Adam Smith

Mr. SMITH of Washington

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, had I been present, I would have voted NAY on Roll Call No. 7.

Mr. SMITH of Washington

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor and thank my constituent, Van A. Hurst of Kent, Washington, for his advocacy on an important issue that will impact thousands of transportation workers. This week, the House of Representatives will consider the Transportation Security Screening Modernization Act. This legislation addresses a long-standing issue affecting transportation workers like truck drivers, pipeline operators, longshoremen, and warehouse managers. These workers are often required to obtain multiple TSA-managed credentials, each with different expiration dates, fees, and redundant background checks. Not only is this process duplicative and time-consuming, but workers also bear the financial burden of maintaining these credentials, preventing them from fully participating in the workforce. The Transportation Security Screening Modernization Act cuts through red tape by allowing workers to apply existing valid background checks to multiple credentialing programs. This will significantly reduce costs and administrative hassle for these essential workers. Mr. Hurst, a former truck driver and Teamster, met with my office to share his expertise and firsthand experience with this issue. His advocacy played a key role in shaping this bipartisan, commonsense legislation. Mr. Speaker, as the House considers this critical legislation, I want to thank Mr. Hurst again for his leadership on this matter. It is an honor representing him in Congress, and I am proud that this legislation has passed the Senate and is on its way to becoming law, bringing much-needed relief to our Nation's transportation workers.

Mr. SMITH of Washington

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I thank Chairman Green, Mr. Graves, and all the people that have been involved in this process. It is, as has been described, a very commonsense fix that really affects a lot of blue-collar workers. If you work in a job that takes you into secure transportation environments, you are required to go through a very cumbersome process and also pay fees to get the security clearance to do that job. The fees are redundant, the process is redundant, and it is an incredible burden on workers just trying to do their job. This bill makes a ton of sense, fixes the process, reduces the fees, streamlines the process, is going to make it easier for workers all across the country, and it is something we need to work on. In my own world in the Department of Defense we have a similar problem with security clearances taking forever and in many cases being redundant, so I hope this is an idea that will spread. We need workers to go to work for us. Yes, we need security, but the process takes too long, it is redundant, and it costs too much. I hope this can be an inspiration to fix it. The last thing I want to say is that I first heard about this issue-- and I think this is the coolest thing about this legislation--from a constituent, Van Hurst, who was a Teamster and a truck driver at the time, who experienced this process, alerted my office to the problem, and it led to our involvement in this legislation. A lot of people say that the system doesn't work; nobody ever listens to us. This is an average constituent, a truck driver in my district, who had a problem and brought it to us. We worked through the process, and now today we are about to pass the Senate bill, solve the problem, send it off to the President where it will be signed, and the problem will be fixed. For all constituents out there frustrated, irritated, aggravated about all the things that aren't happening, bring your problems to us. We will do our level best to listen and try to solve them. It doesn't always work. It is a big, complicated democracy, a lot of people with a lot of voices, but it works far more often than people realize. I will close with another shout-out to Van Hurst, a Teamster from the city of Kent in the Ninth Congressional District who brought this to my attention, and we are now working to solve the problem.

