Providing for Consideration of H.R. 4660, Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2015; and Providing for Consideration of H.R. 4435, Howard P. "Buck" McKeon National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015
Floor Speech
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Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, this is not a normal rule, but it is a fair one. It is unusual because it combines two bills into one rule and makes in order several amendments for one of the bills. What might be unusual for my Republican friends is that I will support it.
The rule makes in order the fiscal year 2015 Commerce-Justice-Science appropriations bill under an open rule. And although I wish the funding levels were higher, I believe it is a good thing to bring this bill to the floor under an open rule.
This rule also makes in order general debate on the annual defense authorization bill along with seven amendments. That is a little unusual. Normally, the Rules Committee reports two rules: one for general debate and one for consideration of amendments. Now, I don't have any problem with these amendments being made in order, but I will voice my strong concerns tomorrow if the Rules Committee fails to make in order many of the amendments submitted for consideration.
I would like to thank my distinguished colleagues, the chairman, Mr. McKeon, and the ranking member, Mr. Smith, of the Armed Services Committee for their leadership and their hard work in crafting this bill each year and for coming to a bipartisan agreement on so many of the serious matters contained in this bill.
This is a massive undertaking that touches on so many aspects of our defense and national security priorities and the health and the well-being of our military personnel and their families. But there are serious and substantive matters in this bill that we must debate over the next few days because they merit the attention of every single Member of this House.
First and foremost, H.R. 4435 fails to make many of the difficult choices required by our current budgetary constraints and fiscal reality. This is a half-trillion-dollar bill. That is trillion, with a t, Madam Speaker. It provides $513.4 billion in discretionary budget authority. $495.8 billion of that is for the Department of Defense base budget; another $17.6 billion for defense-related activities, mainly nuclear, within the Department of Energy; and another whopping $79.4 billion for the so-called overseas contingency operations, or OCO.
But according to the Congressional Budget Office, H.R. 4435 decreases direct spending by just $1 million in FY 2015. In a $500 billion bill, we can only find savings of $1 million? There is probably $1 million in the couch cushions at the Pentagon.
Madam Speaker, this Congress just cut $8 billion in the farm bill for the SNAP program. That is an $8 billion cut to help hungry families put food on their table. But we couldn't find more than $1 million next year from the Pentagon budget? Give me a break.
And if sequestration remains the law of the land, these funding levels simply will not stand, and another round of arbitrary reductions will harm our troops, our military civilian workforce, their families, and our military readiness. That is also unacceptable.
So I oppose, and I have always opposed, sequestration for both defense and nondefense programs. But putting forward a bill that fails to make any hard decisions on reducing spending authority is not a solution. In fact, it compounds the problem.
This brings me to Afghanistan, Madam Speaker, where we continue to squander lives and waste money. Since 2001, over 2,300 U.S. troops have been killed in Afghanistan. Nearly 20,000 have been wounded. We lost 127 brave soldiers just last year alone. Estimates are that around 30,000 Afghan civilians have been killed since 2001. And the VA estimates that approximately 22 veterans will die by suicide every day.
Since 2001, we have spent over $700 billion on this war. In this current year, fiscal year 2014, we are spending $7.1 billion every month in Afghanistan.
The President is committed to bringing most of our troops home by the end of the year, and I trust him to keep his word to America's families. But he has also said that he wants to keep some level of forces remaining there, 5,000, maybe 10,000. And he wants to keep them in Afghanistan for an extended period of time.
Whether you support keeping U.S. troops in Afghanistan after 2014 or whether you oppose it, as I do, I would hope that we can all agree that Congress should have a say in whether or not the longest war in American history continues. At a minimum, we owe the thousands of U.S. servicemen and -women who will be called upon to serve for years to come in Afghanistan a vote, and we owe it to their families, and we owe it to the American people.
Now, Congressmen Walter Jones and Adam Smith and I have an amendment pending before the Rules Committee that would call for such a vote, and I hope the Rules Committee makes it in order so that one of the most important matters facing the American people can be debated and voted on.
Last year, 305 Members of this House voted in support of an amendment that we three offered, calling for just such a vote on any post-2014 deployment of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. If that vote is to have any meaning whatsoever, then those same Members and this
House must support the McGovern-Jones-Smith amendment once again this year.
And this brings me to the overseas contingency operations, the OCO account. Madam Speaker, this bill authorized $79.4 billion for the OCO account for fiscal year 2015. Now, the last time I looked, the war in Iraq was over; the war in Afghanistan is winding down, with nearly all our troops heading home by the end of the year; and only a much smaller residual force for training operations and some special operations might remain deployed in Afghanistan, depending on what the President asks for. But the OCO funds don't ever seem to go down. The OCO is just $5 billion less than the current fiscal year. It certainly doesn't reflect the changing circumstances on the ground in Afghanistan.
