Adam Smith

Mr. SMITH of Washington

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds just to say, not to be a stickler for detail, but we are actually not giving a waiver here. We are changing the law, and that is what makes this appointment different. When you confirm someone to the Cabinet, the gentleman is absolutely right, the Senate, that is their authority. It is in the Constitution. We don't get involved in that. But when you are changing a law, the House has a say in that. It is the Senate and the House. This debate actually makes me even more strongly opposed to this bill as I continue to hear about: We just don't matter. The Senate has got it. Trump has got it. What do we need to do? We have a responsibility as the House, and when you are changing a law, it has to go through the Senate and the House. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. I yield the gentlewoman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of the time. I thank the folks for the debate. I think it has been very good, as it was in committee. But it is disturbing to hear this described as politics, or we feel slighted and we should rise above that. This isn't what this is about. It is about our exercising our constitutional authority as Members of the House and our constitutional authority as members of the Armed Services Committee. It is about us being relevant in the process and doing our jobs, as I said in the opening. Again, there is every opportunity to confirm and then also pass this change in the law that is necessary to make General Mattis the next Secretary of Defense. We can simply insist with the transition team that he appear before our committee. As I have pointed out, if we had done that in the first place, we could have met the January 20 deadline; and even now we could still do it by January 23 or 24. I don't think a few days would make that big a difference compared to the institution of the House actually mattering. Now, I will say that, as I listened to the debate today, I become even a little bit more disturbed, as we have heard some of the reasoning behind supporting this change in the law to allow General Mattis to become the Secretary of Defense. As was said, basically, the Trump administration is going to do this kind of thing quite frequently, as one Member of the opposite party said, so we should just get used to it. I really do think that makes it all the more important at this point, at this moment, that we assert our authority. Again, we can do that and have a bipartisan vote and approve General Mattis. We just have to insist upon it instead of rolling over and accepting what the transition team has said. That was my original argument. I will not belabor it or restate it. I think it is compelling. I think we should stand up for our rights here in the House and on the Armed Services Committee. The final thing I will say is, while I have an enormous amount of respect for General Mattis--and like many who have spoken, I have not served in the armed services, I didn't work with him there, but I certainly have worked with him on the committee--I will point out that General Mattis is not God. As we listen to the people talk here about how we absolutely have to have somebody from the warrior class lead us in the military, that we have to have him in there in order to protect us from this dangerous world, that sort of language kind of makes me a little nervous. That is the point of civilian control of the military. We do not want to be run by the warrior class alone. Now, absolutely we have many Members on both sides of the aisle who have served in the military, and I think that is terrific. That perspective is enormously important. It is not the only perspective that is important to running a representative democracy. We have heard comparisons to the Roman Empire. Again, another analogy that is somewhat troubling. That is not what we want. But more than anything, what we don't want is we don't want a president who thinks that he can roll over the House Armed Services Committee and the entire House any time he feels like it, frankly, as in this case, for no reason. General Mattis, as everyone has admitted, was perfectly prepared to testify, perfectly prepared to come before us, and they simply decided not to send him. I don't think it was mere pettiness or anything like that. I have watched the way President-elect Trump conducts himself, and he is, shall we say, aggressive. I think they wanted to make it clear that they are going to be running things and that we better get the heck out of the way. Well, that is not what I was elected to do as a member of the House Armed Services Committee or a Member of the House. We are not here simply to get out of the way of President Obama or President-elect Trump. We are here to stand up for the people who elected us and for the country and to do our jobs. In this case, for no good reason, we were denied the ability to do that. So, again, I will urge Members to vote down this bill today so that we can assert our authority, hear from General Mattis, get him approved, go forward, but do it in a way that shows that the House of Representatives and the House Armed Services Committee actually matter. We cannot set the precedent that the President of the United States can simply ignore us on a whim. So I would urge us to vote ``no'' on this matter. I, again, thank the chairman for his leadership on this. We have worked very closely on this issue, amongst many others. To echo the comments of the freshman colleague from California, this is a very bipartisan committee. It will continue to be. We have done a bill for 55 straight years, and I am hoping we will make it 56 this year. I look forward to working with Chairman Thornberry, all of the members of the committee, and all of the Members of the House to achieve that goal. