Providing for Consideration of H.R. Streamlining Procurement for Effective Execution and Delivery and National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year and Providing for Consideration of H.R. Stop Illegal Entry Act of 2025

Floor Speech

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Mr. OBERNOLTE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time.

Mr. Speaker, as we debate the rule providing for consideration of amendments to this year's National Defense Authorization Act, I rise to highlight a critically important issue from my district and to offer an amendment that would solve the problem.

Mr. Speaker, I represent a vast district in southern California. Among the five military bases that I represent is the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms. This is a critically important national asset where large-scale training operations are conducted that are available nowhere else in the world.

Recently, the Marine Corps has proposed to expand the scale of operations and training at that base, which I fully support. To accomplish that expansion would require an expansion of the restricted airspace that is above those training operations.

We want to make sure the Marine Corps has access to all of the airspace they need to conduct their operations, but, Mr. Speaker, they are going about it in an extremely troubling way.

They are proposing to create a new restricted area over this airspace which would restrict the public's access to that effectively full time, despite the fact that the Marine Corps only proposes to make use of this airspace 60 or fewer days every year. That is less than 20 percent of the time, Mr. Speaker.

The problem with this is it is going to have a devastating impact on four local area airports, as well as operations in the adjacent Johnson Valley, which is home to the King of the Hammers, one of the largest off-road races in the world and one in which over 80,000 spectators enjoy every year in my district.

These operations will be in jeopardy if the public is restricted from accessing that airspace.

Mr. Speaker, the Marine Corps has other options for getting use of this airspace. For example, they could declare a temporary flight restriction on the days that they propose to use it, which would be communicated to all of the local users of the airspace, or, Mr. Speaker, they could better and more effectively communicate when they are using that airspace to other airspace users so the public would be aware when the military needed the airspace and when the public had access to that.

In fact, we have already directed them to do exactly that. In the National Defense Authorization Act in 2021, we directed the Department of Defense and the FAA to work together to develop a system to digitally inform the public when restricted airspace was activated and when the public was welcome to use deactivated airspace. They were given 6 months to do that. Mr. Speaker, this is not reinventing the wheel. This delivery already exists for temporary flight restrictions. This would just be extending it to the restricted areas.

Mr. Speaker, 4 years later now, the DOD and the FAA have still not acted on this.

My amendment simply conditions the Marine Corps' issuance of a new restricted area on compliance with the direction of Congress that we have already given them 4 years ago to create this new information sharing.

Mr. Speaker, I urge adoption of my amendment and that it be made in order to solve this problem.

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