Mr. SMITH of Washington

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 5 minutes. Mr. Speaker, first of all, I thank Chairman Rogers for his outstanding leadership of the committee this year and in past years. He has done a great job of setting an example for bipartisan leadership in working this process all the way through to produce the product that we have before us today. I thank the members of the House committee, both Republicans and Democrats, and all the staff. We have a very focused spirit on that committee that says we are not going to focus on partisanship. We are going to focus on getting the job done and getting the bill done. Second, I think this process has been really good. We went through the normal process of hearing the bill in committee, with all kinds of amendments and debates that lasted a while. We did the same thing in the Rules Committee. We went to conference and produced what is an outstanding product in many, many respects. The chairman highlighted some of them. Of the priorities that we have, number one is trying to make sure that we can recruit the best and the brightest to serve in our military and, crucially, that we support them. The chairman did a great job of describing what is the best part of this bill this year, and that is the result of our commission, our task force, I guess, that we formed on quality of life in the military, ably led by Don Bacon on the Republican side and Chrissy Houlahan on our side, to produce a whole lot of the programs that the chairman mentioned. They are in there. That is crucially important. We also have a couple of major problems in meeting our national security needs on production of the munitions and crucial equipment that we need. This bill attempts to address that and to expand our capacity. To meet that need and to meet other needs, we also need our partners and allies. There are a number of provisions in this bill that strengthen those alliances on things like AUKUS, the European Defense Initiative, and the Indo-Pacific defense initiative. We do a great job of that. Lastly is the big issue on technology, making the Pentagon get better at quickly buying innovative new technologies, particularly software, that we need to succeed. Overall, that package is terrific. There is one problem, which is that a political partisan wedge issue was insisted on being included in this bill at the insistence of Republican leadership, not of the Armed Services Committee. I think it is really problematic. The language seems somewhat benign. It basically says that minors experiencing gender dysphoria will not be allowed to receive any care that could lead to sterilization. The problem is this is denying healthcare to minors who clearly need it. The ``could'' language is very problematic because, as we all know, anyone who has watched the last 15 seconds of any pharmaceutical ad, if you take any medical treatment, a lot of bad things could happen. The medical profession is always very careful about explaining all those things to you. This could restrict the ability of minors experiencing gender dysphoria access to puberty blockers, access to hormone treatment therapy, access to critical care that they need, and for no good reason. Now, look, there is a reasonable question about what care minors should receive in this area. We had floated the idea that if you want to look at this, you want to ask the medical profession what they think, what the studies said about when this care is appropriate, but we didn't do that. We have an outright ban on care that undoubtedly is saving lives of minors experiencing gender dysphoria and the anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts that come with that. Just today, I got a phone call from a constituent, a daughter now 19 whose parents were in the military service. She received this type of care when she was 10, 11, 12, 13 years old. She believes that it saved her life. We are now going to deny that care. Let me tell you, the treatments for minors with anxiety and depression are very controversial, not just in the trans community. It is the trans community that we choose to focus on for partisan political reasons. I have concerns, having gone through an anxiety problem myself, with the number of antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications that are prescribed to minors. I think, in some instances, it is overprescribed and too quickly, but the other thing I know is that there are some minors who benefit enormously from that treatment. I would never in a million years present a piece of legislation outright banning that treatment from any minor, yet that is what we do here. We are doing it because of ignorant, bigoted reasons against the trans community. The medical profession has no dispute that, in some instances, this treatment is crucial to the health and well-being of our children, and we are now denying that to the children of servicemembers. I think that is problematic, and I hope we will rethink it and remove that from this bill because it taints an otherwise excellent piece of legislation. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Houlahan), the ranking member of the House Committee on Armed Services' Panel on Quality of Life.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Courtney), the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Norcross), the ranking member of the House Committee on Armed Services Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Pocan), the chairman of the House Equality Caucus.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Jacobs), who is the ranking member of the House Equality Caucus and a member of the House Armed Services Committee.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes the gentleman from California (Mr. Khanna), who is the ranking member of the HASC Subcommittee on Cyber, Information Technologies, and Innovation.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes. Mr. Speaker, I want to address a little bit the concerns about the size of the Pentagon budget and the efficiency and effectiveness. First of all, it is important to point out that the defense budget as a percentage of GDP is the lowest that it has been since after World War II. As our budget has grown and ballooned collectively, that has primarily been because of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, and a variety of other programs, all of which I enthusiastically support, but as a percentage of GDP we are actually spending less on defense now than we have, as I said, at any point since World War II. The notion that the defense budget is ballooning out of control doesn't take into account inflation and growth. We are at a more reasonable place than some portray, first of all. Second of all, we keep hearing, oh, they failed another audit. What is actually happening is we are getting better on that point. We were not going to fix the audit problems that the Pentagon had 6, 7 years ago in a year or 2 or even 5. Nevertheless, just to give you a couple of ideas, Mr. Speaker, multiple agencies within the Pentagon are now passing their audits whereas they didn't before, including the United States Marine Corps. In another decent measure of this, the Department of the Navy broadly has not passed its audit, but 5 or 6 years ago they were only 5 percent clean, and now they are 80 percent clean. I don't want to leave the public with the mistaken impression that we are ignoring this problem or not making any progress on it. We are. A big part of the reason we are making progress on it is because of the leadership on the House Armed Services Committee. Under Mr. Rogers and previously under me and before that under Mac Thornberry, this has been a priority for us in the House and the Senate for some time. We are making progress. We are not ignoring the problem. It is not a pass-fail. It is a matter of improvement. We are optimistic that in another 2 or 3 years we will get to that happy day when the entire Pentagon budget can pass that audit, but we had a big hole to dig out of. We are making progress on digging out of said hole, and I want to make sure people are aware of that. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Hawaii (Ms. Tokuda), a member of the House Armed Services Committee.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close at this time, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time to close. Mr. Speaker, I don't really have anything more to add than what I said in the opening statement, so I won't belabor the point. It is, in so many ways, a very good bill that was worked through the process. I regret that we have injected, again, that partisan wedge issue into it. It is a controversial topic, trying to figure out what medical treatment transgender youth or youth experiencing gender dysphoria should get, but I worry in some instances that there is a denial of the existence of the condition. It is an absolute fact that some minors experience gender dysphoria. Mr. Speaker, I guess the one thing I didn't say in my opening statement that is worth adding is, on TRICARE, there are about 1.8 million dependents. The estimates that I have gotten--and they are a little fuzzy because they won't give specifics for, I think, some obvious reasons--are that roughly 4,000 children are being treated out of that 1.8 million, and not all 4,000 of those children being treated are receiving the treatments that are being prohibited in this bill. Mr. Speaker, we are talking about a small number of young people, but we are restricting access to their healthcare based on our opinion, not based on the opinion of the U.S. medical community. That, I think, is a mistake. Again, I close on a positive note. I thank Chairman Rogers, HASC, the Armed Services Committee, and all the staff. I didn't thank the Senate in my opening remarks either. I suppose we have to. All kidding aside, the Senate was good to work with on this process, and I think, ultimately, HASC and SASC have met their requirements and did what we have done for 63 consecutive years in working together on a bipartisan, bicameral bill, with the overwhelming bulk of the focus on what is best for the servicemen and -women who defend our country that we are so proud of. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of Washington

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, had I been present, I would have voted NAY on Roll Call No. 477 and YEA on Roll Call No. 478.

