Adam Smith

Mr. SMITH of Washington

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

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Gottheimer).

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

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I yield 90 seconds to the gentleman from California (Mr. Correa).

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume just to clean up a couple of earlier debates we had on amendments. I just wanted to make a couple of arguments. On the nuclear weapons issue, I just want to be clear, we support a strong and robust nuclear deterrence. We are not advocating unilateral disarmament by any stretch of the imagination. We are simply asking: In the budget challenge environment that we have, is this the best use of our money to totally rebuild our entire nuclear weapons system? And the amendments that were offered weren't even necessarily saying no. They are just saying this is something we ought to study and ought to talk about. And I will, however, disagree with one argument that was made about how somehow it is a myth that over the last 70 years, all of our adversaries are building nuclear weapons in response to the nuclear weapons that we have built. I think that is a big misreading of history. We all recall that we were first to the table on this. And thank goodness we were. It enabled us to end World War II. But we are still the only nation on Earth that has actually used nuclear weapons. And when the Soviet Union developed theirs, we had them and they didn't. And I think it is a little ridiculous to assume that no part of their thinking was that: Well, if the United States of America, our prime adversary, has nuclear weapons, we better have them, too. And then we saw the arms race accelerate, even to the point of the famous debate in 1960, how candidate John Kennedy talked about the missile gap that we had. That turned out to be a total fabrication. It wasn't true. We didn't have that gap. It was unfair to what the Eisenhower administration was doing. But the argument from the other side that the notion of an arms race is ridiculous is something that I think is wrong. Arms races do happen. And part of what we need to do in working with our adversaries is to try to contain them in a reasonable fashion. So I do believe that in many cases, it becomes a self-perpetuating thing. We build them, they build them; we build them, they build them. And I hope that part of our nuclear strategy isn't just building as many nuclear weapons as is humanly possible, but is actually opening up lines of communication with potential adversaries like China, with adversaries like Russia. Now, I will grant you that where North Korea is concerned, and as I have said repeatedly, we have to deter them, but we have the power to destroy North Korea, I think, hundreds of times over. We have the capacity in terms of our weapons systems to deter them. So I hope, as we look at modernizing our nuclear weapons systems, we will consider the cost and the effectiveness of doing that. And I know Mr. Rogers has offered his thoughtful amendment to give the Department of Defense some opportunity to do that, but that is all we were trying to say on that. On BRAC, a couple of arguments were made at the end there that were somewhat misleading. One was that Secretary Mattis had said that he wanted to totally relook at the situation, implying that Secretary Mattis didn't think that a BRAC was a good idea. The Pentagon--President Donald Trump's Pentagon and Secretary Mattis' Pentagon--recommended a BRAC round that we rejected. So make no mistake about it, the Republican President and Secretary Mattis support a BRAC round. And two more minor points. It was argued that, well, we voted for this bill 60 to 1 out of committee, so we were all in favor of it. Yes, not all, but we were in favor of the bill. This was a small piece of that bill. So to argue in a bill--and forgive me, I don't know how many pages this year's bill is. I know last year's was 1,600--that in a 1,600-page bill, if you vote for it, you have got to support absolutely everything in it is a notion that I don't think any Member would support. Again, I will emphasize an argument that I made with Mr. Wilson on the notion that, well, gosh, they don't have a study, they haven't looked at it, they haven't thought about what they are going to do, when, in fact, it is Congress that has prohibited them legislatively-- and I don't know how many of the last few years, but several of them-- from doing that. Let's at least let them take a look at it to give us the numbers, because the same point as the nuclear weapons issue, as we have heard over and over today, we have crucial readiness shortfalls. In many ways I will agree with the chairman: we are right now not doing right by the men and women who serve in the military by not providing them with the training and the equipment they need to do the missions that we are contemplating having them do. And if that is the case, if we can find savings by not building as many nuclear weapons as we need or by closing institutions that we do not need, then I think that is something that we owe the men and women who serve in the military. And let's not kid ourselves. This is a very parochial issue. There are a whole bunch of bases in the State of Washington. I don't want to see any of them closed, but if the military decides that that is the best thing to do, I am not going to stand in the way of it. And I hope, given the dire situation that we face that has been described by my Republican colleagues, that we would put parochial concerns to the side and do what is best for the military, to make sure that we are spending the money as wisely as we possibly can and to make absolutely certain that the men and women who serve are trained, equipped, and ready to fight whatever fight it is we ask them to go into. Mr. Chairman, I urge adoption of the second en bloc amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Will the gentleman yield?

