National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2014

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, there are two very compelling reasons to oppose this amendment.

First of all, this is, again, not recognizing the reality of sequestration and the defense budget. The way Congress seems to have reacted to the reality of the fact that the defense budget has already been cut substantially and that because of sequestration--which nobody seems to want to put forward a plan to get rid of or certainly won't pass the House and the Senate--the defense budget is going to be cut. So the way Congress reacts is, okay, fine, but I have to protect mine. Don't close my base, don't shut down a ship, don't shut down a plane, and don't move anything out of the National Guard.

All of this is an effort to preserve, in these three States, their military presence, which means money. And I get that. But the Pentagon is going to have to reduce their budget. Every time we pass one of these things that says you can't do this and you can't save money here and you can't save money there, we are creating a hollow force. The Pentagon will not have the funds necessary to train our troops to be ready to perform the missions that we need to if they can't save money anywhere because Congress has stepped in and said you can't because it's mine and I don't want to give it up.

The second reason is we have well over 5,000 nuclear weapons. We will be amply able to scare the living crap out of everybody in the world for a very long time even if we reduce that somewhat and sensibly.

This amendment just cramps the ability of the Pentagon to make those types of sensible decisions. It will not eliminate our nuclear deterrence. Our nuclear deterrence is overwhelming. There is money to be saved in the nuclear programs. The Pentagon can sensibly do that. But here comes Congress, again, to say, I have to protect my own, and I don't care what it does to the budget.

Fiscal conservatives should not support this amendment. We've got to get our budget in order. We've got to do it logically, and logically is not ``protect mine and I don't care about the big picture.'' That's not the way to approach this budget if we're going to have an adequate national security.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. I yield myself such time as I may consume.

While I understand the importance of the Department of Defense's role in all this, there are other agencies that also have an important role.

The National Resources Committee minority has expressed concerns about this because the Bureau of Land Management has their interests, as well as a bunch of other Federal agencies. So this basically gives the Department of Defense a veto power over land use. I want to make sure that the Department of Defense's interests are looked after, but they're not the only interests that exists in our country. So a proper balance of those interests I think would be a proper approach. This amendment just says Department of Defense basically gets the ultimate veto, and I think that gives it too much power. So I'd prefer to see a more balanced approach and oppose the amendment.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time and just say I think the gentleman from Utah makes a very reasonable point. Certainly, one agency shouldn't be shutting something down that has a negative impact on another without consulting them. Perhaps if we work on this amendment to figure out some way where consultation is required, there is some sort of balance. It's just the way this amendment is written, it gives the Department of Defense the ability to do what the gentleman from Utah just said the other agency did, which is just whack it and not talk to anybody else.

So we're happy to continue to work on this going forward. In its present form, I am still opposed to it.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. I thank the gentleman from Massachusetts for his leadership on this issue.

My opinion is that we have done what we can do in Afghanistan. A substantial portion of the mission, which was very clear, was to try to contain the Taliban and contain al Qaeda so they could never again use it as a base to attack our country. And it is not easy work. As Mr. Jones pointed out, and others, there are many, many problems and challenges in Afghanistan, not the least of which is the corruption within the government.

Our goal has always been clear: whatever the minimum is to get a government that can stand and deny a safe haven to those who threaten America. That was a fight worth doing. But we have done what we can do. We have trained hundreds of thousands of Afghan national security forces, and it is time to turn that responsibility over to Afghanistan.

It will always be a challenging part of the world. In both Afghanistan and Pakistan, violent extremists are abundant, and we'll have to keep an eye on it. But we do not need to have the troop levels that we have now. We need to draw down in a very responsible way, and I think the gentleman's amendment lays out a plan to do that.

Therefore, I support it, and, again, I support him for his efforts to get us out of Afghanistan as soon as we responsibly can.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. I yield myself 2 minutes.

Mr. Chairman, make no mistake about it, even with this amendment, the President of the United States and the Department of Justice will still have the ability to indefinitely detain people captured in the U.S.--be they U.S. citizens or not--without the normal due process of law. Habeas will be available, but even with this increased standard, it is a very minimum standard; and it does not afford the normal article III court rights that are in the Constitution for everybody else. The President will still have the ability to indefinitely detain people here in the U.S.

This amendment is insufficient, first of all, to deal with the concerns that I think people legitimately have about excessive executive power over people in the U.S. The Executive will continue to maintain, under the Authorization for the Use of Military Force, the ability to indefinitely detain anyone who is deemed to be a covered person, an enemy combatant; and, yes, it is a slightly higher standard, but it is not the beyond-a-reasonable standard that is normally required to incarcerate somebody.

The President doesn't need this power. President Obama has never exercised it. President Bush only briefly exercised it in three instances. He doesn't need the power. But to keep it on the books is a threat to liberty and a threat to freedom here in the U.S.

The specific problem with this amendment is it carves out U.S. citizens, whereas the constitutional protections--and deliberately--were for any person. If you read the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, it doesn't say any U.S. citizen. It says any person.

Now, on habeas, you will have two different standards. You will have the standard to hold a noncitizen--which will be, I gather, still the preponderance of the evidence. The government will still have the presumption that what they're saying is true, but for a U.S. citizen you will have a different standard. That really messes with the Constitution.

There's a very simple way to do this. I will have an amendment in a couple of amendments that gets rid of the ability to indefinitely detain anyone captured in the U.S.--straight forward, no question, no weasel words, no back and forth between U.S. citizens and not. It gets rid of indefinite detention.

I would urge support for that amendment and opposition to this one, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. I yield myself the balance of my time.

There is no incentive for U.S. terrorists to come here. They are trying to attack us. But we capture them successfully, try them, and prosecute them.

Abdulmutallab came here. He was captured. Yes, he was Mirandized. Even after he was Mirandized, he gave out an enormous amount of information that was very helpful. We convicted him.

What this is essentially saying is that we don't trust the Department of Justice to do their job, so therefore we have to give the President the power to detain someone whether they have any evidence of a crime or not. If they come here, the Department of Justice does its job.

We have tried and convicted over 400 terrorists in this country successfully. The only incentive to come here is if they're not going to commit a crime. All of the inmates down at Guantanamo were not captured in the U.S. No one who has been captured in the U.S. as a terrorist have we failed to convict.

Let's trust the Constitution. The Constitution doesn't threaten us. The Constitution protects us. Let us use it, and use it to bring these terrorists to justice, as every single time we have successfully done.

I urge support for the amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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