Adam Smith

Mr. SMITH of Washington

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Moulton), a member of the Armed Services Committee.

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

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I simply associate myself with the remarks of Mr. Nadler. I think he explained the history of this law very, very well. It is a very basic principle. People who work on these cruise ships should be compensated and taken care of if they are injured. There is no reason that the cruise line industry cannot afford to do this. To discriminate against people who happen to be from different countries who are working on these ships makes no sense whatsoever. Our laws apply to whoever is working on the ships and should continue to do so. This is simply an effort to deny workers' rights from a cruise line industry that can more than afford to take care of the people who work there. These are not easy jobs. I confess, I have only taken one cruise in my life, but the people who work there work very long hours, very hard, in very difficult conditions. If they are injured or sick, they should be taken care of. As Mr. Nadler said, the best way to do that is under the current common practice, which is the cruise line does take care of them and makes sure they get the healthcare they need until they are able to work. But if that is not done, the right to sue in court to protect your rights as a worker should not be taken away. I do not believe that we have a problem in this country that workers are being too highly compensated and have too many rights. We don't need to take away the few that they have. I urge opposition to this amendment.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Florida (Mrs. Murphy), a member of the Armed Services Committee.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Wisconsin (Ms. Moore).

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

Mr. SMITH of Washington

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I yield myself 1 minute. Mr. Chair, this amendment goes backwards in an area where we have gone forward. This amendment takes us in the wrong direction. For years, we have had people serving in the military who are openly gay, lesbian, and transgender, and they have served, and served this country well. For a lot of years, we did not allow them to do so openly. We finally repealed that for lesbians and gays, and now, just last year, we had the Department of Defense say we are going to do the same thing for transgender. So the people who have been fighting and protecting our country will be allowed to do so openly. It does not harm readiness at all. These people have served in the military, served it honorably, and served it well. As far as the costs, the military pays for people who have addictions, who have alcoholism, who smoke. They pay for a lot of things that are contained within the military. This amendment would target one specific group, and very unfairly. And most unfairly, it wouldn't just, first of all, target transgender surgery, it would target some of the hormone drugs, which cost, like, $100 a year, cost absolutely virtually nothing to the military.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I yield myself an additional 30 seconds. Most importantly, this wouldn't just impact transgender people who are serving, it would impact their children. If you are serving in the military and you happen to have a child who is transgender, you would now be cut off from this military service. All these other things, alcoholism, drug addiction, smoking, all manner of different problems would be served, but transgender people would be targeted to not be allowed to provide healthcare for their children. This isn't going to help readiness. This is a social agenda that has no business being in the Defense bill. We didn't have it in committee, we shouldn't have it here on the floor. Let's focus on the threats that Mrs. Hartzler talked about, not make this into a social agenda based on the ignorance of what transgender truly is. Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, there is no study whatsoever that shows this is going to cost $3.7 billion. And this amendment is not just about transgender surgery, it is about any treatment. Let's keep that in mind. Mr. Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), the distinguished minority leader.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Sean Patrick Maloney).

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I claim the time in opposition.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the distinguished minority whip.

Mr. SMITH of Washington

Mr. SMITH of Washington. As I like to quote: ``Gentlemen, we are out of money; it is time to think.'' We are, in fact, running out of money--that is a Winston Churchill quote, by the way--but we appear to not be willing to do the thinking part about making choices on where we should not and should spend our money.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from New Jersey (Mrs. Watson Coleman).

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Schneider).

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 4 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from New Mexico (Ms. Michelle Lujan Grisham).

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I agree with the chairman. I support the en bloc package, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I really want to follow up on the committee chairman's remarks. He is absolutely right. In 2011 and 2012, I was actually very intimately involved in the process of trying to update the AUMF, and I have all the bruises and scars to show for it. It is a very difficult process. The main thing I want to accomplish in my 2 minutes here is to explain to everybody why we haven't updated it, because there are actually very clear reasons. I am not sure they are good reasons, but they are very clear. Everyone sort of acts like: Well, we just haven't done it. Why are we twiddling our thumbs? The reason is because, well, lawyers and how words are interpreted. As we went through and tried to word it exactly correctly, and as we negotiated with the Senate, we discovered that basically no matter how you word it, two groups are going to oppose it for diametrically opposite reasons. One side is going to say that it is too broad; it gives the President way too much power for too long a period of time and gives him too open a hand. Other groups will look at that exact same language and say that this unfairly restricts the President; it is going to make it more difficult. You have these conversations those of us on the committee have with the Pentagon as they are trying to figure out--I haven't had as many conversations with the current administration as with the previous, but I talked at length with the Obama folks about deciding what could they do? Where could they commit a strike? Against which groups? It was a very lengthy process to go back through and try to figure out whether or not it was under the law allowed. So if we change this, the lawyers on both sides are going to go bananas saying that this new language proves that you can't do that or it is too broad. Now, all of that is not to say that we shouldn't do it. We should. But I just want people to understand the difficulty of it and for our House to actually be willing--and the Senate--to do the work we should do. Don't kid yourself that this is something, well, gosh, we could just do it, it would be easy, and if everyone understands it, we are just ducking it for no good reason. It is going to be really, really hard. It is going to take bipartisan, bicameral cooperation. But it is way past time for us to do it. Yeah, when we do it, lawyers will interpret it, and there will be some uncertainty. But there is uncertainty now as they try to, as the chairman described, bootstrap the 2001 AUMF on to a whole bunch of other things. We have an obligation to do this even if it is difficult.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, this amendment basically unnecessarily ties the hands of our administration in terms of choosing how best to spend Defense dollars. Now, the gentlewoman mentions that this does not say anything about reducing our submarine force or reducing our bomber force. It does, however, lock in a certain amount of ICBMs that we have to have, and, in that sense, it does impact all other choices in terms of our Defense policy not just within the nuclear framework. But within the nuclear framework, there is, as I keep emphasizing and people keep resisting, a finite amount of resources available to fund the Department of Defense. In fact, that is the central problem with this whole bill, as I have mentioned. We don't have a budget resolution. This is $72 billion over-the- budget caps that the House has shown no willingness to vote to lift. So here we have $72 billion that we are just kind of hoping is going to be there. So at some point we are going to have to make some choices. I keep saying that. We keep delaying it--doing CRs. We even shut down the government once. We continue to sort of stumble forward with no clear plan, but amendments like this are just another example of how we lock in a lack of flexibility in terms of how we spend our money. What is the best approach to our national security? Now, it has been mentioned and I keep harping on the fact that we don't have a national security plan yet. And it has been mentioned, well, Presidents usually take awhile to deliver them. And okay, fine, we will, you know, sometime in the next year hopefully get that plan. But amendments like this trap that plan, restrict the ability of the President to deal with a finite amount of resources to come with what is the best approach. And there are a lot of arguments that ICBMs are not the best approach to nuclear deterrence. Do we need an absolute fixed amount? I don't think so. I think we need greater flexibility, particularly as we await the findings of the Nuclear Posture Review to figure out what our best strategy going forward is. So we have all these little parochial pieces where we make sure that the piece that is closest to us, you can't touch that. We have to have exactly the same number. That is not in the best interests of a comprehensive National Security Strategy. We need flexibility in this budget. We are not going to have as much money as everybody seems to think that we are going to have. That is just the fact. We are $20 trillion in debt, running up deficits of $700 billion a year. We have the budget caps. At some point, we are going to have to start making choices. This amendment does not help in that.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I have no further speakers, and I urge adoption of the amendments en bloc. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of Washington

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Davis).

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, it is not clear that it has got a prohibition on a study, nor does it call for one. So as we get into conference, I think it might be a worthwhile thing to say that we authorize, ask--you know, and I am not sure if this is something the Defense Department can do without our authorization or not, but it is something that we should discuss as we get into conference, to have them do that study. I think that would be an excellent first step, but I am not sure that we cover it in this bill. Maybe we do, and we can figure that out over the course of the next 48 hours. But if it doesn't, that is something that I think we ought to try to do.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I support the en bloc package, as well, and I yield back the balance of my time.