Where is all the money going? A February 28th Pentagon report concludes that the United States Government and its money ``created an environment that fostered corruption'' in Afghanistan. Maybe there are some lessons we need to learn here.
Many assert that the OCO account is nothing more than a slush fund for the Pentagon. If we want to save some money, one of the first places we should look is getting rid of the OCO, putting everything back into the Pentagon base budget, and then taking a long and clear-eyed look at where spending needs to be reduced.
Madam Speaker, there are many other problems with H.R. 4435: it continues to place restrictions on the transfer of inmates in Guantanamo; it undermines our nuclear security cooperation with Russia; it attempts to derail the multiparty negotiations with Iran; and it coddles the nuclear weapons budget. Foolish choices, wasteful spending, and wars without end.
I urge my colleagues to vote to change course, to end the war in Afghanistan, to cut the nuclear arsenal, face reality, and make the tough choices in overall defense spending.
With that, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I yield myself the remaining time.
Madam Speaker, as I indicated at the beginning of this debate, we have no objection to this rule. We are glad that the 2015 Commerce-Justice-Science appropriations bill is coming to the floor under an open rule. We have no problem with moving ahead on general debate or the amendments made in order on the Department of Defense authorization bill, and so we support this rule.
It is my hope, as I said earlier, that when the next rule in the defense bill comes to the floor that it will allow for there to be debate on a number of the important issues that Members of this House feel deserve that debate.
I have nothing but the highest regard for all those who serve on the House Armed Services Committee, but I have to say that this bill is too big. It is too big. We have not done a very good job, I don't believe, in this Congress of getting rid of the bloat, the waste, and the duplication within the Pentagon budget. For some reason, we have Members who think that the way you show you are tough in terms of the defense of our country is by supporting bills that add more and more and more money to the Pentagon's budget.
The bottom line is that strong defense doesn't mean wasteful defense. It doesn't mean weapons systems that are obsolete or that are not practical or that are not needed anymore. It doesn't mean a bloated bureaucracy.
Again, as I said earlier, this bill fails to make any of the tough choices. I want to make sure our troops get all the equipment and all the support that they need. I want to make sure that we are prepared for anything that might come at us in the future.
But wasteful defense spending doesn't help us at all. And so there are some significant problems with the underlying bill. In addition to being too big, this bill also fails to cut our nuclear arsenal. We are spending billions and billions and billions of dollars maintaining an arsenal way bigger than anybody believes that we need to, but we don't deal with that issue.
This bill continues to place restrictions on the transfer of inmates from Guantanamo, which is problematic. Again, this bill fails to face reality and make any of the tough choices in terms of overall defense spending.
Again, I will appeal to my colleagues on the Rules Committee to please make sure that we have the opportunity to debate the issue of Afghanistan on this floor. We are at war, and we very rarely discuss it in this Chamber. To those who say, well, it is up to the President to decide whether we stay or go, I will remind my colleagues that we have a role in that, too. Our indifference and our silence over the last several years means we are complicit in this war's continuing, the longest war in the history of our country.
As I said, I will offer an amendment, along with Mr. Jones of North Carolina and Mr. Smith, the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, to make it clear that if the President wants to continue the deployment of U.S. forces beyond 2014, which was his stated policy last year, then we ought to vote on it. We ought to vote on it. And if you believe we should stay longer, you can vote ``yes.'' If you believe that enough is enough, then you can vote ``no.'' But after that time, after all this time, we have an obligation in this Congress to speak up and speak out and make sure that our constituents know what we are doing. We cannot allow this war to go on forever on autopilot. We have a responsibility here.
I have heard the arguments of my friends who want to stay. They are compelling arguments. Make them on the House floor, and have the next Congress decide whether or not we should continue the war there.
I will just close with this. When people say to me that there is no place to cut in the Pentagon's budget, I would urge them to talk to some of the men and women who serve in our Armed Forces or some of the men and women who serve in the Pentagon who, over the years, I have met with who talk freely of places where we could cut without sacrificing any of our national security, places we could cut, quite frankly, that will enhance our security, because they believe that wasteful defense spending has no place in our budget, especially during these tough fiscal times.
But I also believe when we talk about national defense it also means the quality of life in our country and whether or not people have a job, whether or not people have adequate health care, whether or not people have access to good education, and whether or not we end hunger and poverty in our country. All those things matter, as well.
So, again, I urge my colleagues to support the rule because, quite frankly, there is no reason to oppose it. And I would urge my friends on the Rules Committee to please be generous in offering and allowing Members to offer many amendments on this bill. This is an important bill not just for people on the Armed Services Committee but for all Members.
With that, Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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