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, first of all, I want to thank the chairman, and I want to thank the members of the Armed Services Committee. I think we had a very excellent debate on this issue yesterday in committee. A lot of very well thought-out opinions on both sides were expressed in a respectful way. I also want to thank the chairman because the second that it was said that General Mattis was going to be the President-elect's selection for Secretary of Defense, he joined me in saying that we wanted General Mattis to appear before our committee to answer our questions. This is something that has only happened twice, and the first time in 67 years; and our committee members wanted the opportunity to do our job as the House Armed Services Committee and hear from the nominee about how he felt about the civilian control of the military, which is the reason that this law was put in place back in 1947. So I thank the chairman for that. Unfortunately, it didn't happen. The one thing I would correct, we do have to pass this piece of legislation in order for General Mattis to become the Secretary of Defense. We do not have to do it now. I will explain more on how we can do that in just a second. But the problem of where we are at right now because of the actions of the transition team, we basically, certainly on the House Armed Services Committee and, to some extent, in the full House, are being treated as irrelevant. It was mentioned during our committee that General Mattis received an 81-17 vote on this legislation in the Senate. That is true, it was bipartisan. He appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee. The Senate Armed Services Committee was given the respect to do their job, and they heard him, and they asked him questions. It didn't take very long. He was done by 12:30, and they voted. That didn't happen for us. Really, it is sort of a two-step process in which the legislative branch--in this case, the House--was basically ignored and treated as irrelevant. First was in the continuing resolution that we passed to keep the government open where, with guidance from the transition team, they insisted on very specific language in the CR to set it up so that General Mattis could be confirmed, and that was stuck into the CR. Now, we, on the Democratic side objected to a couple of things in that at the time, but those objections were ignored, and it was put in, and we were not prepared to shut down the government over this issue since it was put into the CR. The chairman has mentioned one of the problems with it, and the biggest one, and that is in the past, in the case of General Marshall, they exempted him from this provision that retired officers are subject to the UCMJ. They did not exempt General Mattis. When we are talking about civilian control of the military, if you have a retired military officer who is still subject to military law, that, without question, blurs the line between his being a military officer and his being a civilian. It is something we easily could have fixed. But the way they wrote it into the CR there was no way for us to do that. Then, second, and more--I can't think of the right word--second and worse, let's just put it that way, as we said, we agreed. We were going to have General Mattis come and talk to us. Both the chairman and I spoke to General Mattis on the phone. He was very anxious to come testify. In fact, 3 days ago, we noticed in our committee that we were going to have a public hearing with General Mattis before us answering our questions and addressing whatever concerns we might have. Then, the next day, 24 hours before he was supposed to appear, the transition team--and as I was led to believe, it was some low-level person on the transition team--said: Nah, we are not going to let him come. Reporters have asked me many times: Why did the transition team do that? The best answer to that question is because they could, because they just really didn't feel like it. Some people have said: Well, it would be a lot of effort, a lot of work. Like I said, General Mattis testified before the Senate committee. Most of us watched it on television. He was done at 12:30. We were scheduled to have him at 2:30. He could have had a nice lunch, walked over to the House, sat down for an hour, and the House Armed Services Committee could have been permitted to do its job. The reason this is important--and I have heard for 8 years endless complaints from the Republican side of the aisle about how President Obama has ignored the legislative branch, how executive authority is making irrelevant the people's House, and how wrong that was. On a number of occasions I've actually agreed with them. I think that has happened. But here we are before this President is even in office, at the very first opportunity, he is choosing to completely ignore us for no reason. You cannot tell me that General Mattis couldn't handle an hour- and-a-half's worth of questioning in the House Armed Services Committee. He has done it before countless times. So what we can do and what I think we should do, what I think we should have done at the time when the transition team called up and said that, is we should have said: Okay. We appreciate your opinion, but you need us to pass this law in order for General Mattis to be Secretary of Defense. We have been told that he is going to appear before our committee. We have told our members of the committee and everybody else that he is going to appear; and until he does, we are not going to pass that law. Now, I am of the opinion that if we had said that, if we had shown some backbone and stood up for what is our right as the legislative body, that all of a sudden General Mattis would have been available and we could have avoided all of this. Even today, I submit that if we defeat this bill on the floor, we couldn't get him in by January 20. I grant you that. But we are back January 23 and 24. We were scheduled to be here January 25. I gather that got canceled because the Republican retreat is going to be a bit longer than expected. But we could certainly take that day back. We could wait 3 or 4 days, which I don't think would be the end of the world, and assert our authority as the legislative branch. Because, let me tell you something, if we set this precedent now, if you think President Obama exercised executive authority in a highhanded way, ignoring the legislative branch, there is every indication that President-elect Trump is going to have an even greater approach in that direction. So if we don't stand up for ourselves now, we are going to be rolled over countlessly. We all want to support General Mattis. We want that bipartisan vote. The way to get that bipartisan vote is to do what we said we were going to do, have him come before the Armed Services Committee and simply address the issue we want to raise. That is why I would ask this body to reject this motion now, so that we can actually have the Armed Services Committee do its job. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I would just point out that, because of the way this law is written, General Mattis actually will not be going back to civilian life after he leaves. He is still subject to the UCMJ and, therefore, is still, in some ways, a military officer while he will be the ``civilian head'' of the Defense Department. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

