Wildlife Innovation and Longevity Driver Reauthorization Act

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I thank Chairman Rogers for his outstanding leadership of the committee this year and in past years. He has done a great job of setting an example for bipartisan leadership in working this process all the way through to produce the product that we have before us today.

I thank the members of the House committee, both Republicans and Democrats, and all the staff. We have a very focused spirit on that committee that says we are not going to focus on partisanship. We are going to focus on getting the job done and getting the bill done.

Second, I think this process has been really good. We went through the normal process of hearing the bill in committee, with all kinds of amendments and debates that lasted a while. We did the same thing in the Rules Committee. We went to conference and produced what is an outstanding product in many, many respects. The chairman highlighted some of them.

Of the priorities that we have, number one is trying to make sure that we can recruit the best and the brightest to serve in our military and, crucially, that we support them.

The chairman did a great job of describing what is the best part of this bill this year, and that is the result of our commission, our task force, I guess, that we formed on quality of life in the military, ably led by Don Bacon on the Republican side and Chrissy Houlahan on our side, to produce a whole lot of the programs that the chairman mentioned. They are in there. That is crucially important.

We also have a couple of major problems in meeting our national security needs on production of the munitions and crucial equipment that we need. This bill attempts to address that and to expand our capacity.

To meet that need and to meet other needs, we also need our partners and allies. There are a number of provisions in this bill that strengthen those alliances on things like AUKUS, the European Defense Initiative, and the Indo-Pacific defense initiative. We do a great job of that.

Lastly is the big issue on technology, making the Pentagon get better at quickly buying innovative new technologies, particularly software, that we need to succeed.

Overall, that package is terrific. There is one problem, which is that a political partisan wedge issue was insisted on being included in this bill at the insistence of Republican leadership, not of the Armed Services Committee. I think it is really problematic.

The language seems somewhat benign. It basically says that minors experiencing gender dysphoria will not be allowed to receive any care that could lead to sterilization. The problem is this is denying healthcare to minors who clearly need it.

The ``could'' language is very problematic because, as we all know, anyone who has watched the last 15 seconds of any pharmaceutical ad, if you take any medical treatment, a lot of bad things could happen. The medical profession is always very careful about explaining all those things to you.

This could restrict the ability of minors experiencing gender dysphoria access to puberty blockers, access to hormone treatment therapy, access to critical care that they need, and for no good reason.

Now, look, there is a reasonable question about what care minors should receive in this area. We had floated the idea that if you want to look at this, you want to ask the medical profession what they think, what the studies said about when this care is appropriate, but we didn't do that. We have an outright ban on care that undoubtedly is saving lives of minors experiencing gender dysphoria and the anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts that come with that.

Just today, I got a phone call from a constituent, a daughter now 19 whose parents were in the military service. She received this type of care when she was 10, 11, 12, 13 years old. She believes that it saved her life. We are now going to deny that care.

Let me tell you, the treatments for minors with anxiety and depression are very controversial, not just in the trans community. It is the trans community that we choose to focus on for partisan political reasons.

I have concerns, having gone through an anxiety problem myself, with the number of antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications that are prescribed to minors. I think, in some instances, it is overprescribed and too quickly, but the other thing I know is that there are some minors who benefit enormously from that treatment.

I would never in a million years present a piece of legislation outright banning that treatment from any minor, yet that is what we do here. We are doing it because of ignorant, bigoted reasons against the trans community.

The medical profession has no dispute that, in some instances, this treatment is crucial to the health and well-being of our children, and we are now denying that to the children of servicemembers.

I think that is problematic, and I hope we will rethink it and remove that from this bill because it taints an otherwise excellent piece of legislation.

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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Houlahan), the ranking member of the House Committee on Armed Services' Panel on Quality of Life.

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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Jacobs), who is the ranking member of the House Equality Caucus and a member of the House Armed Services Committee.

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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I want to address a little bit the concerns about the size of the Pentagon budget and the efficiency and effectiveness.

First of all, it is important to point out that the defense budget as a percentage of GDP is the lowest that it has been since after World War II. As our budget has grown and ballooned collectively, that has primarily been because of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, and a variety of other programs, all of which I enthusiastically support, but as a percentage of GDP we are actually spending less on defense now than we have, as I said, at any point since World War II.

The notion that the defense budget is ballooning out of control doesn't take into account inflation and growth. We are at a more reasonable place than some portray, first of all.

Second of all, we keep hearing, oh, they failed another audit.

What is actually happening is we are getting better on that point. We were not going to fix the audit problems that the Pentagon had 6, 7 years ago in a year or 2 or even 5. Nevertheless, just to give you a couple of ideas, Mr. Speaker, multiple agencies within the Pentagon are now passing their audits whereas they didn't before, including the United States Marine Corps.

In another decent measure of this, the Department of the Navy broadly has not passed its audit, but 5 or 6 years ago they were only 5 percent clean, and now they are 80 percent clean.

I don't want to leave the public with the mistaken impression that we are ignoring this problem or not making any progress on it. We are. A big part of the reason we are making progress on it is because of the leadership on the House Armed Services Committee.

Under Mr. Rogers and previously under me and before that under Mac Thornberry, this has been a priority for us in the House and the Senate for some time. We are making progress. We are not ignoring the problem. It is not a pass-fail. It is a matter of improvement. We are optimistic that in another 2 or 3 years we will get to that happy day when the entire Pentagon budget can pass that audit, but we had a big hole to dig out of. We are making progress on digging out of said hole, and I want to make sure people are aware of that.

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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Tokuda), a member of the House Armed Services Committee.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I don't really have anything more to add than what I said in the opening statement, so I won't belabor the point. It is, in so many ways, a very good bill that was worked through the process.

I regret that we have injected, again, that partisan wedge issue into it. It is a controversial topic, trying to figure out what medical treatment transgender youth or youth experiencing gender dysphoria should get, but I worry in some instances that there is a denial of the existence of the condition. It is an absolute fact that some minors experience gender dysphoria.

Mr. Speaker, I guess the one thing I didn't say in my opening statement that is worth adding is, on TRICARE, there are about 1.8 million dependents. The estimates that I have gotten--and they are a little fuzzy because they won't give specifics for, I think, some obvious reasons--are that roughly 4,000 children are being treated out of that 1.8 million, and not all 4,000 of those children being treated are receiving the treatments that are being prohibited in this bill.

Mr. Speaker, we are talking about a small number of young people, but we are restricting access to their healthcare based on our opinion, not based on the opinion of the U.S. medical community. That, I think, is a mistake.

Again, I close on a positive note. I thank Chairman Rogers, HASC, the Armed Services Committee, and all the staff. I didn't thank the Senate in my opening remarks either. I suppose we have to.

All kidding aside, the Senate was good to work with on this process, and I think, ultimately, HASC and SASC have met their requirements and did what we have done for 63 consecutive years in working together on a bipartisan, bicameral bill, with the overwhelming bulk of the focus on what is best for the servicemen and -women who defend our country that we are so proud of.

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