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

Mr. SMITH of Washington. I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Lipinski).

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I urge Members to support the en bloc package, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I just want to say very quickly, I still have the concerns that I have expressed about the broader nuclear weapons issue and will talk a little bit more about that in a minute. But you know, this is a way to at least give an option to get a greater idea of the costs. So it may not be everything that we would want, but it is certainly not something that we should oppose, so I do not oppose it and would urge support. Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I claim the time in opposition, though I am not opposed.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Suozzi).

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I am not going to take that much time. I agree with the chairman. This is uncontroversial and should be adopted. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I just want to make two quick points, first to the point Mr. Blumenauer made about how we are planning on recapitalizing our entire nuclear arsenal. Now, we have had a robust debate about how much that is going to cost over 10, 25, 30 years. I have some sympathy for the argument that Mr. Rogers made. It is going to be very difficult to estimate how much it is going to cost over 25 or 30 years. But I do know that if we are talking about recapitalizing our entire nuclear arsenal, all of the submarines, all of the ICBMs, a new bomber, it is going to cost a lot. I don't know if it is $1.2 trillion or $2 trillion. Whatever it is, it is going to be enormously expensive. At a time when we face a multiplicity of threats from Russia, North Korea, and where missile defense is critical, I do not believe this is the best investment of our money to get caught up in the Cold War, in the battle against Russia and their nuclear weapons, and making sure we can counter every possible scenario. It is not an efficient use of money. This amendment is but one piece of it to say let's take a step back and see if this is the best place to spend the money. Maybe it would be better to spend it on cybersecurity. Maybe it would be better to spend it on missile defense. There are a whole lot of other places I think that are better than trapping ourselves in these nuclear scenarios that require us to build an unbelievably expensive nuclear arsenal. Secondly, I will disagree with Mr. Rogers on one point: the more you build nuclear weapons, the more the other side tends to build nuclear weapons. I cannot agree that this is not going to potentially lead to an escalation. In fact, the reason we are so hell-bent on building the LRSO and all of these others is because we are concerned about what Russia and China are doing. That is how it works. It does have that destabilizing effect. I don't think this is the best place for us to spend our defense dollars.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I claim the time in opposition, although I am not opposed.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Chair, what I really want to focus on is the budget problem, because that is really underlying all of this. We have heard a lot of good speeches from Members talking about what is in this bill, how important it is, how what is in this bill is attempting both to meet our national security threats and, as importantly, to make sure that we take care of the men and women who serve our military, who fight to protect us to make sure, first of all, that they and their families are taken care of from a financial standpoint, but also to make sure they have the equipment and training they need to be ready to fight the fights that we ask them to go to. I think that is one of the great challenges. Whatever it is we decide ought to be our national security strategy, I think the thing we all agree on is we need to make sure we provide the training, equipment, and support so that the men and women who serve in the military are ready for that fight. The worst thing we can do is create a hollow force and set up an expectation that: You need to do all of this, but we are only going to train you for that. So if this other stuff comes up, you are not going to be ready. We have talked about this a lot in our committee to make sure that we are ready for the fight that comes. And that is where the budget creates a very significant problem. We have talked a lot about the Budget Control Act and sequestration. It is pretty clear why we had the Budget Control Act and sequestration. I was here for it. We were days away from not raising the debt ceiling and basically not meeting our commitments to pay our bills. There are those who figure that that can be a significant problem. So we made an agreement. We were going to try to get the budget under control. Sequestration was put in place, with the expectation that it wouldn't be implemented because we would come to a grand bargain on revenue and spending that would get our deficit under control. Well, we didn't, and sequestration kicked in. But as we sit here today, even if we got rid of sequestration, even if we got rid of the budget caps, we are still $20 trillion in debt. We are going to run a $700 billion deficit. This is projected to go nowhere but up in the years ahead. I don't believe that is sustainable. Now, I don't think we need to balance the budget tomorrow or next year or even in the next 5 years, but we need to get ourselves on a sustainable path. And we flat refuse to do that. You don't see a lot of campaigns promising to cut specific programs or promising to raise taxes. I love the fact that if you poll the American people, there is a very clear consensus on what they think we ought to do about this problem. First of all, somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 percent of them support a balanced budget now, by the way. Not 5, 10 years, but right now. You ask them: Well, here are all the places where the government spends money. What would you like to cut? The answer to that question is: nothing. Literally nothing. The Pew Research folks