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

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

Mr. SMITH of Washington

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire how much time is remaining?

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

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

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

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott), the ranking member on the Committee on Education and the Workforce, and who also was enormously helpful with a number of different aspects of this bill. I appreciate his help and support in that.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Guam (Ms. Bordallo) for the purpose of a colloquy with the chairman, Mr. Thornberry.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire how much time each side has remaining.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Guam (Ms. Bordallo), the ranking member on the Subcommittee on Readiness. (Ms. BORDALLO asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Courtney).

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Davis), the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Military Personnel.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Langevin), the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities.

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

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. I just want to make three issues, and some of them were raised during the course of the debate. First of all, I like a lot of what is in this bill. I think it is also important what is not in this bill. There were a number of issues that were extraneous to the actual business of national security that had been put in by one side or the other that, in conference, we were able to remove. One of the most prominent ones was one that was raised earlier, the so-called Russell amendment having to do with the ability of companies and businesses that are receiving government contracts to discriminate. I was very much opposed to the Russell amendment. I am happy that we agreed to take it out. I just want to explain a little bit exactly what it is because it is really rather simple. All the President accomplished in this is that there already is an executive order saying: if you do business with the Federal Government, then you cannot discriminate against certain classes of people. I don't remember all the different classes, but certainly one of the big ones is you can't discriminate based on race. So in other words, if your religious tenets are racist--say, for instance, you don't like Black people and don't employ them and don't want to do business with them--we, as the Federal Government, have decided that that is not acceptable, and we will not allow you to do business with the Federal Government. All this executive order did was add the LGBT community to those protected classes. So, basically, what we are saying is: not only is it not acceptable to be racist, but it is also not acceptable to be homophobic. I completely agree with that, and I would hope our country would get to the place where it would agree with that as well; that if you feel that you must discriminate against people simply based on their sexual preference, then we are not going to do business with you. That is a policy that, I think, we should have. That is what the executive order does. To reverse that in the Defense bill, I think, would be an abomination, particularly since we have made such progress within the Department of Defense. We have finally gotten rid of Don't Ask, Don't Tell so that gay and lesbian people can serve openly in the military. They have served in the military for decades, and now they are allowed to serve openly. We have recently allowed transgender people to serve openly as well, which I think is a tremendous step forward. The Russell amendment would take us back. So, again, I really want to emphasize that all the executive order does is say that it is not all right to be racist and it is also not all right to be homophobic. I think that is a principle that we should stand for as a country. I want to further add that even within that executive order, there are many exceptions that already exist. Now, even though I am a lawyer, and even though lawyers have tried to explain this to me, I don't fully understand all those exceptions, but religious groups are allowed to discriminate based on the tenets of their belief within the existing executive order that was already passed. So even though the people who were pushing the Russell amendment already have what they want--even though, in my opinion, they shouldn't--there is no need to further emphasize the fact that we are going to allow people who do contract with the Federal Government to discriminate against the LGBT community. I think that is basically wrong and should not be allowed. The second point I want to make is on the money. We have heard over and over again about how underfunded everything is, and I get that. But we are spending $619 billion on the Department of Defense--far and away more money than any other country in the world, and we have been spending more money on defense for decades than any other country in the world. We ought to be able to build a military that can protect our national security interests for that amount of money, and not only should we be able to, we are going to have to because we are $19 trillion in debt. I forget exactly what the deficit is this year, but it is somewhere in the $500- to $600-billion range. We have a President coming into office who is promising trillions of dollars in additional tax cuts. We also have a crumbling infrastructure in this country, and it is just as important that we maintain the strength of our country at home--that we have a transportation infrastructure, an education infrastructure, and a research infrastructure that continues to make us as strong as it is and that we have a national security apparatus that will protect our interests abroad. If we spend all of our money in tax cuts and defense, then we will wind up with a very hollow country. We have got to make some tough choices going forward, and I believe that we can meet our national security needs, frankly, for less money than we spend. There are greater efficiencies; there are programs that we don't need to continue with. Those are the choices that we are going to have to make in the years ahead because right now we are planning on more programs and more national security than we could possibly have money for in the next decade. We cannot continue to duck the tough choices that get us a national security apparatus and a Department of Defense that we can actually afford that also provides for our national security. Lastly, I just want to close where I started and say that the product of this bill--I don't know how many pages it is this year, but it is a lot--requires a lot of work, and the people you see sitting behind us are the staff that do that work tirelessly night after night. It is a yearlong process to put it together and to negotiate with the Senate to get there. We have the most outstanding staff that I can imagine. I want to make sure that we thank them for that incredible work that they do, not just for us but for the men and women who serve in the military. Again, I want to thank Chairman Thornberry. We work in a bipartisan manner on this committee, and, as many of you are aware, that is not easy. I have been here 20 years, and the country and this place have suddenly become more partisan. It has become more and more difficult to do anything, to pass any kind of bill where Democrats and Republicans actually work together. The National Defense Authorization Act is a shining example of the way the legislative process should work, and many people are to thank for that, but it all starts with the chairman. It all starts with Mr. Thornberry and also with Senator McCain on the other side being dedicated to the principle, number one, of bipartisanship--of working together--and, number two, to the absolute commitment that we will get our job done. Sometimes it takes until December. I think we went all the way up to December 16 a couple of years ago, so we are way ahead of schedule this year by those standards. Sometimes it takes a long time, but we always get it done, and it is a credit to those chairmen that we do. Mr. Speaker, again, I urge passage of this very important bill, and I thank the chairman again for his great work and all the staff for the work they did to make this possible. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. First of all, I want to say that this is an excellent product. It was not easy to pull together. It is a very large bill with a lot of very important issues. As Chairman Thornberry indicated, a lot of people contributed to it. Certainly, everybody on our committee, but then many Members who aren't on the committee in the House and, of course, our friends in the Senate. We all worked together and found a way to get through the areas of disagreement and to get to a very good bill, with the central thought that it is our job in passing this bill to give the men and women who serve us in the Armed Services all of the tools they need to do the job we ask them to do. So I really want to echo Chairman Thornberry's comments and thank our staff, first of all, for the outstanding work that they have done in putting together this product. I thank the Members for their contribution. Also, perhaps most importantly, I thank Mr. Thornberry for his leadership as the chairman of the committee. I have been on this committee for 20 years, and we have had a tradition from the moment I showed up and before then that this is a bipartisan committee that is focused on getting its work done. Whatever the hurdles, whatever the difficulties, whatever the disagreements, we know how important it is to produce this bill and how important it is to our troops who are fighting to protect us and provide the national security that we need. Mr. Thornberry has upheld that tradition. We have had many chairmen in those 20 years. They have all had that first and foremost in mind. This is not a partisan committee. This is a committee that works together to get its job done. Mr. Thornberry has done an outstanding job of that. He has certainly been an excellent partner for me, and we even found a way to work with the Senate and then made that work. So I thank all of those people who contributed to this. Chairman Thornberry is also right. I think that the most striking thing about this bill is how much it does to help reform the way things are done at the Department of Defense. There is much on acquisition reform, all aimed at trying to get the taxpayers more for the money they spent. Because the chairman is right, as in many areas of government, there are more needs than there is money. What we have to do is try to figure out how to make that money go as far as possible. Acquisition reform is a key part of that. We really struggled in the early part of the 21st century with a lot of programs that went overbudget. We are still dealing with the legacy of some of that, but very proud that, in the last few years, that has declined, as we have passed acquisition reform, and as we have figured out better ways to get things in the field, into service more quickly, commercial, off-the-shelf technology, more improvements in our acquisition. That is critical if we are going to be able to use the scarce resources we have to the best of our ability. So we put together an excellent product. Also, as Chairman Thornberry mentioned, we do have the full pay raise for the troops that they need and desperately deserve. I will just close by saying, I think, that is the thing that you can really see from this bill. It prioritizes the men and women who serve in the military to try to make sure that we provide for them, give them all the training they need and all the support they need so that when we ask them to do something, they are trained and ready to do it. I really believe that is the most important thing that we do on this committee. We can have many, many debates about what our national security strategy should be, where we should employ our forces, how we should use them, and what equipment we should provide for them. But the one thing that we have to agree on is, whatever we decide the mission should be, we have to make absolutely certain that we provide the men and women everything they need to be ready to carry out that mission so that we do not send them into a fight unprepared. I think we are doing a very good job of that. There are many challenges ahead, as the chairman noted. We have a lot of demands. We do not have an infinite amount of money. So we are going to keep working hard to try to figure out how to make that money go as far as possible. Again, I want to thank all the people who worked on this process. This, I think, is an example of how Congress should work, how legislation should work, people working together, having differences, working them out, and producing a product that improves our Nation and, in this case, improves the quality of national security. Again, I thank Chairman Thornberry. I think this is an excellent bill. I urge passage. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of Washington

