National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2016

Floor Speech

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time to once again say that I want to, first of all, thank the chairman. I want to thank all of the members of the committee and the staff for the hard work that they do and have done on this bill.

Every year, this is a very, very difficult process, starting with the committee markup, which, this year, I think--we probably didn't set a record. We set a record for my time in terms of one day going until 4:45 in the morning.

But I just want to take one brief moment to recognize the staff that does just an unbelievable amount of work throughout this process. We see the amendments both in committee and on the floor that survive that process. The staff has to sift through literally hundreds more to try to boil them down, to try to find compromises, to basically try to work out whatever they can work out. I don't think there are too many members of the staff on either side that have slept more than 2 or 3 hours a night here for the last few weeks. So I thank them for their hard work, and I thank the committee members for their hard work as well.

It is the largest committee in Congress. We have excellent members on it. During the course of the debate and during the course of putting together this bill, every one of those members contributed greatly to the product.

As I have said before, there are a lot of good things in this bill. The reform package that the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Thornberry) has made of particular priority I think is a very good first step towards trying to get more efficiency out of the military in a variety in different places. And of course we fund a lot of very necessary programs.

But we have one overarching problem that we have had since 2011, starting with the fact that we couldn't pass the appropriations bills for 2011. And most have forgotten this, but at the end of March of 2011, we were looking at a government shutdown. We had a marathon 4-day, every amendment you can imagine on the appropriations bill, and, actually, I think it did go past the moment when the government was supposed to shut down before passing a CR, which pushed us then up against the debt ceiling in 2011, which wasn't going to be raised. We were facing a situation where chunks of the government would shut downs in ways we couldn't even predict, and I want everyone to understand the impact that this has on the Department of Defense.

I vividly remember a dinner that I had in March of 2011 with then-Vice Chief of Staff of the Army, Pete Chiarelli, and I was asking him about how all of this budget uncertainty impacts the Department of Defense. He said: Well, we have got several hundred programs, and every day we try to figure out which ones we are allowed to fund, which ones we are not allowed to fund, where we can get the money, what we can do, and how we can move it around. They didn't know.

For the last 4 years plus, that is what the Department of Defense has had to do. We have gone from CR to government shutdown to occasionally getting a spending bill to living with sequestration and the budget caps. The one thing that this bill doesn't do is it doesn't resolve that issue. It goes to the overseas contingency operation fund while leaving the budget caps in place.

As Secretary Carter has said, the overseas contingency operations fund is no way to fund the military and does very, very little to remove that uncertainty that I just described. So I want everyone to understand when I talk about the fact that I am opposing this bill because of its impact on the overall budget, that is also very much about the Department of Defense.

The Department of Defense is left in that uncertainty and also stuck with OCO funding, which is unpredictable, 1-year money that makes it very difficult for them to plan. So this bill's reliance on the OCO funding is a problem for the Department of Defense. Leaving those budget caps in place is something that I am opposed to. So it is an issue directly related to the Department of Defense.

Now, it is also related to the rest of the budget. We have caps that impact the Department of Homeland Security, that impact the Department of Justice, that impact those other areas that, by the way, are very important. I have had some folks mention ISIL and our fight against them. Those departments are incredibly important to that fight. They are still under the budget caps, which are, I believe, jeopardizing our national security. And then there are other issues, infrastructure being the biggest one that those budget caps continue to hamper and continue, I believe, to make our country less safe.

So the fact that this bill locks in place and keeps the budget caps, relies on the overseas contingency operations fund, and, most importantly, does not lift the budget cap for defense is the reason I am opposing it and urging other Democrats and Republicans as well to oppose it. It doesn't lift the budget caps. I believe that is harmful to the Department of Defense. So this is a defense issue.

Mr. Chairman, I also point out for my conservative colleagues who are so concerned about keeping those budget caps that the OCO goes right around them. I wouldn't think that a conservative who wants to keep government spending under control would encourage the government deciding that they can create free money. The OCO doesn't count against the budget caps. So it is like the money isn't really being spent, only, of course, the money is being spent. It is $38 billion that we are just choosing not to count. It doesn't fix the problem.
Lastly, the President has promised to veto all of the appropriations bills and the defense bill that are based on this flawed approach to the budget. So what we are doing here is ultimately not going to be successful until we come up with a better long-term solution to dealing with the budget caps, and I will simply emphasize one more time that has a profoundly negative effect on the Department of Defense, on our obligation to, I believe, properly fund and properly support the men and women who serve in our military. So, Mr. Chairman, while there is a lot of good in this bill, the ongoing budget uncertainty that it continues, I believe, is the fatal flaw in this bill. So I urge people to vote ``no.''

I do appreciate all the work and the effort that went into it. I also emphasize that this is but one step in the process. We have got a long way to go, and I am completely confident by the time we get to the end of it, we will have a National Defense Authorization Act. It will be difficult. We have to work with the President, we have to work with the Senate, and people have a lot of different opinions, but this is but the first step in the process.

So, Mr. Chairman, I urge us to continue working to hopefully get a better product that can get the support of the House, the Senate, and the President and fulfill our duty to pass this bill and support our troops.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

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