Servicemember Quality of Life Improvement and National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2025

Floor Speech

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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee).

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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from the Virgin Islands (Ms. Plaskett).

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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Amo).

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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Green).

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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I urge adoption of the amendments en bloc, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I will take this opportunity on the last en bloc package to give my closing remarks on the bill.

We do have a few more amendments to go, but this will be the last opportunity to speak about the broad issues surrounding the bill.

The first thing I will do is thank Chairman Rogers, his staff, and the entire team on the Armed Services Committee for the work that they have done in pulling this bill together. As we often lay out from the beginning of the process in committee, there were well over a thousand amendments offered in committee, well over a thousand amendments offered to the Rules Committee that we all had to sort through to try to produce a piece of legislation.

Coming out of committee, we produced an outstanding piece of legislation. I think even on the floor and even where we are at right now, this is a very, very good bill. The chairman, Mr. Rogers, deserves an immense amount of credit for getting us to the point where we have a very good bill that deals with a lot of incredibly important issues.

Most notably, as we have mentioned, this is a piece of legislation that does the most to help support the men and women who serve in the military and their families out of any piece of legislation that I have ever worked on.

I thank Don Bacon and Chrissy Houlahan and all of the members of the Quality of Life Panel that really did a deep dive to figure out what our servicemembers and their families need. They did a large number of hearings. They brought in veterans. They brought in Active- Duty members. They brought in family members to say what their life is like and how we can make it work better.

They put together a series of proposals that are really quite remarkable. Some of it is pay, certainly, but it also has to do with support for spouses in finding employment. It has to do with childcare, healthcare, education, housing. A wide range of issues are very aggressively addressed in this bill, and I strongly support those provisions.

I also have worked closely with the chairman on what I think is a critical issue of modernizing our military, making sure that we can hit the production numbers that we need to hit, to have an adequate deterrent in light of the challenges we face in the world and then also making sure that we modernize.

So much technology is crucial to warfare when it comes to drones, counterdrones, missiles, missile defense, and having secure information systems. There are a lot of provisions in this bill that put us in a better place to get those technologies quickly and field them.

We have a long way to go. I understand that. We are not where we need to be, but we have made a lot of progress and, again, that is a testimony to everybody who worked on this bill.

I also thank my staff on the Democratic side. We have a real spirit of bipartisanship in this committee that I think serves us well. They have done an outstanding job of getting us to where we are.

The amendments that were adopted yesterday, unfortunately, mean that I am going to oppose this bill and the bulk of the Caucus is going to oppose this bill as well, and there are three main reasons for that.

Number one is the prohibition on the travel policy within the military. This is something that we didn't need to address. We did not address it in committee, but it is a crucial issue. It is a crucial issue because so many States across the country have passed restrictive laws when it comes to access to healthcare for women.

You may find yourself stationed in one of those States, and you may not have access to that healthcare. The travel policy was meant as a way to give people serving and, crucially, their family members, access to the healthcare that they need.

Passing a piece of an amendment to this bill that basically eliminates that access to healthcare is a readiness problem and is a problem for the military.

Women serving, and even if you have a spouse and you are serving, you will have concerns as to whether or not you are going to be able to access the healthcare that you need. The stories have been documented over and over again: A woman has a miscarriage and can't get the healthcare that she needs because of some law that was passed.

This is a debate and a struggle that will be fought out State by State across the country, sadly, for years to come, but our servicemembers shouldn't be caught in that debate and denied healthcare when they need it. That provision alone is extremely problematic.

Also, along the healthcare theme, we have two severe restrictions now in this bill on trans people and their families receiving the healthcare they need. I am not going to presume to say what the right healthcare is. I am not a doctor. I am not a trans person. It should be between them and their doctor.

We placed two restrictions in this bill that presumed that the United States Congress is a better medical professional than a doctor. It is a restriction on that access.

Again, it hurts the military because not only if you are a trans person serving, but if you are someone who is serving who has a trans child, you now have to wrestle with the fact that if you are in the military, your child is not going to be able to get the healthcare that he or she may need. That is a problem for our servicemembers. It has got no business being in this bill. We had these discussions in committee and decided that we weren't going to do it and didn't. The fact that it is added undermines the credibility of this bill.

Lastly, we have the whole epic fight over diversity, equity, and inclusion. My position is the Department of Defense ought to be able to deal with that issue as is necessary and as they see fit. I understand we are in a very, very difficult culture war right now, but the restrictions in this bill that say you can't do DEI ever for anything fundamentally misunderstands that culture war. I don't think anybody, even on that side of the aisle, would disagree that this fight is going on.

If you are running the Department of Defense or even a commander of a local base, you have to deal with that. I don't like the extremes on either the left or the right when it comes to this.

It is absolutely true that there are some people on the left that interpret diversity, equity, inclusion to mean that basically our country is nothing but a racist country, has never been anything but a racist country, we ought to teach people that, and that all White people are racist and we ought to teach people that as well. That is wrong. That is not what the Democratic Party supports. It is certainly not what the Department of Defense is doing right now.

On the other side, we have the approach that says racism isn't a thing, let's pretend that it wasn't ever that big a deal, we don't have to deal with it, and let's just blind ourselves and not deal with it whatsoever, which is equally ridiculous. As I have shown over and over again, there is still a problem with racism.

When you are trying to lead a bunch of young men and women in the military, they come to you with those issues. How do you deal with them?

What the Department of Defense very sensibly has done is, they have some people who are focused on how you deal with that. How do you make sure that we are going to work together cohesively as a unit without bias and prejudice?

This bill says nope, you have got to ignore it. You have got to act like none of this has happened. If you are in the Department of Defense, there is no culture war. There is nothing to be worried about. We are not going to let you deal with it at all. That is a really, really stupid approach.

Those three things got into this bill because the Rules Committee ruled them in order, and then by a reasonably narrow vote they passed. That is unfortunate because I believe it will undermine the ability of the military to do its job.

For that reason, I do oppose the bill at this point, but as I have told everybody I know, in the end, we will work it out.

For now, I think it is important to make that statement. I think those areas are wrong.

Again, I applaud the chairman and all of the people who have worked on this bill. Ninety-eight percent of the bill is really good, outstanding work. I know in the end, we will get that 98 percent through, but for now, I think it is really important to point out the deep flaws contained in those three areas.

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

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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

A recorded vote was ordered.

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