Mr. SMITH of Washington

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the memory of Sam Martinez and to commemorate how his legacy has inspired change in Congress. This week, the House of Representatives will consider the Stop Campus Hazing Act. This bill was brought to my attention by the advocacy of Mr. Martinez's family, and I cosponsored this bill shortly after meeting his parents. Today, I address the House as a proud cosponsor of this legislation, and I urge its passage. Mr. Martinez was a Bellevue resident and Washington State University student whose life was tragically cut short on November 12, 2019, at the age of 19. He was a beloved son, brother, and friend, and my heart is with the community he leaves behind. Mr. Martinez was born in 2000 to parents Hector Martinez and Jolayne Houtz. He grew up as a brother to Ariana Martinez in Bellevue, Washington, and throughout his life he was surrounded by friends and loved ones. Those who loved him remember his fierce athleticism on the soccer pitch, his dry sense of humor, his intelligence, his commitment to volunteer work locally and abroad, and his loyalty to his friends and family. He was in the Bellevue School District's Spanish immersion program and graduated from Newport High School in June 2019. In the fall of 2019, Mr. Martinez matriculated at Washington State University, where he planned to study business and entrepreneurship. Mr. Speaker, as the House considers the Stop Campus Hazing Act this week, let us remember Mr. Martinez and call attention to this critical issue that impacts students like Mr. Martinez nationwide. My thoughts are with his family and loved ones as we honor his legacy today.

Mr. SMITH of Washington

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, during Roll Call Vote number 429 on H.R. 7909, I mistakenly recorded my vote as YEA when I should have voted NAY.

Mr. SMITH of Washington

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the life and legacy of Mark Myers, who served as the Vice President of the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) Branch 79 Seattle. Mark served as NALC's legislative liaison to my office for many years. He was a constant advocate for the voices and needs of his union's members. He was a very effective advocate and all that were ]ucky enough to know Mark know that he was both sincere and kind in all that he did. Throughout his life, Mark embodied what it truly means to serve. Mark served his union through his work with my office, but a]so through his work at the Martin Luther King, Jr. County Labor Council and the Washington State Labor Council. Not only was Mark the current Vice President of the NALC Branch 79 Seattle, but he had also served as Secretary-Treasurer and made history as the only retiree re-elected for three consecutive terms. Mark spent his time outside of work continuing to serve his community. He was a former member of the Highline Community Council and a devout member of his local church, the Saint Francis of Assisi Parish in Burien. Mark is a shining example of true leadership and commitment. I appreciate his many years of service working with my office, as well as all of his service to our community. He will be deeply missed.

Mr. SMITH of Washington

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the honorable life of Major Walter T. Tanimoto, a distinguished veteran, volunteer, and father. Mr. Tanimoto, in his military service, career, and personal endeavors, left a mark of service, dedication, and a deep commitment to community. Walt took on the task of protecting his country with devotion and skill. Through his service in Operation Iraqi Freedom II, Walt received a variety of accolades, including a Combat infantry Badge. Walt never stopped sacrificing for our country even after leaving the Army, embarking on a long, impactful, and dedicated career at the Washington Department of Revenue. Mr. Tanimoto went beyond professional achievements to dedicate his time towards supporting fellow veterans. He maintained active participation in multiple veterans' organizations, but rather than simply belonging to veterans' groups, Walt had leadership roles in three separate organizations, including Veterans of Foreign Wars and the Military Order of the Cootie. I had the privilege to meet Walt multiple times through his ongoing participation in these organizations, a demonstration of his commitment to his community and desire to support others. Most recently, I recall Walt's efforts in June 2023 on the planning and execution of a Veterans History Project that my office hosted with the Nisei Veterans Committee. Through his participation, Walt helped preserve the stories of his fellow veterans for future generations. Mr. Speaker, I once again draw your attention to the life of service and generosity led by my constituent, Walter T. Tanimoto. Many can aspire to dedicate their lives to others, but few can say they have done it as Walt has.

Mr. SMITH of Washington

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the life and legacy of former Congressman George Nethercutt, who passed away recently. Former Congressman George Nethercutt served in the United States House of Representatives from 1995 to 2005, representing Washington's Fifth Congressional District. Congressman Nethercutt was an influential force who led with character and conviction and embodied what it truly means to be a member of Congress. He proudly served the Fifth District for a decade, traveling around the state and back and forth to D.C. to serve his constituents and deliver on issues important to our state. During his time in Congress, he sat on the House Appropriations Committee and co- founded the Congressional Diabetes Caucus. After serving in Congress, Congressman Nethercutt spent much of his time working to promote civic education and government service among our younger generations, an effort that demonstrated his commitment to public service. Congressman Nethercutt is a shining example of leadership for elected officials in Washington State and across the country. My thoughts are with his loved ones and our entire state as we mourn this incredible loss.