Adam Smith

Mr. SMITH of Washington

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I rise to honor Habitat for Humanity of Tacoma and Pierce County for their thirty years of invaluable housing assistance and support to families throughout our region. Since 1985, this organization has been dedicated to building quality and affordable housing for families from all walks of life, offering an opportunity for families who are otherwise unable to obtain proper financing to achieve their dream of homeownership. In order to qualify for a home, families must contribute five hundred hours on the construction of their or someone else's home, which in turn fosters a sense of ownership and a greater sense of unity in the community. In the last year alone, the organization built fourteen new homes and renovated almost a dozen others, providing a better living situation for over eighty adults and children. This positive impact on the lives of families would not have been possible without the vision and devotion that Habitat for Humanity of Tacoma and Pierce County and its countless volunteers have shown. They have played a key role in making Pierce County a better place to live-- both for their clients and the community at large. Mr. Speaker, it is with great honor that I recognize the work of Habitat for Humanity of Tacoma and Pierce County on their thirtieth anniversary as a positive contributor to the community. Their commitment to lifting up the lives of so many Pierce County families over three decades is admirable and I look forward to their future positive impacts.

Mr. SMITH of Washington

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, on Thursday, January 22, 2015, I was unable to be present for recorded votes. Had I been present, I would have voted: ``NO'' on roll call vote Number 42 (on ordering the previous question on H. Res. 42), ``NO'' on roll call vote Number 43 (on agreeing to the resolution H. Res. 42), and ``YES'' on roll call vote Number 44 (on the motion to recommit H.R. 7, with instructions).

Mr. SMITH of Washington

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, on Thursday, July 16, 2015, I was unable to be present for a recorded vote. I would have voted ``YES'' on roll call vote Number 443 (on agreeing to the Garamendi Amendment to H.R. 2898).

Mr. SMITH of Washington

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, on Wednesday, May 13, 2015, I was unable to be present for a recorded vote. I would have voted ``No'' on roll call vote Number 221 (on agreeing to the resolution H. Res. 255).

Mr. SMITH of Washington

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, on Thursday, June 25, 2015, I was unable to be present for a recorded vote. I would have voted ``Yes'' on roll call vote Number 387 (on the motion to suspend the rules and pass H.R. 1615, as amended).

Mr. SMITH of Washington

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I rise to honor Tomio Moriguchi, a native of Tacoma and longtime Seattle resident and community icon, for his latest honor: the Dr. Samuel E. Kelly Award from the University of Washington's Multicultural Alumni Partnership (MAP). This is a fitting recognition for Tomio's extensive leadership and service in the community over the course of decades. Tomio's father, Fujimatsu Moriguchi, made a living selling rice to workers at logging and fishing camps in the Seattle area. The business--named Uwajimaya after the fishing village where Fujimatsu learned his trade--grew steadily until World War II, when Tomio and his family were placed in internment camps along with many Japanese- Americans. After the war, the Moriguchi family went back to work. Uwajimaya reopened and Tomio attended Garfield High School and the University of Washington. Following his time in college, Tomio enjoyed a brief stint at the Boeing Company as an engineer before joining the family business. Under his careful leadership for 30 years as CEO and in partnership with the many family members involved in the business, Uwajimaya experienced meteoric growth. Tomio guided the company through its massive expansion in the International District while adding locations in the Greater Seattle Area. Today, thanks to the careful guidance of Tomio and other family members, the company now employs 500 people and is engrained in the social fabric of life in the Pacific Northwest. Outside of his business endeavors, Tomio has also made a life-long commitment to the betterment of his community. Tomio led the way for the development of the Keiro Nursing Home, a culturally-sensitive facility to serve the Japanese community in Seattle. He has served as President of the Hokebui Hochi Foundation, which organizes educational and cultural activities to preserve Japanese culture. He also serves as publisher of the region's largest Japanese newspaper, the North American Post. Other highlights include his service on many non-profit boards and the creation of the International District Improvement Association. Throughout his life, Tomio has demonstrated a unique ability to serve as a unifying force and advocate for Asian American communities in the region. Mr. Speaker, it is with great honor that I recognize Mr. Tomio Moriguchi for his years of service and the impact he has made within the Asian American community and countless others in the greater Seattle area.

