Adam Smith

Mr. SMITH of Washington

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the motion to recommit.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, legislatively, this is a terrible idea, to introduce a 13-page sanctions bill at the last possible second and expect us to vote on it without knowing the true impacts of it. I absolutely agree that we should have tools to hold the Chinese, the Russians, anyone accountable who does any of the things that the gentleman said. Within current law, there are a ton of tools to do precisely that. Putting in law brand-new sanctions legislation without thinking about it is a bad idea. And if this was so crucial and so important, why are we seeing it just at this last second? There was somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,000 ideas submitted to be added to the defense bill all along the process. We would have had time to work on it and think about it and actually craft a decent piece of legislation. This clearly does not have that objective in mind or they would have introduced it a long time ago. This is a bad way to make law. Mr. Speaker, I urge us to vote ``no'' and not to jeopardize all the incredible work that Members on both sides of the aisle did in this bill. There are a ton of Members, Republicans and Democrats alike; those 2,000 provisions are roughly equal between Republicans and Democrats. We have an incredibly bipartisan piece of legislation before us in which individual Members decided something is important, worked the issue, and got us a product that we could support. Mr. Speaker, this puts us in the very risky position of passing really bad legislation at the last second for no good reason, and I would urge Members to vote ``no.'' Now, let me be clear. We absolutely need to hold accountable Russia, China, whoever wants to interfere with our process of developing a vaccine or cyber hack us in any other way, and there are an enormous number of tools to do so. I do want to point out and just simply make an urgent plea. One of the gentleman's arguments was that China hid the true risk of the virus from the American people, and, yes, that is terrible that China did that. It is not actually their job to warn the American people. It is the President's job to warn the American people. And talk about someone who has done a horrible job of warning us of the true dangers of the virus. It was just, I think, last week, maybe a week and a half ago, when the President said 99 percent of the cases will be completely harmless. That is wrong. The President said again, just a couple days ago, it is just going to magically disappear. He cannot even bring himself to tell us to wear a mask. Some people don't like mandates. Okay. That is fine. Let's have the leader of our country tell us what we ought to do to protect ourselves. He is the one who is not warning the American people of the true danger of this virus, because, sadly, we would kind of listen to him. We are not going to listen to the Chinese. We don't trust them, for all the reasons they said. So, Mr. Speaker, I would implore Members on the other side of the aisle, ask our President to do what they are now asking the Chinese to do. The least that he ought to do for the American people is to warn us of the danger we face. This is incredibly frustrating. I want my kids back in school. I want my constituents back to work. If we took the virus seriously, if we did the work necessary to contain it, we could do it. The President wants to stand up and say: Meh. It is not a problem. Nothing to worry about it. It is all good. We are paying an enormous price for that. So, yes, let's hold Russia and China accountable. Let's also hold our President and the executive branch accountable for the spectacular failure in leadership that we are living and, yes, dying with today in this country. Let's also oppose this motion to recommit as bad legislation that isn't going to make any difference whatsoever, and let's pass the defense bill. This is an excellent piece of legislation, a bipartisan piece of legislation that we have all worked on and produced an excellent product. Mr. Speaker, I ask Members to please vote ``yes.'' Please pass this bill, keep the legislative process going forward. And don't forget, what we are doing here is providing for the national security, providing for the Department of Defense, providing for the men and women whom we are asking to put their lives on the line for the defense of this country, giving them the support they need and they deserve. Mr. Speaker, I ask Members to vote down the motion to recommit and vote for the national defense authorization act. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I reserve a point of order against the motion to recommit.

