Streamlining Procurement for Effective Execution and Delivery and National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026

Floor Speech

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Mr. CISNEROS. Madam Chair, I rise in opposition to this amendment.

Madam Chair, I thank the gentleman for recognizing me. This highly partisan amendment would prevent DOD from contracting with entities that perform fact-checking for recruitment purposes.

Explain to me how we are enhancing national security, deterring our adversaries, and, most importantly, increasing servicemember quality- of-life needs by going after a contract.

In my previous role, I oversaw recruiting for the military services. Never did one of them ever come to me stating they couldn't recruit because of this tool.

As the gentleman said, it had to do with COVID. It was because the services weren't putting money into their recruiting budgets. That is why recruiting went down.

It is amendments like this that not only put our national security at risk but make this bipartisan process crumble before us in the House.

Madam Chair, do you know who loves to feed this information through sites that don't fact-check? Russia, Iran, the People's Republic of China, and other adversaries do.

Republican leadership has continued to fail the American people by making this bipartisan bill a rightwing culture war process. When we should be debating the administration deploying Active-Duty servicemembers on U.S. citizens in our cities or managing the destructive mess Hegseth and Trump have turned the Pentagon into, we are dealing with this nonsense.

Madam Chair, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this amendment.

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