Every American Wants A Strong Military
Floor Speech
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Mr. CLYDE. Madam Speaker, I thank both of my friends from Texas. What an incredible job they have done so far in communicating that the swamp's compromise NDAA is, indeed, woke, weaponized, and wrong for America.
Why, you may ask.
It is because during backroom negotiations, virtually all of the conservative wins that the House Republicans fought for were removed. This is a disaster for both our military and the American people.
Now, due to the so-called compromise, this year's NDAA green-lights the Biden administration's horrendous policies of treating our military like a social experiment.
For a long time, I have firmly believed that our Nation's incredible military will never be defeated by an outside force before we rot from the inside first, and that is exactly what these woke policies are doing. It is the real reason that recruiting is at rock-bottom levels for our military.
For example, the NDAA fails to eliminate the Pentagon's chief diversity officer, it fails to ban mask mandates on military installations, and it fails to prevent the Department of Defense education activity from teaching radical gender and racial ideologies.
Not to mention, the NDAA allows Joe Biden's Department of Defense to waste taxpayer dollars on transgender surgeries, drag queen shows, and abortion travel. Abortion travel, imagine that. The radical left will stop at nothing to advance the evils of abortion, even if their vile efforts violate Federal law.
Additionally, a vote for this year's NDAA is a vote to reauthorize warrantless surveillance on the American people. That is right. To make matters worse, a clean reauthorization of FISA 702, which has been dangerously abused to illegally spy on Americans--literally, last year 278,000 times--was attached to this year's National Defense Authorization Act.
So let me be perfectly clear: the Fourth Amendment is not a suggestion, and I certainly will not be fearmongered by the intelligence community in order to allow this egregious and unconstitutional abuse to continue.
So either get a warrant or let FISA go dark, which means let FISA's authorization expire on 12/31.
Furthermore, FISA's reauthorization should never have been attached to the NDAA in the first place. An extension of FISA is not germane to the NDAA, meaning this legislation violates our January agreement of germane, single-subject bills.
Nevertheless, since leadership plans to pass the NDAA under suspension of the rules, Members will have no opportunity to raise the appropriate point of order against this nongermane matter.
Madam Speaker, this is not how Washington should operate. Members deserve the opportunity to debate legislation and vote on these matters separately. That is what we agreed to in January, and that is the standard we must now follow.
For all these reasons, I am a hard no on the fiscal year 2024 NDAA, and I urge all my colleagues to join me in taking a firm stand against this bad bill. As a 28-year Navy combat veteran, I am disgusted by the Biden administration's ongoing efforts to weaken our great military with woke and weaponized policies.
I am greatly disturbed by this body's blind acceptance of these nefarious efforts, so they can go home early for Christmas. Our military and our Nation deserve better.
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