Mr. SMITH of Washington

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, first of all, let me associate myself with Ms. Jayapal's remarks. I completely agree with everything she said. I have an enormous amount of respect for Mr. Thornberry, but I disagree with the premise of part of what he said. Part of what he said is absolutely right. We should exercise our independent judgment and not simply rubber-stamp what the Pentagon asks us for, but I don't see how having them give us even more of what they want somehow better enables us to exercise our independent judgment. It is the Pentagon who is sending us what ``their priorities are.'' I think we should be absolutely skeptical of whatever they sent us. But to say, ``Look, you get to ask for $740 billion, and then you can ask for even more,'' that somehow that makes it easier for us to exercise independent judgment, independent of what the Pentagon wants, sort of stands logic on its head. Make no mistake about it, there is one and only one reason for this law. It is because there are some who believe that no matter what you spend on the Pentagon and defense spending, you could always spend more. They are trying to push us down that road toward more, which is wrong because it is a waste. But it is also wrong because it is bad for national security. We need to make choices, not imagine that the budget is unlimited. That is what this does, and it should go away.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 1053, I call up the bill (H.R. 6395) to authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2021 for military activities of the Department of Defense and for military construction, to prescribe military personnel strengths for such fiscal year, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and to include extraneous material on H.R. 6395.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, we have before us today the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021. It is an important piece of legislation that we have done every year for 59 consecutive years. We are going for 60 this year. It is incredibly important that the United States Congress, the House and the Senate, exercise our oversight over the Department of Defense and our national security budget and priorities, and this bill reflects that. I want to start by thanking a lot of people who have done an enormous amount of work to make this possible. We started in committee a couple of weeks ago. We had over 650 amendments submitted to the original mark of the chairman and the subcommittee marks. We processed those amendments and actually adopted 475 amendments in committee. I want to thank our staff more than I possibly can for the incredible amount of work that they did to go through all of those amendments, to work with Members, to work with various interested parties to get us to that product. I am very pleased that we were able to get that done, and we passed the bill out of the Armed Services Committee unanimously, 56- 0, with broad support. At this point, I want to thank the ranking member of the committee, Mr. Thornberry, for his incredible leadership during this process. He has been a terrific partner, both when he was chairman of the committee and now that he is the ranking member of the committee. As all of you know, this will be his last NDAA, as he is retiring from Congress. I want to once again thank him for his great work and his great leadership and really emphasize a point that I have made many, many times. The Armed Services Committee works in a bipartisan way and produces a legislative product in a manner that I think should be an example for all of Congress. That does not happen by accident. It happens because of leadership. When Mr. Thornberry became chairman of the committee and I was ranking member, Mac showed that leadership from the very start. He understood the priority of getting the bill done and of working in a bipartisan way to do that. Because of that leadership, that example has been set for the committee, and we have been able to continue to accomplish that. I also want to thank the Rules Committee. That is not an easy job in the best of times, and, as we all know, these are not the best of times. 752 amendments were submitted to be added to this bill this year. The Rules Committee had to sift through and process all of those amendments to produce before you the rule that we all just approved today. I thank their staff for doing that incredible work and do want to pause just one moment to thank the staff for the work they did in light of COVID-19. We all know that things cannot be run the way they normally are. We had to make adjustments. The staff in particular had to make those adjustments just getting our committee hearing room set up so that we could accommodate a social-distancing markup. It took an enormous amount of time and technological know-how. The staff did a fabulous job to get us to this point. I guess what I am saying is it is no accident that we are here. A lot of work went to get us to the point to have what I think is an excellent product. Again, we can't forget the central premise behind this product, and that is to support our national security policy and to make sure that the men and women who serve in our military, whom we assign with the task of implementing that policy, have the tools and training and equipment that they need to perform whatever tasks we ask them to do. We can and should have a robust debate about what those jobs should be, what our national security priorities are, what we should fund, what we should do. But something we should never disagree on is the idea that whatever that is that we decide, the troops, the men and women who are charged with implementing it, are well equipped, protected, and supported in carrying out that mission. And that is what we attempt to do. This year's bill had agreement from last year's budget agreement on our top-line budget of $741 billion. I think that was a good agreement that we reached on the defense and nondefense discretionary budget. And I will say, going forward, this is one of the greatest challenges that we are going to face. We had a difficult budget environment before COVID-19. It is even more difficult now. We are going to have to make some very difficult choices in the decade ahead about what to fund, not just to meet our national security priorities, but to meet all of our priorities within that budget context. I do want to thank the Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, for his leadership in this regard. The Pentagon has gone to great lengths to do a bottom-up review, to really take a hard look at where they are spending money and to find savings, sometimes in the tens of billions of dollars. That type of effort is going to have to be ongoing, going forward, if we are going to be able to have a rational national security policy. I also want to commend a number of the Members in our committee who have worked to really focus on diversity in this year's bill. I believe, in addition to the COVID-19 challenge that we face, the reckoning that we have as a country for the historic racism, discrimination, and bigotry that we have wrestled with, it is enormously important that we address that. This is society-wide, but within the Department of Defense there are issues to work on there as well. We fund, to the tune of $17 million, aggressive efforts to increase the relationship between the Department of Defense and historically Black colleges and universities, to create and grow the pipeline of diversity into the Department of Defense, jobs both civilian and Active Duty. We also have now created a chair of diversity within DOD, whose job it is to look and make sure that we are, in fact, hiring and promoting people in a way that is equitable, and we have also set aside a special inspector general to examine that question. Also, thanks to the leadership of Congressman Anthony Brown and Congresswoman Jackie Speier, amongst others, we are looking at how the UCMJ is implemented. Is it being implemented in a way that is fair and unbiased. These are all efforts to create the diversity that we need within our Armed Forces and the diversity we need within our society. Overall, I am very, very pleased with this product. And more than anything, I am pleased with the people who worked together to put it together in a bipartisan way. There are a lot of diverse opinions, not just Republican and Democrat, but within each party. As Mr. Thornberry will attest, we are not all the same within our own parties. Even with that diversity, we were able to work together and produce what I think is an excellent product that we should all be proud to support. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time. Committee on House Administration, House of Representatives, Washington, DC, July 7, 2020. Hon. Adam Smith, Chairman, Committee on Armed Services, House of Representatives, Washington, DC. Dear Chairman Smith: I am writing to you concerning R.R. 6395, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021. There are certain provisions in the legislation that fall within the Rule X jurisdiction of the Committee on House Administration. In the interest of permitting your committee to proceed expeditiously to floor consideration of this important bill, I am willing to waive this committee's right to sequential referral. I do so with the understanding that by waiving consideration of the bill, the Committee on House Administration does not waive any future jurisdictional claim over the subject matters contained in the bill which fall within its Rule X jurisdiction. I request that you urge the Speaker to name members of this committee to any conference committee which is named to consider such provisions. Please place this letter into the committee report on H.R. 6395 and into the Congressional Record during consideration of the measure on the House floor. Thank you for the cooperative spirit in which you have worked regarding this matter and others between our respective committees. Sincerely, Zoe Lofgren, Chairperson.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the distinguished majority leader of the House.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Golden), a member of the committee.