Mr. SMITH of Washington

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this resolution. As a member of the Benghazi panel, I think what we have learned from the Benghazi panel is that this House majority is not to be trusted when it comes to forming special investigatory panels. Basically, they form them for purely partisan reasons, as Representative McCarthy admitted just last week. The second point here is one that has been made repeatedly. There is no evidence whatsoever that Planned Parenthood has violated the law. So what exactly is it exactly that we are investigating? Even the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight has admitted there is no evidence that Planned Parenthood has violated the law. Third, there is a House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. In fact, just about every committee in Congress has an oversight function. So why don't we use that instead of wasting taxpayer dollars on something like the Benghazi Committee, which is admittedly breaking all kind of records in terms of wasting taxpayer dollars? But we don't need to pile on with another wasteful committee. If you want to investigate this, do it through the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Do it through the existing committees. Lastly, it is incredibly important to point out that Planned Parenthood performs enormously important services to women in this country. They provide much-needed health care to poor women and much- needed family planning to poor women. You should have a family when you want a family. If you are not prepared to take care of children, then family planning makes an enormous amount of sense. In fact, what it does is it prevents abortions. It stops women from getting pregnant when they are not ready to have children. It goes after precisely the issue that the majority is most concerned about, to prevent abortions. Planned Parenthood deserves our support, not another wasteful, taxpayer-funded, partisan investigation.

Mr. SMITH of Washington

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 5 minutes. First of all, let me agree on two points with the chairman. There is a lot that is good in this bill. There is no question about that. And I want to thank the chairman for his leadership in making that happen. I think the conference committee process was a model for how the conference committee is supposed to go. The minority was included. There was robust debate about a large number of issues. There were points when we thought we couldn't resolve them and we did. And I think there is a lot that is good in this bill. I also think, without question, without debate, that this is a very, very dangerous time for our country. No doubt about it. The chairman laid out some of the challenges--there are many, many more--with what is going on in the Middle East, certainly with Russia, with how we deal with China. It is a very challenging time for national security, and we need to be as strong as we possibly can. But the one area where I disagree--and I think the chairman also correctly states the fundamental question: Is this good for our country? Is it good for our troops? I don't believe that it is. It is not good for our country, and it is not good for our troops. It does, in fact, matter where the money comes from for a couple of reasons. First of all, by the budget gimmick that the Budget Committee in the House and the Senate put together, by using overseas contingency operations funds for things that are not overseas contingency operations funds--and this was all done as a dodge to get around doing what we need to do, which is to lift the budget caps. Because, you see, the OCO funding, for some reason is not counted as real money. It is money. It is $38 billion. But it enables the conservatives in the Republican Party to say that they have maintained the budget caps while still spending $38 billion more dollars, which is incredibly hypocritical and a terrible way to budget. But here are two reasons why that is bad for our country and bad for our troops. Number one, it does not lift the budget caps. These budget caps are in place, I believe, for another 9 or 8 years. Unless we lift those budget caps, we are harming our troops and we are harming our country. This bill dodging that issue is precisely a national security issue because, until we lift those caps, the Department of Defense has no idea how much money they are going to have. All right? OCO is one-time money. That is why it is not as good as lifting the budget caps and giving the ability to do the 5- and 10-year planning that they do, to do multi-year projects so that they can actually have a plan going forward. That hurts national security. The inability to raise the budget caps in this bill and appropriations process is a critical blow to our troops and to our national security. The second reason this is important is because the OCO funding that is in this bill is not going to happen; all right? Part of it is because the President is going to veto it. But the larger part of it is the Senate, as they have been unable to do for a number of years, has not passed any appropriations bills because they have rejected their own budget resolution. So this $38 billion in OCO funding that we are going to hear about, all this great money, is not going to happen because the appropriators have said it is not going to happen. So to have a national defense authorizing bill with $38 billion in imaginary money is not good for our troops and it is not good for our country. We need to lift the budget caps. We need to spend the money that we need to spend on national security. I will also say that there are other pieces of national security, because the budget caps remain in place for the Department of Homeland Security. They remain in place for the Department of Justice. They remain in place for the Department of the Treasury, three agencies that play a critical role in national security for this country, in tracking the money of terrorists, in protecting the homeland, in making sure that we can try and convict terrorists when we catch them. So it is not good for the country to maintain those budget caps, and that is what this bill does. It also relies on money that simply isn't going to be there by having this imaginary OCO funding. The second way I think this bill is not good for the troops and not good for the country is something that the chairman alluded to, and that is there are restrictions on what the Pentagon can do by way of saving money. The chairman mentioned the A-10, but there are a whole host of other things the Pentagon has proposed as a way to save money and spend it more efficiently, which, over the course of the last 2 or 3 years, we have blocked almost every attempt, not every attempt. On personnel savings, we have made changes in the retirement system. We have made changes in the healthcare system. We saved no money for 10 years. For 10 years we saved no money in personnel costs while the Pentagon tells us that, to be able to properly train our troops to get them ready to go to battle, they need personnel cost savings. If we don't give them that savings, last year, next year, this year, in the future, they will not have the money for readiness that they need to train and equip our troops. So that is not good for the country. There are a number of other provision areas--well, BRAC would be a big one. We have seen our Army and Marine Corps shrink substantially. We have seen our entire military shrink substantially. We haven't closed any bases. That is not good for the country, to not find savings there so that we can spend it on training our troops.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. I yield myself an additional 30 seconds. Over the course of the last 2 or 3 years, we have wound up authorizing and appropriating here in Congress substantially less money for readiness than the President, now, not this year, assuming you imagine that this OCO money is actually going to appear. The bulk of the OCO money makes up for the readiness gap. But, again, that OCO money isn't going to be there. So I don't think this bill is good for our country or good for our troops. I do agree with the chairman that that is the criteria on which it should be judged. But I urge a ``no'' vote. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. I am.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield the gentlewoman an additional 1 minute.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute. First of all, I very specifically challenge the substance of this bill. The OCO funding and the way it is funding is not good for national security and not good for our troops. The substance of the bill is precisely the issue and what it does for defense or does not do for defense. That is why using the OCO funding is the exact wrong way to go. The other thing I will say is I am quite confident that we will get a bill. Because that is the interesting thing about this argument. As I have pointed out, the appropriators in the Senate have already rejected the OCO funding. So this $38 billion that we have in here is gone, done, poof, not going to happen. All right? We are going to have to have a further debate about that in the Appropriations Committee to actually fund any of the stuff that we are talking about in this bill. I am confident that we will have that debate. I wish I could be more confident that it will come out in a positive way. We need to lift the budget caps. We actually need to pass appropriations bills and not shut the government down. We will see what happens on December 11. But when that happens, we can pass this bill. We are not going to not pass the NDAA. We just need to pass it the right way so it actually helps our country and actually funds the programs that we are talking about. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I have a motion to recommit at the desk.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

