Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2025
Floor Speech
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Mr. OGLES. Mr. Chairman, the section 1260H was established by the fiscal year 2021 NDAA to blacklist Chinese companies with close ties to the People's Liberation Army as well as other companies, so-called civil-military fusion contributors. The FY 2023 NDAA went even further, applying sanctions for those entities on the list.
Section 1260H addition certainly hurts a company's shareholder value, which is the point. It protects American investors from unwittingly supporting companies underwriting China's military modernization and/or genocide.
This amendment simply ensures that for the coming fiscal year, the Biden administration cannot remove any CCP company designated for the Department of Defense section 1260H list.
I understand there is similar language in the underlying bill, but the language has a waiver so broad you could drive a Chinese tank through it. I am therefore offering it as a stand-alone to continue to push for full funding prohibition.
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Mr. OGLES. Mr. Chair, this amendment is necessitated by the fact that, at every opportunity, our President has chosen to placate rather than punish China. Appeasement has long been a failed strategy, and it continues to fail us today.
Last year, Joe Biden unilaterally removed 27 CCP entities from Commerce's unverified list, all to ensure that Gina Raimondo could simply secure a meeting with her CCP counterpart.
Similarly, in November, Joe Biden removed an agency of China's police, an agency which uses DNA to collect genetic information on Uyghur detainees from Commerce's entity list. Joe Biden made this decision on a mere commitment from China that they would cooperate with us on confronting drug trafficking.
I can tell my colleagues that the drug overdoses in my State and your States last night would conflict with this idea that China is cooperating with us, that they are doing anything to stem the flow of precursor chemicals for fentanyl into this country, so this amendment is quite necessary.
The gentlewoman is right that it amends the law. It removes the Secretary's ability to do so, and it puts Joe Biden in a box, where hopefully he can't get lost.
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Mr. OGLES. Mr. Chairman, increased scrutiny of these companies is a national security imperative, and delisting these companies, these Chinese military companies, cooperators in genocide, and proponents of the PLA's military modernization, must be an absolute nonstarter. We have to put America first, whether that is at our border, whether that is in commerce, and most certainly for our military.
We have to take a stand and put Biden in his place and not let him delist these companies for political or monetary gain.
Mr. Chairman, I urge adoption of my amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. OGLES. Mr. Chair, this is an important issue. We are going to talk about RIMPAC for a moment. It has direct impact on Taiwan and also the United States of America, our beloved country.
RIMPAC, Rim of the Pacific, is the world's largest international maritime warfare exercise, involving coordination of dozens of countries. The 2024 RIMPAC exercise will showcase the participation of nearly 30 countries, 40 surface ships, 3 submarines, 14 national land forces, over 150 aircraft, and more than 25,000 personnel.
RIMPAC promotes a free and open Indo-Pacific, which itself promotes fairly commonsense priorities, including that all nations, big and small, have the right to freedom of the seas and the right to pursue economic growth consistent with international law and the principles of fair competition.
This vital naval exercise deepens interoperability and resiliency with our allies and partners. It serves as a bulwark against malign major powers. It pursues deterrence for the sake of peace and stability.
Genocidal nations, like the People's Republic of China, have no business going anywhere near the RIMPAC exercises.
This amendment would defund enforcement subsection (b) of section 1259 of the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019. That subsection is a waiver that, if utilized, would effectively allow the People's Republic of China to participate alongside the United States Navy in the RIMPAC exercises, no questions asked.
Consider just how peculiar it is that the Chinese Communist Party, our adversary, can be eligible to participate in this naval exercise. It is all because of a waiver Congress wrote several years ago.
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Mr. OGLES. Mr. Chair, keep in mind that China is a country that steals hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of U.S. intellectual property every year. They commit espionage against the United States on an unparalleled scale every year. They are doing the bare minimum to prevent fentanyl precursors from flooding into Mexico en route to the southern border. They are directly supporting every single designated state sponsor of terrorism on the State Department's list: Cuba, Syria, North Korea, and Iran.
Even considering all of this, Beijing is not fully excluded from participating in RIMPAC. For robust democratic allies like Taiwan, however, participation currently is impossible.
The existence of the waiver undermines the precondition on China's participation in RIMPAC. Currently, the Secretary of Defense must certify to the congressional defense committees that China has stopped all land reclamation activities in the South China Sea, removed all weapons from land reclamation sites, and established a consistent 4- year track record of taking actions toward stabilizing the region. If they do all those things, China could be invited to RIMPAC.
It is important that we send a message to our adversary that they are a bad actor, it is time for them to behave and to understand that countries in their region, like Taiwan, have a right to participate in the free market, to be free and democratic, and not to be under their thumb.
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Mr. OGLES. Mr. Chair, in the fiscal year 2021 NDAA, Congress included a fourth precondition stopping the ongoing genocide against the Uyghurs. We have already seen President Biden placate China in more ways than one, in addition to the unilateral delisting of dozens of entities from Commerce's unverified list.
Mr. Chair, we are the leader of the free world. Who else is going to hold China accountable?
Who else is going to send a message that enough is enough?
They are a bad actor on the global stage. They undermine us at every turn.
Yes, this is an amendment. Yes, it may take a moment to work through it. Yes, that may require more time, but this is the people's House. We do the work, we take the time, and we get it right.
Mr. Chair, I urge adoption of my amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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