National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024

Floor Speech

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Mrs. SPARTZ. Mr. Chair, I have to say there are things where I agree with my colleagues, the Republicans. It is good to have healthy dialogue and discussion. We are a free institution here. I actually agree that we need to defend our borders, too. I actually agree that we need to have better oversight and go to better security assistance and not some other things, too.

I actually agree with them that we need to have the fiscal issues resolved at the Department of Defense and offered amendments, but I disagree that Ukraine is not a national interest.

Stopping this war and deterring aggressors like China and Russia is in our national interest. Many Americans were killed by Russian-made weapons around the world, and we need to learn from the mistakes of World War II that weakness invites aggression.

I truly believe this administration didn't do that good of a job deterring it, but now we need to help Ukraine. We need to understand that there are a lot of lives that are going to be lost for Ukrainians. We need to make sure that we don't have never-ending war, and better security assistance will help to restore peace.

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