Streamlining Procurement for Effective Execution and Delivery and National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026
Floor Speech
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I rise in opposition to the amendment.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I yield myself 2 minutes.
Mr. Chair, there are going to be five amendments now that are all targeting the transgender community. I want to make sure we understand a couple of really sort of broad themes and why these amendments are so problematic.
Number one is the transgender community has been targeted and discriminated against aggressively. If my colleagues troll through rightwing radio or online messaging, they are called freaks and weirdos. They are dehumanized on a very consistent basis in a way that has led to violence and discrimination against the transgender community.
On all five of these amendments--just put a little exclamation point on that--it encourages the dehumanization of transgender people in a way that is very, very dangerous. That is number one.
Number two is transgender people exist. That is just a fact. Gender dysphoria is a medical fact. No serious medical person disagrees on that point. It is not even debatable. There are a couple of things that are debatable.
What do we do about it? What treatments are appropriate, given the set of circumstances? Personally, I think it is wide open to have that conversation. What should the medical profession do?
Second, when there is a transgender woman or a transgender man, how does that work in terms of sports and a wide variety of different things with women's sports or men's sports? We can have a conversation about how to fit that in.
Acting like transgender people don't exist further contributes to their dehumanization and the discrimination against them. None of these amendments before us today are even remotely necessary. They are simply an effort to take advantage of a culture war, partisan issue to drive a wedge into this bill. Does it belong here?
On this particular amendment, for a servicemember who has a child experiencing gender dysphoria, what this amendment says is that child doesn't actually exist. That is not really happening.
How is it going to make a servicemember feel when they are trying to take care of their child? I have met with children who went through gender dysphoria and who credit the treatment they received for absolutely saving their lives.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I yield myself an additional 1 minute.
Mr. Chair, do they sometimes make mistakes?
I always like to say, I have had three hip surgeries including two total hip replacements. I probably didn't need any of them. It was probably a mistake. I don't see anybody on the floor talking about banning hip replacements because occasionally one is done wrong. That happens.
This decision should be made by doctors and patients. It should not be made by Congressmen and legislators. This is restricting healthcare that could be incredibly necessary for young people and also for other family members. It is bigoted, discriminatory, and unnecessary. I hope this body will turn it down.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, may I inquire as to the time remaining.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I yield myself 1 minute for three quick points.
Number one, this does not restrict medical treatment for anybody else. It has nothing to do with this whatsoever.
Second of all, this doesn't just eliminate sex-change operations. This very specifically eliminates any treatment for gender dysphoria. A lot of times, that is mental health treatment. That is not surgery, and that is not drugs. That is a conversation about that issue. It eliminates it for everybody.
Third, yes, we need to put our servicemembers in the best position to focus on their mission and the fight. If you are a servicemember overseas, Mr. Chair, stationed and fighting, and you have a child who is experiencing gender dysphoria and told that your child, who is in a very dangerous situation, cannot get the healthcare that they need, that is not going to help that servicemember be the best possible fighter they can be for this country.
We should not be denying healthcare to the family members of our servicemembers that they need, and that is what this amendment does.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Again, Mr. Chair, we are not talking about sex-change operations. This is just another example of the profound ignorance surrounding treatment for gender dysphoria. We are talking about any treatment.
Mr. Chair, I yield the balance of my time to the gentlewoman from Hawaii (Ms. Tokuda).
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I yield myself 1 minute.
First of all, I thank the maker of this amendment for making it clear what the problem is: ``trannies,'' ``mentally ill,'' and insulting transgender people. This is exactly what these amendments are about.
It is about a rightwing culture war to try to target the transgender community and make them something less than human. If you listen to those comments, Mr. Chair, you can get a feel for why that is a problem.
Number two, this amendment does not have anything to do with transgender people serving in the military. President Trump has already implemented that bigoted, discriminatory policy to drive them out of the military.
This is about healthcare for children experiencing gender dysphoria. What this amendment does is it bans that healthcare treatment for children experiencing gender dysphoria.
I made a series of arguments on the other amendment about why that is such a bad idea, but the bottom line is this is a legitimate problem. The studies have often shown that this is beneficial treatment that is now being denied by the United States Congress.
This is something that doctors and patients should decide. If we want to offer an amendment saying, ``Please look at this issue. Here are some studies on one side or the other,'' and ask the medical community to reach conclusions, then that is one thing, but banning it doesn't make sense.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Current law bans sterilization, so that is just a lot of crap about what this is about. Current law bans what she is talking about. What is being banned here is any treatment for gender dysphoria, and that is completely wrong.
Mr. Chair, I yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Jacobs).
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, may I inquire as to the time remaining.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I yield to the gentlewoman from Vermont (Ms. Balint).
