National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024

Floor Speech

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Mr. MAST. Mr. Chair, I am amazed at the bigoted comments I am hearing from the other side right now, literally stating that units need to look a certain way. There have to be people of certain colors in these units. It is purely idiotic. It is dangerous.

War is not a game. It is always dangerous. It is very often deadly. I damn near gave my life for this country, and I can tell you the last thing I cared about was the color of the snipers that had my back or the color of the medics that were putting tourniquets on each of my legs and my left arm when I was injured on the battlefield. It didn't matter if they were Black, White, Brown.

None of that mattered when they were recruited into the military, and it didn't matter as they were serving. It has absolutely zero place, and you are literally putting the lives of our servicemembers in danger. You are concretely saying that units need to look a certain way by color.

I just pose this quick question. I don't know how much time I have remaining, but I will bet you all over there can't tell me what my background is. Am I part Black? Part Brown? Part White? What am I?

I yield time to you for a colloquy if you want to answer that. What am I?

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Mr. MAST. Mr. Chair, I will bet they can't tell me. I hear silence because you don't know what I am. You don't know that I am half Mexican. You can't look at me and see that, but you believe that units should be made up of something that you can't see and that you can't ask about. It is idiotic policy and dangerous for our servicemembers, and they deserve better from the other side.

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