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

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. I will go ahead and start with that last comment because it is a popular trope that is trotted out all the time about how sequestration was the President's idea and, therefore, it is not our fault, which is a fascinating argument because I was actually here when that happened, and I don't think it is clear exactly whose idea sequestration was. What is clear is that the reason that we did the Budget Control Act and sequestration was because the Republican majority in the House was refusing to raise the debt ceiling, refusing to allow us to borrow money at a time when we had to borrow it. How do we think that would have impacted national security and our troops? I voted against the Budget Control Act, but I have often said I don't hold anything against those who voted for it because they basically had a gun to their head. The Budget Control Act was an awful piece of legislation, but not raising the debt ceiling, not paying our debts, you know, stopping the ability of the United States of America to borrow money, was clearly worse. So this partisan argument that, oh, you know, sequestration was the President's idea so therefore it is not our fault is about as absurd an argument as I have ever heard. Number one, because like I said, the only reason that that discussion was on the table was because it was blackmail for raising the debt ceiling, which had to be raised. Number two, it has been a good 5 years since then. The Republicans now control both the House and the Senate, and they had an opportunity to pass a budget resolution this year. They passed a budget resolution that held those caps and sequestration firmly in place, and that is not good for our troops and it is not good for our national security. So let's move on to that appropriations process; get those budget caps lifted for the sake of a whole lot of different issues. That brings me back to the National Defense Authorization Act and the fact that, by locking in the OCO, by accepting those budget caps, by using OCO funds, we are once again putting the Pentagon in a situation where they don't know how much money they are going to have and they have no predictability whatsoever. It is the OCO in this bill that is the reason that I oppose it and the reason that most Democrats oppose it because that OCO is harmful to national security. We need a real budget. We need real budget authority and real appropriations. Voting for a bill that puts in place the OCO instead of that simply perpetuates the nightmare of the last 5 years of uncertainty. Like I said, we are going to have a motion to recommit here in a moment that easily fixes this problem. I agree with 95 percent of the rest of the bill. I don't agree with all of it. The chairman said, you know, we negotiated some things; they were up, they were down. By and large, it is a good bill. But the 5 percent that is bad is so bad that it does justify a ``no'' vote because it perpetuates this bad budget situation and is a very easy fix. Take the OCO out of it and put it in the base budget. It is very simple. That is what we are going to propose in the motion to recommit. You will see Democrats vote for that because we support funding this. What we don't support is maintaining the budget caps through an obvious budget gimmick. I had a fascinating conversation with a member of the Rules Committee yesterday on the other side of the aisle who said he was very, very proud of the Budget Control Act, said it was the best vote he had taken in Congress. Interesting that it was supposedly all the President's fault. But he really supported the Budget Control Act. He felt those caps were absolutely necessary. And I said: Well, then you must oppose the NDAA because it busts those caps by $38 billion. He said a lot of things at that point, but he never answered my question. So this dodge of saying that we are going to create sort of money that really isn't money in order to, for one brief period of time, fund isolated programs within the Pentagon does not help national security. The only thing that is going to help national security is by getting rid of the OCO dodge and budgeting honestly. So that is why we oppose this bill. Yes, I believe that budget caps should be raised for the other bills as well, in part, because I think a lot of those Departments are important to national security, as I mentioned: the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, the Department of the Treasury. More than anything, we oppose this bill because of how bad it is for the Pentagon. That is the reason the Secretary of Defense opposed it. That is the reason all of the Joint Chiefs of Staff oppose it. They want an actual budget. They want actual, dependable money, the way things used to be before 2010 when we would actually pass appropriations bills and they could plan more than a month or two at a time. If we pass this bill, we simply perpetuate that process. We will pass