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I rise in opposition to the amendment.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I yield myself 1 minute.
This amendment would be very destructive to achieving peace in Ukraine. I agree with the gentlewoman; that should be the goal.
What has been clear for quite some time is that Putin will only stop his war when it is clear that he cannot achieve his objectives in Ukraine.
President Trump showing weakness on that issue, literally rolling out the red carpet for Putin, has only made the war worse. Ever since President Trump has tried to blame the war on Zelenskyy and Ukraine, Putin has ramped up the war, launching more aggressive attacks than he ever has in the 3\1/2\ years of the war, and most recently, sending drones over Poland, as well.
Weakness invites aggression, and I know the proponent of this amendment has said this many, many times, but apparently she doesn't recognize weakness when she sees it. That is what cutting off Ukraine does.
If you want to stop the war, back the 53-nation coalition that is supporting Ukraine and make it clear to Putin he is not going to win. That forces him to the peace table. Showing weakness, backing off, undermining the coalition only extends the war.
Please defeat this amendment.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, sadly, the gentlewoman has had a big part in it. She just voted for a budget that would add $4 trillion to the debt, so I don't know that that is a particularly consistent position.
Mr. Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Bacon).
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, may I inquire as to how much time is remaining.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Courtney).
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, no more money for Ukraine will not end the war. This is absolutely in the interests of United States' national security.
Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Turner).
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I am prepared to close.
Mr. Chairman, I agree with all of the arguments that were made. I think the most crucial point here is that the United States of America is the most economically powerful country in the history of the world. That has been the case since the end of World War II. A large part of that is because of our efforts to work with the rest of the world to maintain peace and security.
Sadly, it just doesn't end at our borders. Peace and security in the world is in the best interests of the American people, and we see the economic prosperity that we have enjoyed because of it. That is what Ukraine is about and why we should continue to support them.
Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I yield myself 2 minutes.
Mr. Chair, basically, what this amendment says, as the gentlewoman was saying, is that we are a compassionate nation. She is saying that she wishes we weren't, basically, and that we need to stop being a compassionate nation.
This is $115 million. I will remind everybody that the budget bill that the gentlewoman and the sponsor of this amendment voted for added $4 trillion to the debt. Why don't we start there?
There is a basic argument here: Why does the U.S. engage in foreign aid? There are four real arguments for that.
Number one, economics: Again, we are the most economically powerful nation in the world. We have the largest economy. We benefited the most. If we can help other countries generate economies, we have access to those markets. They will buy our stuff. It grows our economy. It has worked spectacularly well for 80 years.
Number two, disease and health: Sadly, those things don't know borders. Ebola and a variety of different other diseases can spread and come back here. If we work with the rest of the world to prevent it before it comes here, that is to our benefit.
The third is a matter of national security and safety. Mr. Chair, 9/ 11 happened because things were going wrong in other parts of the world, and they came here. It absolutely impacted people in the United States of America. The idea that this has no impact on our citizens doesn't matter. It just fails to recognize that it is not the 19th century anymore. It is a globally connected world that impacts us.
The last argument I would make, Make America Great Again: We are supposed to be the most compassionate nation. As we run around the world telling everybody how great we are, how much we are better than everybody else in the world, this amendment basically says: Screw you. We don't care.
We should be a great nation. We should be willing to set aside $115 million in a $14 trillion economy to help other parts of the world that are less fortunate than us. If we want to make that claim, then we ought to live up to it to at least this tiny little degree.
Mr. Chair, this is a heartless and uncompassionate amendment. Please defeat it.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Jacobs).
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I yield myself the balance of my time.
Mr. Chair, there are two aspects. One is a budget debate, and it is fascinating. We are having this passionate debate about $115 million, and we didn't, apparently, have that debate when we passed the budget resolution that the sponsor of this amendment voted for that added $4 trillion to the debt.
All those passionate speeches about the debt, the deficit, and its impacts are absolutely real, but how can you ignore that and vote for the $4 trillion debt and be all passionate about $115 million?
Also, it is not true that we do nothing for the American people. It is somewhere around a $6.5 trillion budget. This is $115 million. Let's not act like we are not funding those other priorities. We are funding those other priorities.
The second piece of this is, does this benefit the United States of America to spend this money to help the rest of the world deal with disasters? As I explained earlier, it 100 percent does.
Would it make sense for us, as the gentlewoman has suggested we are doing, to fund every single crisis all around the world? No, it wouldn't, and we don't.
We spend $115 million to try to help the rest of the world with public health disasters and natural disasters, which does benefit us.