do a poll on this every year, and in every single category a majority of people would rather keep the money the same or increase it, as opposed to decrease it. Of course, if you ask them what taxes they would like to increase, by and large, they don't want to increase taxes. It is interesting. If you can convince people that the taxes in question will not apply to them, for a brief moment they will be supportive of it. But then someone will come along and convince them that at some point it might apply to them, and then they oppose it. So our task as Members of Congress is to balance the budget without raising taxes or cutting spending. That, of course, is impossible. So what we have chosen to do is put off that decision for as long as is humanly possible. That is why we do not have a budget resolution. Any budget resolution this body could create would fail on probably multiple fronts of what the public expects. It wouldn't balance the budget. It would cut spending they didn't want to cut. It probably wouldn't raise taxes, coming from this majority, but if it did, it wouldn't be popular. So we have to start having an honest conversation about the budget. We hear in the Armed Services Committee all the time about all the needs, all the shortfalls, all the critical things we need to do. We argue about it and argue about it, but in 6 years the Republican majority has not put forward a plan to control mandatory spending. They say that is the problem. No plan to do that. Certainly, they haven't even considered the possibility of increasing revenue. If we are this serious--and we should be--about making sure that we have the funds necessary to provide an adequate national security, then we should stop cowering from the budget debate. Personally, I am all for raising taxes because I see the needs that the chairman and everybody else has described, and I am actually prepared to pay for them. So we need to do that. That overarching budget problem is what has put us in this mess. As we talk about this bill, as I said, it is $72 billion over the budget caps. Unless we get a vote to lift those budget caps--which I just mentioned is politically unpopular, which is why we haven't done it for the full 6 months we have been in session this year--then that $72 billion goes away and the Pentagon is back in chaos. So this may be a good bill. It may be solid. It doesn't have the backing of the budget. Let me finally suggest that there are some things that the Department of Defense could do. This is why the strategy is so important. Yes, the Obama administration waited until May of 2010. They didn't have 6 years of CRs and government shutdowns and threatened shutdowns and the changing threat environment that we have. They had a reasonably consistent set of problems. It was a set of problems, but they had the same Secretary of Defense from the previous administration. They had time to look at that. We need this strategy urgently because the big question is: Are we spending the money correctly? Is the Department of Defense spending the money in the right way? Do we have a strategy to figure out how we should prioritize? We don't. With this crushing budget environment, it is absolutely critical that we do. We need to consider the possibility, for instance, that we might be spending some money that we shouldn't be spending. I will often ask that question of the generals who come over and tell us how short they are of everything. I say: Well, where are we spending money, in your opinion, that we shouldn't be? They never answer the question. You cannot tell me in a $700 billion budget in a place as large as the Pentagon that there isn't somebody over there who knows to say: Look, we shouldn't be doing this. Just to give one suggestion, we have had the BRAC debate forever. We have had a shrinking military, yet we have maintained the same infrastructure. We have seen study after study from the Air Force and others about how much excess capacity they have and money that could be saved from doing that. But again this year, for, I submit, political reasons, BRAC is prohibited. So we need to get a lot smarter about how we are going to spend this money and a lot smarter about our budget if this bill is actually going to become reality. Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, may I inquire as to how much time remains on each side.

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

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Courtney) who is the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces.

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

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, there is nothing political about a domestic agenda, and this isn't conditional on additional money being spent. In fact, the chairman has got it exactly flip-flop. The money that we are providing for the armed services at this point, the extra money, is conditioned on cutting it from everything else. As we saw in President Trump's budget, $54 billion-plus up for defense and $54 billion taken away from the domestic agenda. And it is beyond insulting to say that if you support any sort of domestic spending, you don't care about the troops. That being concerned about transportation and infrastructure, which, by the way, bridges have collapsed and killed people in this country because of the problems with our transportation and infrastructure. The Department of Homeland Security is part of nondefense discretionary spending. Does it not protect us? We have heard from the President it does. The State Department is also part of nondefense discretionary spending, where we have heard from the Secretary of Defense that it saves lives. So for our committee--the Armed Services Committee to say, ``We are all that matters, to hell with everything else; and if you care at all about transportation or domestic agenda, you don't care about the troops,'' that is what is an incredibly disingenuous argument.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Guam (Ms. Bordallo), ranking member of the Subcommittee on Readiness.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Massachusetts (Ms. Tsongas), the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces.