National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2014

Floor Speech

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Mr. LARSEN of Washington. Mr. Chairman, if this amendment passes, we will strip away one of the main tools that we have in the defense budget to ensure that small businesses continue to be part of the defense industrial base.

The Rapid Innovation Fund was created a couple of years ago in order to ensure that small businesses that had technology, that had resources to help the war fighter could get funding to develop that technology to develop those resources and get service to the warfighter sooner rather than later.

In 2011 alone, over 3,500 white papers were submitted and evaluated--proposals for the Rapid Innovation Fund--3,500. Two hundred final proposals were invited. Out of that total 3,500, 177 awards were made, 95 percent of which went to small businesses, 80 percent to current or prior SBIR participants; and the average product value of $2.2 million, awards to companies in 32 States and in the District of Columbia.

This is an important program to help small businesses continue to be part of the defense industrial base. We should not strip RIF funding out of the bill. If we are going to deal with operations and maintenance, let's do what everybody on the committee wants to do: let's stop the sequester, replace the sequester with something more balanced to ensure that the O&M accounts, as well as great programs like RIF, are funded.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. LARSEN of Washington. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

In conclusion, I would ask my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this amendment. I think we have made a good case. I think folks have heard the argument.

Just a final note. The defense business panel that Mr. Shuster of Pennsylvania spoke of, we did travel around the country, talking to small businesses all around the country in many States; and everywhere we heard that this is the program, the Rapid Innovation Fund is the program that they see as most valuable. They want us to keep this in place.

I would ask my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this amendment, and with that I yield back the balance of my time.

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Mr. LARSEN of Washington. Mr. Chair, I'd encourage our colleagues to vote ``no'' on this amendment. The amendment implies that the President is negotiating some secret deal with Russia that would weaken U.S. security for the ideological pursuit of nuclear weapons reductions.

Now, we know the President has the constitutional power to conduct formulations, and Congress has the authority to provide advice and consent to ratification and to deny funding for any implementation of any treaty. The administration has provided regular briefings and has supplied senior State and Defense officials over here to our committee and to the House Foreign Affairs Committee and informed us on talks on Russia.

This amendment also is not necessary. The bill already contains numerous provisions asking for information on U.S.-Russian missile defense cooperation and blocking nuclear weapons reductions. So I'd ask my colleagues to oppose this amendment.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. LARSEN of Washington. Mr. Chairman, again, I would ask my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this amendment.

We have heard from this side not just the content of this amendment being sort of out of whack with reality, but also when we consider whether or not it's necessary to commit a case, this is not a necessary amendment given the provisions that are already in H.R. 1960.

So I ask my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this amendment and yield back the balance of my time.

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Mr. LARSEN of Washington. Mr. Chairman, this amendment would restore funding for commonsense nuclear weapons reductions that have already been approved with the advice and consent of the Senate and that the Navy and the Air Force have planned for fiscal year 2014.

The $70 million cut in the bill keeps nuclear weapons at Cold War levels, and denying fiscal year '14 funding risks the United States missing the deadline for treaty compliance as there will be insufficient lead time for procurement and installation to support conversion efforts to implement the reductions required by 2018, the date of entry into force.

This amendment is funded by an offset of $50 million from DARPA's space technology program due to the recently terminated System F6, which was aimed to distribute functions of big satellites into several small ones orbiting in tight formation--so this funding is available--and $20 million from the $2.1 billion in the Office of the Secretary of Defense O&M funds which pays OSD staff. This is a 1 percent cut with minimal impact, as the Secretary of Defense has indicated that he intends to make cuts to overhead.

So I urge my colleagues to support this amendment.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. LARSEN of Washington. Mr. Chairman, if this amendment passes, we will strip away one of the main tools that we have in the defense budget to ensure that small businesses continue to be part of the defense industrial base.

The Rapid Innovation Fund was created a couple of years ago in order to ensure that small businesses that had technology, that had resources to help the war fighter could get funding to develop that technology to develop those resources and get service to the warfighter sooner rather than later.

In 2011 alone, over 3,500 white papers were submitted and evaluated--proposals for the Rapid Innovation Fund--3,500. Two hundred final proposals were invited. Out of that total 3,500, 177 awards were made, 95 percent of which went to small businesses, 80 percent to current or prior SBIR participants; and the average product value of $2.2 million, awards to companies in 32 States and in the District of Columbia.

This is an important program to help small businesses continue to be part of the defense industrial base. We should not strip RIF funding out of the bill. If we are going to deal with operations and maintenance, let's do what everybody on the committee wants to do: let's stop the sequester, replace the sequester with something more balanced to ensure that the O&M accounts, as well as great programs like RIF, are funded.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

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