Streamlining Procurement for Effective Execution and Delivery and National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026
Floor Speech
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Mr. McCORMICK. Mr. Chair, I rise in strong opposition to Ms. Greene's amendment to eliminate funding for the Taiwan Security Cooperation Initiative.
I know that my colleague is trying to save money and put America first, and I respect that, but defunding support to Taiwan that was requested by the Trump administration has consequences that would do exactly the opposite of what I believe the gentlewoman is trying to achieve.
Peace through strength saves money, saves lives, and puts American interests first. President Trump recognized that, which is why he requested Congress double the funding for this program to preserve peace in a critically important region.
Trade in the Indo-Pacific accounts for about 40 percent of the world's GDP. Around 21 percent of the global trade passes through the Taiwan Straits, including 40 percent of the world's container fleet. The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company produces 90 percent of the world's AI chips, which are crucial to the American economy.
A war in this region would be a global catastrophe. Our Taiwanese allies are already awaiting overdue delivery of American military supplies.
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Mr. McCORMICK. Mr. Chair, they are waiting for supplies they have already paid for. This amendment sends the wrong signal at the worst time. A withdrawal of our support would defeat Trump's initiatives to shore up this critically important part of the world, save us money, save us ultimate deficit spending in defense of a region that we need to critically supply.
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Mr. McCORMICK. Madam Chair, I rise and offer my amendment No. 25 to H.R. 3838, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026.
My amendment expands on language already in law, in this bill, and in the Senate NDAA to combat the indirect censorship of conservative news outlets in the Department of War.
Section 1555 of the fiscal year 2024 NDAA required that the DOD, when contracting with organizations that place military recruitment advertisements, must certify that an organization does not place advertisements based on political bias or the determination that a media outlet spreads so-called misinformation.
The language is necessary because the DOD, or now the Department of War, has contracted with organizations such as NewsGuard and the Global Disinformation Index.
According to the Media Research Center, the average NewsGuard score for the left and lean-left outlets was a green shield rating of 91 of 100, while the average rating for the right and lean-right outlets was a low of 66 of 100.
A Global Disinformation Index report on the online news lists the 10 riskiest online news outlets as the New York Post, The Federalist, The Blaze, The Daily Wire, Newsmax, One America News Network, The American Spectator, The American Conservative, Reason Magazine, and RealClear Politics. They are all conservative.
Left-leaning sites like ProPublica.com, NPR.org, NewYorkTimes.com, WashingtonPost.com, BuzzFeedNews.com, and HuffingtonPost.com were among the 10 lowest risk online news sites.
We should not be excluding large swaths of Americans simply because they watch or read conservative news, especially when considering that recruiting is hard enough without excluding this demographic.
My amendment adds language to clarify the standards on what exact bias looks like, as well as by striking the 1-year sunset included in subsection (c).
This language is already in the Senate NDAA. I thank Senator Tuberville for his leadership in pushing this forward. I ask for my colleagues' support on amendment No. 25.
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Mr. McCORMICK. Madam Chair, I find it rather distracting that my peer on the other side of the aisle thinks that one person controls the truth. That, by and large, he thinks that conservative media is lying and that liberal media is telling the truth.
The fact of the matter is, during the Biden administration when all of this came to be, where we start fact-checking, recruiting went down miserably. We had a recruiting problem we have never seen in America since the Vietnam war. We had a problem getting the Army up to par. The only service that made their recruiting goals was the United States Marine Corps. I would like to say it is because of their amazing commercials, but I am sure it is far more than that.
What we know is they have a job to do. We are hurting the recruitment efforts by taking out a demographic based on your idea of what is accurate and truthful, rather than doing your job of bringing people into the military to make sure that we are sustaining a lethal force moving forward. That is our goal. That is as American as you get, and it is not a partisan issue.
Trying to figure out which news agency should be advertised on, based on your idea of what the truth is, is really a side-note argument that should be kept in this room, not on the political front in front of the future soldiers, marines, sailors, and airmen that we need to sustain our force.
Madam Chair, I would say, since we instituted this bill last year: Guess what? Maybe it is because we have a new President or maybe it is because we can now advertise to the people who are most likely to join our Armed Services.
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Mr. McCORMICK. Madam Chair, I love the fact the other side just said that it is factual that COVID is the reason we couldn't recruit.
When I came into Congress, we had the President of the United States say we can take off masks, that the pandemic is over. For the first 2 years of my service here in Congress, the pandemic was over. Yet we could not recruit.
Therefore, I want to point out that the gentleman literally put misinformation in his argument, which proves my point. Should I censor him from being able to present his case right here in front of the American people? No, I would say not. He is allowed to give us misinformation like he just did.
COVID was over. We couldn't recruit. Then we changed the law. We changed the President. We have mass recruiting efforts being reinforced. It was downright misinformation just to say that COVID didn't allow us to recruit. We have seen that in recent history.
The pandemic has been over for 2 years now. It didn't change until we had a new President and new laws. That was misinformation. To my point, they interpret their misinformation. I interpret mine.
Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
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