Every American Wants A Strong Military

Floor Speech

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Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I appreciate my friend from Texas yielding, and I appreciate his remarks because we share a committed interest to defending the United States, defending our military, and ensuring that our military is able to do its job.

Just in the last 24 hours, I saw that one of our generals put forward a report basically detailing the extent to which our recruiting levels and morale levels are low and that it is a particular time of difficulty for them in terms of recruiting.

I have been engaging with my colleagues, particularly on this side of the aisle, about the National Defense Authorization Act. It is, I believe, going to be on the floor tomorrow under a suspension of the rules. That means we are not going to go through regular order, we are not going to be able to amend it, and we are not going to be able to have any real significant debate on it.

We are suspending the rules of the House, and we are going to try to jam this bill through by basically trying to get two-thirds of the Chamber to just say: Let's get this done, let's get out of town, and let's go home for Christmas, and send it to the Senate.

That is wrong.

That is a problem. To my colleagues who think we need to do this for our men and women in uniform, the truth is this is undermining our men and women in uniform. We are destroying the soul, we are destroying the culture, and we are destroying the morale of those men and women who signed up to serve and who are frustrated.

They are frustrated by being put in indoctrination classes on diversity, equity, and inclusion. They are frustrated by critical race theory being pushed. They are frustrated by abortion tourism being funded by taxpayer dollars and transgender surgery. They are frustrated by being fired from their job because they dared to say no to getting a COVID vaccine. They are frustrated about the state of affairs when our military is being turned into a social engineering experiment instead of being committed to its core function, which is to defend this country when called upon to do so.

That is the truth.

Our men and women in uniform want change. They want us to stand up and change it.

So what did Republicans do?

In one of the great demonstrations of what a body can do with a bare, thin, and razor-thin majority, we passed a National Defense Authorization Act in July that was a responsible bill and that would fundamentally make sure our military is focused on its core responsibilities and would ensure that our military is able to do its job without being focused on engineering.

I appreciate getting the message from those who delivered it. We have more people than just the two of us on the floor, I am pretty excited. It is a great night in the House Chamber. This is fantastic. We had a great audience. I am not just speaking to the echo chamber, as it were. We have a couple up in the bleachers up there.

Madam Speaker, here is the thing: Republicans passed a responsible National Defense Authorization Act that will make sure our military is focused on its mission.

Madam Speaker, you can see here the House GOP's bill. All of the green checkmarks are what we are talking about here. We ended President Biden's taxpayer-funded abortion travel fund which enables abortion tourism with taxpayer funded dollars. We ended taxpayer-funded gender transition surgery. We ended Biden's radical climate agenda in the carrying out of his executive order, which will promote and push his radical agenda into our military so that we will have a forced migration to electric vehicles and all of the mandates of the Biden executive orders in the Pentagon.

It would protect servicemembers who were discharged for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine. It would ban the drag shows and drag queen story hour on DOD installations and prohibit critical race theory. It would create an inspector general for Ukraine aid. It would prohibit race-based admissions at our military academies, and it would eliminate the chief diversity officers and all these positions that are divvying us up by race.

Here is the thing: Senator Schumer and the Democrats created a bill that did none of those things because they want our military to be a social engineering experiment.

Now, to my colleagues on this side of the aisle who have said: Chip, you are just focusing on the social issues. That is not true. That is not true.

COVID vaccines that force some of our men and women in uniform off of their duty is not a social issue. That is their job. They have got shoved out of their job because they didn't want to have an experimental vaccine shoved in their arm.

It is also not true if you go look through all of the things, Madam Speaker, for example, the Inspector General with respect to Ukraine and other issues, none of the changes that we embraced to try to get our military focused where it needs to be were embraced by Democrats.

So then what happens?

At the end of the year when everybody is panicked, they go around this town, and all the defense lobbyists and all the people go around saying: Oh, my God, you have got to pass the National Defense Authorization Act, or the entire world is going to end, and we are not going to be able to defend the country.

That is not true. It is not true. We believe we should pass such a bill, but that is not true. That is legislating by fear.

Nevertheless, what you see here, Madam Speaker, is this NDAA compromise, National Defense Authorization Act compromise.

Now, Madam Speaker, you would think that we went through some regular process that we have been fighting for this year. Go to conference committee between the Senate and the House.

Wrong. That didn't happen.

There was a conference set up, but what happened is the leaders all got together, they decided what they wanted to jam through before Christmas, they went to the conference, and they said: Take it or leave it. Basically they said: Take it.

Then their conferees sent it back to us. Five of them didn't sign it. That is the truth.

So what do we get?

Madam Speaker, do you see the red Xs?

You see the one green check bans critical race theory which, by the way, is hard to enforce, but, okay, we got that. We have got some weak reforms here with respect to the vaccine issue with COVID-19, and we have got weak reforms with respect to the Inspector General of Ukraine.

In other words, we got one piece of it. We didn't get everything we had put in there, and that is it. We didn't get the other stuff. Nonetheless, that is not what they are telling you, Madam Speaker. They are going around telling you saying: Oh, yeah, we ended the drag queen story hour.

That is not true. What they did is they are accepting the Defense Department's characterization of the rules they are going to follow. They didn't actually include the language that restricts it.

