Adam Smith

Mr. SMITH of Washington

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I have no further speakers. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Gottheimer).

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I urge adoption of the en bloc package, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Madam Chair, pursuant to House Resolution 476, I offer amendments en bloc No. 16.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from New Hampshire (Ms. Kuster).

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Madam Chair, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Ruiz).

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I urge adoption of en bloc No. 6, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, pursuant to House Resolution 476, I offer amendments en bloc.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I appreciate the gentleman's comments, and I think he is absolutely right in the first half, and absolutely wrong in the second half. I would disagree with my colleague's comments that Democrats have not had an opportunity to contribute to the process. We have in the past. We worked in a bipartisan way. It is, however, not true that this year everything is different. Something was different, but not what I believe the ranking member said. That is that we did include a large number of Republican provisions, certainly in committee by the amendment process, and on the floor. The one sort of stark number here is, on the floor, we have not had a large number of Republican amendments. There are a couple of reasons for that. Number one, we have, I think, 15 or 16 en bloc packages, and there are a large number of Republican amendments contained in that en bloc package. But as far as standalone amendments, there are a couple of problems. One, traditionally, and this has happened to us as well, we had a lot of our more controversial amendments, unless the majority party--at the time, the Republicans--thought it was to their advantage to have us vote on something that made us look bad, then they would let it in. Otherwise, they wouldn't. We kind of did the same thing. If there were amendments that we didn't want, we didn't keep them. We did allow for Republican priorities. The reason, however, that there are fewer Republican amendments than in the past is because, for a long time, it has been the minority party's plan this year to not support this bill. This is not a new thing. This has been a debate. As I mentioned yesterday, the reason for that was purely partisan. And it is traditional. I have been working as a legislator long enough to know that when Members are in the minority, they want the majority party to fail. So whatever bill they are bringing up, the minority tries to defeat it to gain leverage. The Armed Services Committee has traditionally been different from that. We don't do that on this bill. We work together in a collaborative process to create the bill. But this year, the minority party decided to treat the defense bill like every other bill: We are in the minority. We want the bill to fail. The evidence of that is that I have worked with a lot of Members to try to get amendments straightened out in Rules. On one in particular, we worked with Representative Stefanik.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Madam Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Virginia (Ms. Wexton).

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Madam Chair, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Levin).

Mr. SMITH of Washington

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Madam Chair, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Cuellar).

