Wildlife Innovation and Longevity Driver Reauthorization Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. McCOLLUM. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2025 (NDAA).

It is with regret that I must oppose this legislation that sets policy for the Department of Defense. I do want to acknowledge the work that Ranking Member Smith and the Armed Services conferees did to remove many of the worst social policy riders contained in the version of this legislation that passed the House earlier this year, however, I have three problems that leave me unable to support the legislation today.

First, I want to address concerns I have long had with how the authorizers on the Armed Services Committee use the NDAA to constrain the Appropriations Committee in our work to responsibly fund the Department of Defense. In the House, I serve as the Ranking Member of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, which has the responsibility to allocate annual funding for the Department of Defense. As appropriators, we have a statutory defense budget cap under the Fiscal Responsibility Act that we must meet. Absent an action by Congress, we cannot appropriate beyond what the law allows. Unfortunately, while this NDAA conforms to the level of Fiscal Responsibility Act, it sets defense spending expectations that in the short-term will complicate appropriators while we work to complete the Fiscal Year 2025 Defense Appropriations Act. In the long-term it does nothing to control the unsustainable trajectory of defense spending that must at some point be confronted.

Let me provide an example of this clash of unsustainable spending priorities within our national security budget. That is the challenge of balancing support for our military personnel and their families with resourcing the rest of the defense budget. To be very clear, I have always supported pay raises for our troops. I worked with the Department of Defense to appropriately fund them when I was Chair of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee in the 117th Congress. I also improved funding for the Basic Allowance for Housing, Basic Allowance for Subsistence, childcare services, and safer barracks. But this NDAA includes a 4.5 percent pay raise for all service members, and an additional pay raise beyond that for junior enlisted service members that totals 14.5 percent. Appropriations will need to find the resources this fiscal year and in future fiscal years, to cover this cost. I also have concerns with how this could impact the balance of the entire military pay scale.

But we know that the quality-of-life concerns for military families go well beyond pay. Critically important things like affordable housing, quality healthcare, and childcare access must be addressed. And we know that the dramatically rising costs of resourcing our military personnel must be balanced against our other national security priorities. Among those include supporting the development of innovative defense technologies, fixing a fundamentally broken shipbuilding industry, modernizing major weapons programs, and ensuring our troops have the best training and equipment possible so that they can complete their missions and come home safely. We also live in a world of significant geopolitical conflict. That requires additional resources to fund U.S. operations overseas that were not planned for during the development of the Pentagon's annual budget.

This NDAA includes language requiring the Department and the Services to implement plans to get programs like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the Sentinel Program, or our fundamentally broken shipbuilding process under control. Based on my own experience with these programs, I question whether these efforts in the NDAA will be successful. But I do know that Congress cannot afford to wait any longer to fix a broken Pentagon acquisition process that produces delays and cost overruns in these and other programs.

Unfortunately, the costs of accepting this process are now running headfirst into the rising costs of increased military personnel pay and supporting quality-of-life improvement programs for military families. None of this is sustainable in the long-term, and it will fall to the appropriators to balance the dollars. At some point, Congress must stand up and make quicker and tougher decisions when it comes to festering procurement problems in the Department of Defense. We must fix our broken defense acquisition process and stop boxing the Appropriations Committee into corners.

Second, I am disappointed that this legislation includes a provision allowing the Air Force to transfer certain Air National Guard personnel with space missions to the Space Force absent consultation with the Governors. The precedent this will set in upending the Governor's authority over their National Guards is deeply concerning to me, and I made that clear in hearings the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee had with the Reserve Component and the Department of the Air Force. That is also why nearly every Governor in the United States opposes this proposal. As a former member of the Minnesota House of Representatives, I worked at the state level with the Minnesota National Guard to provide them with the necessary state resources to do their jobs. So, it is unfortunate to see that the Air Force failed to follow a collaborative process with the Governors in advancing their legislative proposal in Congress. If they had, I think we could have found an outcome that satisfied all parties. I believe by accepting the more expansive Senate version of this language, that the Armed Services Committee has made a serious error they will regret.

Finally, I am deeply opposed to Speaker Johnson's eleventh-hour insertion of a controversial provision that was not included in the House version of the bill which would prohibit TRICARE from providing gender affirming health care to children in military families. This language is discriminatory. It is a signal to military families with transgender children that their service is not valued. Make no mistake, it will force service members to choose between continuing their own military service or providing their families with the health care they need and deserve. The language is also overly broad, and it is not clear what the text of the bill defines as ``medical interventions for the treatment of gender dysphoria that could result in sterilization.'' No one knows exactly what this means. But it will prevent the teenager of a service member, who is facing great health care challenges, from getting the physical and mental health support that they need. The decisions on how the TRICARE regulations will be written will be made by bureaucrats in Washington, not families and their doctors. Republicans in Congress should get their heads out of the personal lives of our military families and worry more about providing our service members with the support they need to perform their missions effectively and come home safely.

Mr. Speaker, again I am disappointed that I cannot support the legislation today. I urge my colleagues to vote no on this bill so we can get a more bipartisan compromise NDAA.

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