National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024

Floor Speech

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Mr. ROY. Mr. Chair, we have spent the better part of the last several days making clear to the American people that this side of the aisle wants to see a Department of Defense that is focused on its core mission, defending the United States of America, rather than divvying us up by race and dividing us and separating us.

I rise today to ensure that the Department of Defense is focused on its core mission rather than pursuing the political agenda of climate change to the detriment of the national security of the United States.

In 2021, Department of Defense spokesman John Kirby refused to say that China is a bigger national security threat to the United States than climate change. He called them equally important and said it doesn't do any good to make a relative assessment of national security issues.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has said climate change is an existential threat to our Nation's security.

Next week, Secretary of State John Kerry literally travels to China to discuss climate change, not China's increased aggression against Taiwan, not its expansion in the Pacific, not its oppression of its people, not the fact that they produce two new coal-fired plants per week on top of the 1,100 they have while we undermine our national security to pursue the climate-fetish agenda of the other side of the aisle.

President Biden's executive orders have served as the catalyst for massive reforms at the Department of Defense that compromise national security to advance this climate fetish.

The amendment that I offer would prohibit any of the funding in the National Defense Authorization Act, or that flows from that authorization, from being used to carry out President Biden's executive orders on climate change.

The Department of Defense's climate adaptation plan includes radical proposals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at the expense of our warfighting capabilities. According to the plan, the DOD has identified climate change as a critical national security issue. It mandates environmental justice because why miss an opportunity to push divisive ideology?

The DOD says it will transition to 100 percent carbon-free electricity, meaning America's war machine will literally depend on the wind and the sun.

No one, including anyone on this side of the aisle, believes that we shouldn't pursue every advantage and technology to harness energy, no one. In Texas, we have embraced wind and we have embraced solar, but to our detriment when we have interfered with the market and interfered with our ability to have energy at our disposal and at our demand. We undermine our grid. We undermine our national security. We undermine reliability. We cause energy prices to go up.

In this case, in the context of the National Defense Authorization Act, we should not be pursuing this politically motivated climate fetishization that undermines our national security.

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Mr. ROY. Mr. Chair, I appreciate my colleague for basically making the case for the very climate fetish that I describe. When he talks about the need for energy and its existence for national security, my point is having reliable energy. We have to have energy that is available and reliable and dependable. That is the whole point.

My colleague talks about nuclear power. Great. I am waiting with bated breath for my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to embrace and promote and push noncarbon-producing nuclear power.

We haven't generated a new nuclear power plant since when, the 1970s? Georgia isn't even off the ground because of Federal regulation and interference.

The fact is, we are subsidizing and promoting unreliable wind and solar while subsidizing the hell out of electric vehicles, and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle want to use the Defense Department to continue to promote it, when it engaged in crony capitalism to enrich a small handful of elitists on the back of the hardworking American people while we subsidize China and make ourselves reliable on China for their minerals and what they produce.

It is absolutely astonishing that we would turn over our national defense capability to China at this point in time to pursue this radical agenda.

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

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