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Madam Chair, I don't have any speakers. We have been doing so many votes on the House floor that it appears we have worn down the Members of Congress. We don't have as many people over here to speak as we normally do on our en bloc packages. Madam Chair, I urge a ``yes'' vote on the en bloc package, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Madam Chair, I have no further requests for time. I urge a ``yes'' vote on en bloc package No. 4, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Madam Chair, pursuant to House Resolution 476, I offer amendments en bloc.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Madam Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume. This doesn't require someone to commit a crime. It requires you to divest of your interest if you move into this position, something which, by the way, all Members of Congress have to do. We are not permitted to have outside income over what we have as a Member of Congress. So if you are elected to Congress and you have another job, you have to leave that job; you have to let go of a particular business interest. That is part of public service. It does not require them to be criminalized. That is like saying having a law against taking bribes is criminalizing the elected official. Now, there is actually something you can do: Don't take the bribe, and you will be okay. As far as our ``obsession'' with the President, I couldn't help but laugh at the statement, ``instead of doing the hard work of governing.'' I am counting how many hours I have slept over the course of the last month-and-a-half as we have worked to put together a nearly 2200-page bill that fully funds the Defense Department--sorry, in my opinion, fully funds the Defense Department--and all the amendments. Let me assure you, we are capable of doing both. We are capable of doing the hard work of government and actually trying to make sure that our elected officials are at least passingly ethical so that the American public doesn't think what they already think, which is that too many people get elected simply to enrich themselves. This is not something new. We have a long list of ethics laws that restrict what you can do as an elected official or a member of government. I would hope that the gentleman is not suggesting that we shouldn't have that because it is somehow inconvenient. I think it is incredibly important that we have ethical standards, that we make sure that elected officials are not able to enrich themselves based on being in the elected position that they are in. That is all this amendment does. It is targeting good government, which is part of our job. Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Madam Chair, I yield myself the balance of my time. I don't know where the gentleman was over the course of the last month when we passed 10 appropriations bills and took hundreds of votes on the substantive business of funding the government. That is not a waste of time. I realize the Senate has decided that they are not going to do it, but it is our job to pass appropriations bills. That is what we did for the last month-plus. We are now working on the defense bill. I would trust the gentleman wouldn't think of that as a waste of time. It is incredibly important. We have passed an entire rewrite of the ethics laws for the United States House of Representatives. Whether you support it or not, it is certainly not a waste of time. We have passed countless other bills and important pieces of legislation. The Senate hasn't been doing much. I understand its rules are more complicated, so I am sympathetic, but we are working on the substantive ability to govern. We are doing it, even if the gentleman doesn't agree with the bills. This is where bipartisanship becomes difficult because as we do that, to have someone stand up and say that is not what government is supposed to be doing, I mean, what are we doing here? That is what we have been doing. Part of that should also be to have an ethical government; ethical elected Members of Congress; and ethical Presidents, Vice Presidents, and Cabinet members. As I have said, there are a bunch of rules governing that. This is one more that I think would help to make it appropriate. Madam Chair, I urge support for the amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Madam Chair, this amendment is very straightforward. Currently, all Members of Congress are prohibited from having contracts with the Federal Government, either way. In other words, if you are a Member of Congress, you own something, you can't lease it to the government, rent it to the government. Similarly, you cannot rent or lease something from the government for, I think, obvious reasons. As Members of Congress, we could potentially have undue influence. We could get a deal that other Members of the public could not get. Therefore, we would have an unfair advantage and be using our position as elected officials to enrich ourselves, which is supposed to be prohibited. This amendment is very straightforward. It adds the President, the Vice President, and Cabinet members to that list of people who cannot contract with the Federal Government, again, either the Federal Government leasing something to us or we leasing something back to the Federal Government that is owned, in this case, by the President, the Vice President, and members of the Cabinet. Because, again, particularly in the executive branch, they would actually have, in many ways, more control over this than a Member of Congress, who does not have the power over the assets that the President, the Vice President, and Cabinet members would. It prohibits them from doing that so that there are no ethical problems, so the President, Vice President, and Cabinet members cannot profit off of being in the office that they are in. This is part of the way we maintain a transparent and ethical government. I think it is a good amendment that will improve the ethics of our government, and I urge all Members to vote in favor. Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Madam Chair, pursuant to House Resolution 476, I offer amendments en bloc.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Madam Chair, this is a very important issue and something that our committee worked on over a long stretch of time on export controls. We made very carefully thought-out reforms in that process. The process was a nightmare. Dual-use was the big problem. We could have, just as an example, a bolt that happened to go into a piece of military equipment. If it was to be put in something else, it was subject to this far more aggressive export control thing. But we fixed all of that. What the gentlewoman is trying to prevent is stepping way over the line here and allowing the export of things that really are clearly within the military use concern. We covered what wasn't. This goes beyond that and undermines our ability to make sure that we are not giving potential adversaries access to weapons that can jeopardize our national security. I do think we need to take this step to make sure that the Trump administration doesn't go beyond what we worked out. I realize this word is being overused, but we did work this out in a bipartisan way. With the chairman's help, we included this in the National Defense Act a few years ago. That was helpful. This goes too far by the President. I think this amendment is perfectly appropriate.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Madam Chair, I strongly support this amendment. The documents that the gentleman just pointed to don't even begin to scratch the surface of addressing the issue that the gentlewoman is raising. Those are very broad documents about where the Defense Department spends its money. And I am sure they mention in there--actually, I am not sure. They might mention in there exactly how much money they spend on overseas bases. Actually, I would be surprised if they outline all the overseas bases we have and what their purpose is, and that is what this amendment calls for. Not the broad strategy, but really how many bases do we have, how much money are we spending, and what do they all contribute to that national security policy. I have read through those documents. They do not have that type of detail. Yes, they point out, for instance, here is why we are in all the places that we are--in Asia, for instance--as we are trying to defend it, but they don't go through all the bases and say why this particular place, that particular place. We are overseas in a lot of places that many people are not aware of. It is not just the big ones that we are all aware of that would be contained in that. There are a lot of other places where we own property and maintain bases. And the gentlewoman is also correct that the inability of the Pentagon to audit--in fact, one of the things that the audit found is that the Pentagon doesn't actually know all of the property that they own--or they can't document it, at any rate. So getting this piece of it documented would be helpful and would begin to answer the question: Is that money well spent? Is that even advancing the policy that is outlined in all of those documents? So I think this is necessary, appropriate, and will be helpful in getting us to a more efficient defense budget. And, again, that is a major difference in our approach from the minority. We don't want to just give the Pentagon money. We want to make sure that they are accountable and spending it well.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Madam Chair, I don't have any speakers, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk, which I am offering as the designee for the gentlewoman from Massachusetts (Ms. Clark).

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume to say that I urge support for the en bloc package. I yield back the balance of my time.