Culture Wars in the Ndaa

Floor Speech

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Ms. SLOTKIN. Mr. Speaker, the annual National Defense Authorization Act is the Pentagon's budget. It is perhaps one of the most important tasks we fulfill here in Congress, protecting our national security and taking care of servicemembers, their families, and their housing.

It has been one of the few places where we have bipartisan agreement despite what you see on TV. This year, the House Armed Services Committee again did their job and, on a bipartisan basis, passed the National Defense Authorization Act out of committee 57-1. That includes a bunch of investments for the quality of life of our military members and military families.

The bill was good to go when it left committee. Unfortunately, once it left committee, it was transformed into a document that my colleagues have turned into a culture war document.

Most disappointing is, despite my colleagues saying that they were good with overturning Roe v. Wade but then will leave it to the States to decide what to do beyond that, we are once again watching them try to strip away a basic right to provide reproductive healthcare to women in uniform. It is dividing us at a time when we should be coming together on national security challenges.

It says specifically that uniformed women do not have the right to get some time off to leave the State to get an abortion if they need it.

If you are forced to be based in Texas and get pregnant and don't want to be pregnant, they are trying to repeal that woman's right to take time off to travel to another State to get an abortion.

They also are trying to repeal the right for a servicewoman to take time off to help her daughter get an abortion in another State, not even a woman in uniform.

I am deeply disappointed in my colleagues' constant attempts to repeal a woman's right to choose. Again, in public they may say that they were good with Roe, that they are thrilled that Roe was overturned but now are leaving it alone. In this Congress alone, in the past year and a half, we have voted 15 times to strip a woman of the right to choose in some form or fashion. Sometimes it is the right to travel. Sometimes it is the right to medication. Sometimes it is the right to understand if a healthcare center is actually able to perform an abortion or not. It is misinformation. It is disinformation.

I am deeply disappointed that we are again in this place where my colleagues won't stop attacking a woman's right to choose, now including the rights of a woman in uniform, someone who is putting her life on the line to serve her country.

We have seen a ton of other divisive amendments come into the NDAA, something that should never be a place where we do culture wars. I am also very disappointed in the refusal of a very bipartisan amendment to be brought to the floor preserving our National Guard's tactical air capability that underwrites our national defense.

We asked, on a bipartisan basis, that the Pentagon show us their plan to recapitalize their aircraft as they bring down the number of planes that they have in the U.S. Air Force. We asked what their plan was.

If my colleagues are worried about conflicts with China, worried about issues abroad, for every two planes we are retiring, we are creating and initiating only one new plane to replace them.

Places like Selfridge Air National Guard Base, which are home to important fighter aircraft, don't know what the plan is after the A-10s depart. We had a bipartisan agreement that would ask the Pentagon to tell us what their plan is. We would like to know what fighters are coming behind that.

Unfortunately, it was ruled out of order, and we weren't able to talk about it. Despite having 30 bipartisan cosponsors and a tremendous show of support from the Air National Guard, this will not receive a vote on the floor.

As a CIA officer and Pentagon official and someone who has spent my entire life looking at national security issues not through a political lens but through a national security lens exclusively, it is hard to watch my colleagues across aisle turn the Pentagon budget into a culture war buffet.

Particularly on the issue of choice, as we have the Supreme Court in real time making decisions about a woman's right to choose, do not believe my colleagues when they say that they now are done pursuing a woman's right to choose. Look at what they do, not what they say.

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