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. Again, I urge Members to support this bill. I want to emphasize a point that a number of folks have made about the process, which sounds a little bland and a little bit dry, but that is actually how we produce such an excellent product, and I think it is a good model for how Congress should function. We debate issues. We take amendments from a wide and diverse group of people, and in so doing, the product gets better. We get the ideas, the benefit of the talents and the experience of everybody in Congress. We work it out where we can. We debate where we can't. Then, we vote, and we move the process forward. I think it is really, really important that the institution continues to function in that way. A number of institutions in our country, many that we have taken for granted for a long time, are under an enormous amount of pressure. It is very important to have coherent stability in the institutions of government. That is something that I know Mr. Thornberry prioritized during his service on the committee. It is something we all prioritize, to show people, as Mac pointed out, the system works--yes, the men and women who serve in our military, clearly, but everybody. It is a good thing when we get together and have these debates and create a legislative product, and I urge Members to support this product. In closing, I want to emphasize one point that has come up a number of times, and that is the importance of alliances and partnerships to our national security and to what the Department of Defense does. This bill has a number of provisions to strengthen that: support for NATO; support for our relationship with South Korea; support for the creation of an Indo-Pacific defense initiative, which is building upon the idea that we did with the European Defense Initiative. The goal there is to build the partnerships necessary to maintain our national security interests globally and, hopefully, without having to rely on the military. I know a number of my colleagues on this side of the aisle are concerned about how the U.S. has used its military over the years, and I don't disagree with that. The military should not be the first or primary tool of U.S. foreign policy and national security. But if that is to be the case, we need to build the partner capacity of allies throughout Europe and Asia. That is what this bill, I believe, reflects, that desire to give us peace by deterring our adversaries through a system of interlocking alliances. I think that is incredibly important. Before I close, I do want to address the issues. Concerns have been raised about some of the amendments. One particular concern is that there are some amendments that aren't necessarily within our jurisdiction. As the one bill that passes every year, this is not an unusual occurrence. I will point out that even when the Republicans were in the majority, we frequently had amendments that were outside the jurisdiction of our committee, including in the lands area. Who can forget the lesser prairie chicken and the years after years that we fought over that? That, too, is part of this process, and I hope, however that comes out, it will not, in any way, undermine the incredible bipartisan work that has been done on the bill and, gosh, the nearly 1,500 provisions that will be reflected in that bill once we get done here. I think whatever disagreements there may be on a few amendments coming forward, the best thing that we can do for this institution, for this committee, for the way the legislative process is supposed to work, and, as all of us have said, most importantly, for the men and women who are serving in our military, we show them that we support the defense bill. We support them. We support what they do. We have worked together to produce an excellent product that is worthy of the support of every Member of this body. I urge everyone to vote ``yes.'' Again, I thank everyone who was involved in the process. Lastly, I want to close by joining my colleagues in recognizing the life of John Lewis. He brought honor to this country. He lived a life that made us all feel better about where we live. I think the thing that I will always remember about John is, gosh, he lived a very tough life. He took on tough fights, but he did it with joy. You never saw John Lewis get really down. He always had this joy about him, even in the face of some unbelievable injustice. He did not hate his enemies. He didn't attack them. He stood up for what was right. I hope we can all learn from that lesson and build upon it, bringing this country together and deal with the challenges that we face now as he dealt with the challenges that he faced during his life. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time

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

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Carbajal), who is a member of the Armed Services Committee.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Speier), the chair of the Subcommittee on Military Personnel.

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

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Norcross), the chair of the Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, this amendment allows us to continue doing what we are already doing to preserve and protect our nuclear deterrent. It simply says: You can't go setting off nuclear weapons again. It doesn't work. It doesn't help. And it is extraordinarily dangerous. Mr. Speaker, I urge adoption of the amendment.

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

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Malinowski).

Mr. SMITH of Washington

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 1053, I offer amendments en bloc.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Sherman).

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from Texas.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Virginia (Ms. Spanberger).

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Langevin), a member of the committee.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Engel).