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I rise to honor the life of Technical Sergeant Bonny Emanuel Williams, USAF, Retired. Bonny Williams began his military service in 1955 in the United States Air Force as a Logistics Plan Clerk. During his time in the Air Force, Mr. Williams served all over the world on various military assignments. In 1975, after twenty years of exemplary service to our nation, Mr. Williams retired from the Air Force. After his retirement, Mr. Williams attended City University of Seattle and earned a Bachelor of Science in business management under the Post Vietnam Era Veterans Educational Assistance Program. Mr. Williams was also active in his community and worked tirelessly to serve the veteran's community. He was involved with the American Legion and was a member of the Veterans of Foreign War (VFW) Post for 44 years. Mr. Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I recognize the life of Technical Sergeant Bonny Emanuel Williams, USAF, Retired and his service to his country and community. His accomplishments and contributions will never be forgotten, and he will be greatly missed.

Mr. SMITH of Washington

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I rise to congratulate Bill and Paula Clapp as they are honored with the Inspiring Global Leaders Award from the Washington Office of Latin America (WOLA). This award is given in recognition of their years of indispensable leadership on global development and philanthropy for the past quarter century. Bill Clapp, an accomplished Seattle businessperson with more than thirty years of experience running a variety of companies in the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, and Hawaii, decided in the 1990s that he wanted to do more to make an impact globally. This decision resulted in the foundation of a series of impactful organizations that Bill and Paula Clapp had a hand in creating. Bill has served as President and Co-Founder of the Seattle International Foundation, a preeminent non- government organization (NGO) focused on poverty reduction and women's empowerment in Central America. Bill and Paula Clapp co-founded another NGO, Global Partnerships, in 1994 after witnessing the need for targeted and sustainable investments in Central America. Since 2001, Global Partnerships has impacted 3.3 million lives in thirteen countries in Latin America and the Caribbean through its unique social enterprise model. In 2015 alone, the organization invested $35.7 million to deliver economic opportunities to over 600,000 individuals. Global Partnerships continues to be the largest microfinancing organization for Latin America in Seattle. Bill and Paula also helped to create Global Washington in 2008, a consortium of NGOs that promotes and supports its members who are working to reduce poverty and disease, increase access to health care and education, protect the environment, and strengthen economies. Global Washington is the only organization in Washington state that builds networks between private companies and nonprofits working in global development, leading to partnerships that result in innovative, impactful projects around the world. Following Bill Clapp's retirement from Matthew G. Norton Co. in 2002, he co-founded the Initiative for Global Development. In addition to serving on the boards of Weyerhaeuser and Alaska Airlines, he has also served on several community and nonprofit boards, and has been actively involved as an early investor in micro-finance development. Bill has also served on many industry panels and advisory committees, speaking widely on development issues around the world and in Congress. Paula Clapp has been an active leader throughout the years, as well. She played a central role in the creation of an acclaimed documentary film ``SOLD'' which raised awareness about sex trafficking. She and a group of Seattle women co-founded Stolen-Youth, a non-profit organization that raises awareness and funds to help rescue and recover local youth who are forced into prostitution. Paula was also a founding member of the Washington Women's Foundation and has served on the boards of the Make A Wish Foundation, One World Now, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In 2014, Paula received the Unsung Heroes of Compassion award from His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Throughout the past twenty-four years, Bill and Paula Clapp have remained steadfast in their belief that international development serves our national interests and improves all aspects of our society. Mr. Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I recognize and congratulate Bill and Paula Clapp for their contributions and leadership in the global development sector, and the impact they have made in the lives of countless individuals and families around the world for over twenty-four years.