All the arguments about the debt and the deficit, please don't take those seriously from a group of people who just voted for increasing the debt by $4 trillion. This is $115 million that is absolutely in the best interest of the United States of America. It will help us.
Mr. Chair, please defeat this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Madam Chair, I yield myself 2 minutes.
We have dealt with this issue on a number of levels. It is already in the underlying bill. This expands it to any organization that is deemed to be engaging in fact-checking. Basically what this amendment has done--and it is in law from last year; now we are making it permanent and expanding it--is basically if you are an organization that checks for factual accuracy, we don't want to do business with you, which is just a remarkable statement in terms of how we approach this. I think we should want people to check facts.
For example, it is not the Department of War. It is the Department of Defense. It is in the statute. It is the law. The President can say whatever he wants to say, but the law still says it is the Department of Defense. If he wants to put into the law that he is going to change that, that is fine; but it is factually inaccurate to say that it is the Department of War.
Yes, the statistics seem to show that rightwing news agencies score lower on factual accuracy. There are two reasons possible for why that happens. One is the bias that the gentleman, the maker of the amendment, says. The other is that they are more likely to be factually inaccurate, which seems to be the more likely outcome.
I also want to make clear, we are not excluding anything. In fact, this amendment is what excludes things. If you are an organization that checks facts, we are going to exclude you from who we are going to do business with.
I would just let out a heavy sigh at this moment about how do you engage in that sort of conversation? If you want to take a close look at this and say: The way you are checking for factual accuracy, we think it is wrong. We don't think you are being fair. We don't think you are doing this right. Okay. Fine.
Now we are just going to say: Don't look. Don't check. Don't think about it. It is your truth.
We are going to go with--the leftwing version of this is: Your truth is as much truth as anybody else's. The rightwing version of this is: We are going with alternative facts.
I still want to live in the factual universe. If you join me in that cause, let's defeat this amendment.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Madam Chair, I would make a couple of quick points.
Madam Chair, first of all, I am not remotely saying the left is right and the right is wrong or anything like that. This amendment says we are not going to even examine the question. That is the problem I have. I fully admit the left is wrong frequently. I think we ought to factually check that. Here, we are saying don't factually check that.
While we are on the subject of facts, COVID played a little bit of a role in our recruitment problem. I don't think anyone who is being fair about analysis would dispute that. Again, here we hear: Oh, no, it wasn't COVID. It was the fact that, where we advertised, we didn't place it here.
Madam Chair, come on. COVID is what impacted our recruitment, which is why I think we should allow people to check facts. It is not that the left is always right. They are frequently not. Believe me. I live those arguments back home in my district, and I argue the other side of it. I just think we should at least try and figure it out.
Madam Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Cisneros).
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Madam Chair, may I inquire as to how much time is remaining.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Madam Chair, actually he made my point. He just fact-checked me. Good for him. I disagree, which I will get to in a second, but he fact-checked me.
What their amendment does is it doesn't allow that. It just allows it to hang out there. They can't fact-check it.
The facts are recruitment picked up a year before Trump came back in office. We all know this. Recruitment improved for a long time. There was a bit of a lag in time, yes, until 2022 and 2023. They caught up with the lag. Recruitment improved for a year before Trump showed up in office. It continues to do well.
I would say that that argues it was, in fact, COVID that drove it. I would love to have that discussion. I would love to have people check out facts and have a debate and not cut off all fact-checking.
Madam Chair, I ask my colleagues to please oppose this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. I claim the time in opposition, though I am not opposed.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment, even though I am not opposed to it.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I have no opposition to the amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Davidson).
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Houlahan).
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I yield myself the balance of my time to close.
There are three things I want to do in the closing here. First of all, I want to really recognize the efforts of all of the staff that were involved in bringing us to this point to get the bill to the floor: certainly the House Armed Services Committee staff, and the bipartisan staff, ably led on both sides of the aisle.
This is a long process. Thousands of amendments are generated, thousands more ideas that they have to work their way through to get the bill through the markup and get it to the floor.
Certainly, the Rules Committee staff works overtime processing all those amendments, as well as the floor staff. I thank them all very much for putting up with this. This process was not as bad as it has been in the past. I am not sure that is a good thing, but there was a lot less stuff that came out here.
Everyone has to do so much work on this to make this happen, so I really thank the staff for their incredible work. It is a fine testimony to how vital government employees are to making our country run, and I really appreciate that.
Second, I thank Chairman Rogers, all of the members of the House Armed Services Committee, and their respective staffs for the product we produced out of committee. It was a bipartisan product that really focused on what we needed to do to make the Defense Department better and make sure that we support the men and women who serve in the military.
There are all manner of external issues that really are focused more on partisan advantage one way or the other that typically get thrust at us. We resisted that and stayed focused on the policy. It is not that there aren't disagreements on that policy, even partisan disagreements, where Republicans tend to be in one place and Democrats tend to be in the other. However, it was all around the focus of what is the best way to run the Department of Defense, and that is a legitimate debate to have. Chairman Rogers handled that incredibly well. It was a very fair debate, a fair discussion, and we produced what I think was an excellent product.
It is worth remembering what is in that base bill. The single biggest thing is acquisition reform, which is every little bit as important as it is boring to talk about. It is hard to dive into the details of who is making this decision, the other decision.
The bottom line is, it just takes too long now to buy the equipment, to update and get the innovative technologies that we need in the modern world. The pace of change has never been this rapid--AI, drones, counterdrones, all manner of different technologies. We have got to get those in the hands of the warfighter vastly more quickly and vastly less expensively than we currently do, and the focus in this bill is absolutely right to deal with this.
We also continue to prioritize quality-of-life issues for the men and women who serve in our military and their families, as well we should. There are a lot of very good provisions in that bill, and we produced that product.
The Rules process was a different thing. It was a very, very partisan exercise in which if Republicans made requests, they got them, including the weird little thing that we just went through with some financial services issue, which I don't understand why that is in our bill. It shouldn't be. Well, I do understand why it is in our bill, because the Speaker has a very difficult time saying no to people that he ought to say no to. We need to work on that.
That created a partisan process out of what was a bipartisan process. In and of itself, that is problematic because what it means is Democrats do not get to adequately participate in the process. We didn't get any of the amendments in the debates that we wanted, not a single, solitary one. Meanwhile, all manner of different issues that are pure culture war, partisan issues were allowed in. I fear that many of those are going to pass. We will see. If those amendments are defeated, we will wind up in a different place, but if they pass, we will have a bill that is no longer bipartisan.
This year, as Ms. Houlahan just highlighted, there is one particular thing that was problematic, and that is we are not exercising oversight of the Chief Executive in the manner in which we should. We have become vastly more partisan in that regard as well. I have served under--I am going to lose track of how many Presidents. I think it is five now. Every single one of those, Republicans would always have complaints about a Republican President and Democrats would have complaints about a Democratic President, now not as many as would go the other way, to be sure. But there were always efforts when we would, on a bipartisan basis, say no, the executive branch shouldn't do that. We are going to stand up for Congress.
This is the first term I have ever seen that completely silenced. There is no effort whatsoever for Congress to criticize anything the President does. That is a problem. That upsets the balance of power, the checks and balances that were put in place by our Founders to make sure that we continue to be a constitutional Republic, a Nation based on the Constitution and laws, not on any one individual.
We see that played out most starkly with the way the United States military is currently being used in our cities, in Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and even the specter of the President threatening the city of Chicago that he will invade them like a scene from ``Apocalypse Now.'' That should trouble everybody. I don't care whether you are conservative, Democrat, Independent, Republican, liberal, whatever. You should be troubled, even if, by the way, as I do, you have profound concerns about crime in our areas.
I have profound concerns about the way some of those cities are using the criminal justice system. I have concerns in my own area.
I have concerns in my own area. The answer to that is not sending in the United States military.
The way I have come to sum it up is: Crime is a problem. Fascism isn't the answer. More police and stronger communities, that is the answer.
We need to exercise oversight on that because it violates the law. It also undermines the readiness of the United States military. They are supposed to be trained to defend us against our enemies and adversaries, not to engage in domestic law enforcement. We should have a conversation about that and exercise oversight.
We also have the problem with the whole Signalgate thing, where classified information was shared in a way that it should not be shared, and there should be no disagreement on that. We didn't exercise oversight on that either, so stepping aside from all of these issues, simply letting the President do what he wants to do.
Then, internationally, the last point, this attack on that boat down in the Caribbean is incredibly problematic. This is an expansion of the war powers of the President that we have never seen before.
If the President has the power on his own, without even notifying Congress, much less with us exercising any oversight of it, to declare war on any drug cartel in the world whenever he wants to, then our Constitution, Article I, pretty much ceases to have meaning.
We just had an amendment to repeal the AUMFs. I listened to some of those arguments. I support that amendment. I think it was a good argument. The argument was for Article I, for the United States Congress playing a role. We have abdicated that role at this point in a way that we have never done before.
That is a problem. It is something that the Rules Committee should have permitted us to really debate through a series of amendments on the floor, and they did not. I am troubled by that. We will see how the amendment process goes.
Again, beneath all of that is a really good bill that a lot of very good people worked very hard to produce. I hope that when we get through the end of this process and actually pass the bill and send it off to the President, we get that bill back, because it is really important that we pass it.
Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
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