Providing for Further Consideration of H.R. 1960, National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2014

Floor Speech

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Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you, Mr. McGovern.

I want to follow up on the previous comments.

A strong case was made for changing the way in which rape is handled and sexual assault is handled, but it doesn't go far enough. Unfortunately, the rule doesn't allow for a full discussion and a full vote by the House on this very, very important issue being brought to us by my colleague from California (Ms. Speier). We need to have that debate here. We need to really go outside the chain of command for the most important piece, and that is the charging of the incident.

Beyond that, the Rules Committee did pick up an issue that I put forward. The Afghan National Army is going to receive $7.7 billion in this legislation. Unfortunately, $2.6 billion has been added to last year's money, and there is no indication as to how that $2.6 billion will be spent. So the Rules Committee did adopt my amendment, and it will be en bloc. It deals with: we can't spend that money until we find out how it is going to be spent, which is the basic policy that we apply to every military acquisition in our own military.

The east coast missile defense site remains and is not to be debated on the floor. That's unfortunate. It's $2.25 million this year and more in the future. Language in this bill about Syria ought to be debated on the floor. Fortunately, it will. We are going to also debate the authorization to use force.

We need that debate. Unfortunately, in the committee markup, only moments were spent on the Afghanistan war, and more than $80 billion will be spent there.

At a time when we are reducing our forces by 40 percent, we're actually spending at least as much as we're spending in the current year. Why? We need to ask that question. Why are we spending that amount of money as we reduce our forces? It was not discussed at all during the markup. We need that full debate on the floor. And therefore, for these reasons, I oppose the rule.

We must debate this $700 billion bill in full.

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