Mr. SMITH of Washington

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. In the prime sponsor of this bill's remarks, there are a whole lot of sort of half-truths and assumptions that got jammed together that don't actually make sense and are not actually the facts that are before us to paint a very dark picture that isn't what we are dealing with. Let me just run through those. We heard that 30 percent of the people have returned to the battlefield or are suspected to have returned to the battlefield. That 30 percent figure relies, again, on the folks that were released before the Obama administration when, again, quite frankly, people were picked up in a very haphazard manner and released in a very haphazard manner. Since 2009, since the Obama administration did the vetting process of all of these people, the actual rate of people who have been deemed to have returned to the battlefield, even with the two that were counted this morning, is 5.6 percent. So when you hear 30 percent--oh my gosh, 30 percent of these people are returning to the battlefield; how can we release them--that is not the number. Okay? Now, you can argue about the 5.6 if you want, but let's at least get the number right. Since the Obama administration did the proper vetting process, the number is 5.6 percent to have been confirmed to have returned to the battlefield, including the two that were added this morning. It is also worth noting that when we say the ones that are left are the worst of the worst, there is truth in that. Obviously, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would fall right up at the top of that; and 41 of the folks who are there do fall into that category of the worst of the worst. None of those 41 have been cleared for transfer. What we are talking about is the 20 who have been cleared for transfer, and the President--those are the people that President Obama has released and repatriated to other countries over the course of the last 7 years, are people who have been cleared for transfer; with one exception, which I am sure will come up at some point, and that was in the prisoner swap for Bowe Bergdahl. And we can relitigate that argument as well, but that has really got nothing to do with what is going on here. There, the President made a decision to transfer five people that had not been cleared for transfer in exchange for our captured member of the military. So except for that situation, all of these people who have been released have been vetted and cleared. Lastly, I just want to--well, not lastly, actually two more things. The most disturbing thing that was said was that these people who have been released are people who, at one time, were suspected of being dangerous, and that is true. They wouldn't have been there if they weren't suspected of being dangerous. But it turns out in these cases we were wrong. And you can go back through the history of post-9/11, you can find a number of instances when we were wrong. I remember right after 9/11 there was a doctor in San Antonio who had done a whole bunch of suspicious things, and everybody was absolutely convinced that this guy was tied in with al Qaeda. He was held for an extended period of time, and then people looked into it and they said: Oops, sorry, we got the wrong guy. We are going to let you go. That happens, and I don't blame law enforcement in the least bit for that. It is a difficult job. In this case, when you are talking about terrorists, you should err on the side of caution. If you have probable cause, you should pick somebody up and you should be sure. But now what this side is saying, once you have been suspected, even if it turns out that you were completely wrong in that suspicion: Sorry, we are just going to lock you up for the rest of your life without due process or a possibility of trial. That is unbelievably unconstitutional and just flat wrong. Yes, these people were suspected. They wouldn't be in Guantanamo if they weren't. But what was determined was that, of those people who were suspected, a number