So here is the way this town works, and then I am going to yield to my friend from Georgia because I just want everybody to understand, this is the way this town works: you govern by fear. You go up to a deadline, and you say: You must do this because I haven't got to the whipped cream with the cherry on top, which is this Defense bill watered down that not one Republican should support.

Let me be clear. There is no justification for supporting a bill that does not materially change the direction of our military away from being social engineering back toward its mission.

Nevertheless, what did they do?

They added the extension of surveillance, what we call FISA.

What does that mean?

Madam Speaker, you have read about all of the surveillance that has been carried out on American citizens. You know all about it through Carter Page. You know about the extent to which there has been rampant abuses by the FBI targeting American citizens and backdooring the ability to gather information on non-Americans and use that to target Americans. It happened.

They took January 6 names, they stuck them into the database, the query, the database that was collected on these non-American targets, and they have put the names of January 6 people into the database. Oh, the FBI says: Don't worry. We fixed it.

Nevertheless, Madam Speaker, can we really see what it was that they fixed?

Can we really look under the hood?

We are trying to pass reforms to what we call FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. We should pass reforms right now before we leave town.

If we don't, then we should all be eating our Christmas dinner on the floor of this House, but, no, what are we going to do tomorrow?

We are going to take the National Defense Authorization Act with all of these red Xs--yes, it is true, all of you leadership hack staffers who are running around and saying that it is not true, come down and debate me on it because it is true--they are going to add a FISA extension that will take it to April of this next year, and, worse yet, the procedures under that will extend all the way until April of 2025.

Then my colleagues get frustrated, and they say: Well, Chip, why do you say things like name one thing we have done?

It is because of this. It is because we extend the same stuff and kick the can down the road. We do a National Defense Authorization Act which changes precious little, we jam it through, violating our own rules with respect to germaneness and single subject bills, we pile on FISA, we extend it to April of 2025, and then we go to the American people. We lie to them, and then we say that we did something great.

We should reject this. My colleagues should reject it tomorrow. We should stand up for the American people and do what we said we would do.

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Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I thank my friend from Texas. He is one of my best friends in the House, and one of the best Members we have in this body. His constituents are blessed to have him.

Madam Speaker, I am proud to stand here with these gentlemen here on the floor. I will say in firm defense of our men and women in uniform and in firm defense of our appropriate use of intelligence surveillance on foreign subjects, on foreign targets, that is what we should be doing, but instead it has been abused by the FBI, abused by our intelligence apparatus to target Americans.

What are we going to do when we finally get the chance to deal with the reauthorization? We kick the can down the road, extend it to April, and that means extending it until April 2025; thus, the same procedures, the same abuses can continue with nothing but the promises of reforms within the FBI.

That is not good enough. This is the people's House. We are supposed to stand up and defend the people who sent us here.

I want to read something. In a Christmas Day 1944 letter to his mother and sister Rose, living in Washington, D.C., Sergeant David Warman, 1st Infantry Division, wrote: ``This is Christmas morning, and I'm writing from a foxhole. The weather is very clear and sunny and there is slightly over two inches of snow which fell the other day. It is way below freezing, and I am wrapped in blankets as I write.

``As you know from the papers, the Germans have come out of their holes to put on a great drive to push us off their soil.''

He later writes in that letter: ``Let's hope the end is near and peace again comes to Earth quickly and this time permanently.

``How are you both? I hope you have a happy holiday season and don't have too many gloomy thoughts about me. True, my life is very uncomfortable and, I might say, uncertain, but I'm still around and who knows--I may get out without a scratch. So don't worry about me.''

He and the men next to him in those foxholes knew why they were there. Those of us in this body need to pause and consider whether we know why we are here, whether we are doing our duty with the seriousness demanded by the sacrifices like theirs.

When we get on our planes and fly home for Christmas, rather than doing our job to protect the civil liberties of the American people by reforming FISA and doing our job here, we are doing a disservice to those men who sat in the foxholes on Christmas Day in 1944 and to the men and women in uniform we ask to go around the world defending us.

I get a little sick and tired of the preaching on the floor about what we need to do to defend our men and women in uniform by saying, you must pass the NDAA and you must do it now, but never mind the reforms you need to do to ensure we are doing it the right way; to make sure our military is focused on its mission rather than social engineering, so you can boost the morale, boost recruiting, boost the effectiveness, undo the damage being done, and not layer on it a disastrous kicking the can down the road by putting more surveillance power still on the back of our men and women in uniform. That is not the way that we should be conducting business.

I implore my colleagues on this side of the aisle, don't do that. Don't use our men and women in uniform as an excuse to shirk our responsibility to actually reform the laws we were sent here to reform.

We have bipartisan legislation sitting right before us--Judiciary Committee, Intel Committee--that would reform these things. We should put them on the floor--or put one of them on the floor--we should amend them, and then we should send it to the Senate and tell them to do their job.

We should stop governing by fear and the false pressure of deadlines. Let's do our job for the American people. Let's send them a Christmas present that we are going to stand up and defend them and their civil liberties. That is what we should do tomorrow.

Madam Speaker, I implore my colleagues to oppose the NDAA with FISA added on it.

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