Activity, an agency under the Department of Defense, runs 160 schools on military bases across the globe, serving more than 69,000 children of military personnel.
The amendment that I am offering would prohibit the Department of Defense schools, DODEA, from using funds to promote or compel teachers to adhere to critical race theory.
Specifically, this is what I on the floor was accused of offering as being racist by the ranking member of the Rules Committee a little bit earlier, but I was not on the floor to have the words stricken.
Here is what the language is in the amendment--compel teachers to adhere to critical race theory, specifically the idea that:
``(1) Any race is inherently superior or inferior to any other race, color, or national origin.
``(2) The United States is a fundamentally racist country.
``(3) The Declaration of Independence or Constitution of the United States are fundamentally racist documents.
``(4) An individual's moral character or worth is determined by the individual's race, color, or national origin.
``(5) An individual, by virtue of the individual's race, is inherently racist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.
``(6) An individual, because of the individual's race, bears responsibility for the actions committed by other members of the individual's race, color, or national origin.''
Instead of working to empower parents, our education system is using critical race theory outside of the Department of Defense, but in this case inside the Department of Defense, to turn schools into a propaganda machine dedicated to raising students up that judge one another by race and hate our country's founding principles.
Teaching kids to hate the country they live in, to view their fellow citizens as enemies because of the color of their skin is wrong. It is anti-American, and it is societal suicide.
Critical race theory is an anti-American ideology that seeks to pick winners and losers based on skin color. We are seeing a large-scale effort to impose this tyranny over the minds of men and our children through taxpayer-funded indoctrination of this ideology.
I believe we must preserve the foundational American truth that people are valuable regardless of their skin color and prevent critical race theory from being used to divvy us up by race further.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. ROY. Mr. Chair, an article written by the spouse of a member of our military in The Federalist and the mother of a former Department of Defense education student talked about the training that she discovered when she dove into what their students were being taught.
She saw that there would be an equity and access summit for teachers and administrators. She said: Knowing that equity means different things to different people, I wanted to get a sense of what it meant, and I was floored.
They released a video of summit clips in which a principal talks about a student who felt like he had done something wrong because he is a young, White male. The teacher said she didn't know what to tell him, but she seemed pleased with the breakthrough. Perhaps she was just following the lead of DODEA's diversity, equity, and inclusion chief, Kelisa Wing, who is currently under investigation or at that time was under investigation by DOD for a history of disparaging comments toward White people.
The fact here is, the sordid business of divvying us up by race is what we are trying to move past, and having our Department of Defense schools teaching the children of our men and women in uniform to focus on race and the divvying us up by race is inherently wrong and undermines the future cohesion of not just the military but the country. The purpose here is to say that we don't need our Department of Defense schools to be engaged in this indoctrination.
I heard earlier the questions here about all these stats about how this improves all of our recruiting. If that is so, why is our recruiting in the toilet? It is in the toilet because if you talk to recruits, they are sick of it. They don't like the indoctrination. Their friends listen to it, and they say: ``I don't want any part of it.''
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. ROY. Mr. Chair, in closing, we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Life. I can't help but notice the focus of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle of terminating life.
Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. ROY. Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source