of them turned out we were wrong. And of the ones that are left, there are 20 out of the 61 that are eligible for transfer. Now, again, finding the right country to send them to, it might not happen. All right. So no one is talking about releasing the worst of the worst. The President has made it clear those 41 are not transferrable. We are talking about the 20 that have been deemed to be transferrable. Just because you were suspected at one point, I would hate to think that we would have a country that says: If you are suspected of a crime, sorry, we are going to lock you up and that is it, even if evidence later shows that we were wrong. That is not the way we should do things in law enforcement. Lastly, we have heard that this is all about a campaign promise to close Guantanamo. Again, this has nothing to do with closing Guantanamo. Now, the President and the Vice President are reluctant to give up on what they think is the right policy, closing Guantanamo Bay. So until they leave office, they are not just going to say: We are not going to do it. They think it is important. Again, I won't relitigate that argument, but there are people who feel passionately that it is the right thing to do. But that is not what we are talking about doing here. We are talking about 20 people who have been deemed not to be a threat to the United States that we are, nonetheless, incarcerating, and the President is talking about transferring them. We are not talking about transferring the 41, not talking about closing Guantanamo. It is still in law that we can't close Guantanamo. So it is not about a campaign promise. It is about upholding the values in the Constitution of the United States of America that says that if we have you incarcerated and it turns out that our evidence was wrong and you are not guilty of what we thought you were guilty of or, in this case, not a threat to us in the way that we thought you were, then we should release you, not hold you. We are not a dictatorship. We are not a country like Saddam Hussein used to run, where he just locked people up because he wanted to. That is not who we should be. This bill takes away the ability of this President to transfer those 20 people who have been clearly deemed transferrable by the Defense Department, the Justice Department, Homeland Security Department, Intelligence Community experts. They want to stop, as Mr. Nadler said, this President from being President. Now, they never wanted him to be President in the first place, and it is incredibly inconvenient that he got elected twice, from their perspective. But he is the President and he should have the authority to exercise the Office of the Presidency until January 20 of next year, when he is done. This bill unfairly strips him of that right. Again, we are talking about 20 people who have been deemed to be transferable. So let's get the facts straight and then argue based on those facts. It is not 30 percent; it is 5.6. We are not talking about releasing the worst of the worst. We are not talking about closing Guantanamo Bay. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds to make two quick points. The Obama administration is not determined to clear the facility before they leave office. They want to close the facility. But, again, those 41 that have been deemed dangerous, it is the Obama administration's position that they shouldn't be held in Guantanamo Bay, that they should be held in secure prisons in the United States, not to let them go. I think that is one of the most misleading things about this argument that is being made by the other side repeatedly that they simply want to let them all go. It is not their goal to empty GTMO before January 20. It is their goal to still try to close the prison so that they can be held here in the U.S. Again, that is a separate argument, but I just want to make sure that it is clear it is not the goal of the administration to simply empty out the prison and send all 61 wherever. We are talking about 20 that have been deemed eligible for transfer.