an NDAA. We will resolve one way or the other our appropriations difference, and we will get it done, but passing this bill now simply perpetuates a bad situation that is bad for our troops and bad for national security. For that reason, I oppose it. I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. SMITH of Washington. I yield myself an additional 2 minutes. We have cut Medicare. I know we have cut Medicare because the Republican Party ran all kinds of ads bashing us for cutting Medicare back in 2010. We found about $700 billion in savings that has extended the life of the program and saved money, so we have saved money. But the flat refusal to raise any revenue is what has got our military with a hand around its throat, because, believe it or not, you have to actually raise the money if you are going to spend it. So as you stand up here complaining about all the things that we are not funding in national security and then insist on maintaining the budget caps and insist on not raising a penny in taxes, that is the grossest hypocrisy I can imagine. If you are unhappy with how much money is being spent on the military, then have the guts to raise the caps and raise the taxes to actually pay for it, or just stop talking about it and accept it at that level. We are opposing this bill because the budget process that we have been under is what is throttling our military. Until we break that grip, until we get an actual appropriations process, until we get the budget caps lifted, and until, I believe, we actually raise some revenues to pay for it, we are not going to be doing adequate service to the men and women of our military. I also want to say that I oppose this bill because it also continues to keep Guantanamo Bay open at the cost of nearly $3 million per inmate. In addition to being an international problem, it is unbelievably expensive and not necessary. We should shut Guantanamo. This bill locks in place for another year that it will stay open and does not give the President any option or any flexibility in that regard. So, again, don't tell me or anyone over here that we are voting ``no'' for reasons that have nothing to do with national security. How can you possibly look at the last 5 years of budgeting and the impact that it has had on the Department of Defense and say that getting rid of the budget caps isn't absolutely critical to national security? I believe that it is, and that is why we oppose this bill. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes. There was a comment earlier about the military being held hostage by these other needs, and I think it is really important to understand that, over the course of the last 5 years, what the military has really been held hostage to is the budget caps, one government shutdown, multiple CRs, and multiple threatened government shutdowns. That is what is holding the military hostage. If you talk to them about how they have tried to figure out what they can spend money on and what they can't spend money on throughout that madness--because we can't pass along a long-term budget, because we can't lift the budget caps, because we can't pass appropriations--that is what is holding them hostage. A 1- or 2-month delay in passing the NDAA--which, by the way, we have passed in December for the last 3 or 4 years--isn't going to hold them hostage at all. What is holding them hostage is that ridiculous budget process that I just mentioned. And why do we have that ridiculous budget process? Because the Republican majority insists on maintaining those budget caps. It is those budget caps that are holding our military hostage. Unless we lift them, we will not be able to adequately fund defense. I heard a number of times over here that the only reason we oppose this is because we want more spending on other programs. That is not even close to true, and it is obvious that no one has been listening to the arguments that I have been making. The reason we propose this is because it perpetuates our military being held hostage to budget caps, budget gimmicks, CRs, and threatened government shutdowns. This bill has OCO funding in it. It does not have base budget funding. It does not provide the same amount of money for the President that the President's budget provides because it is not the same money, and the type of money does matter. If you have actual budget authority, if you have actual appropriations, you can spend them over multiple years because you know that they are going to be there. It is absurd the way we have budgeted for the last 5 years, and what we are doing in opposing this bill is standing up to that absurdity for many reasons, I will grant you. Number one is to protect our national security and the men and women who serve in the Armed Forces who have had to live with that government shutdown, those CRs, those threatened government shutdowns, and, most importantly, those budget caps that the majority refuses to lift. Unless we lift those, the military is going to be in this situation in perpetuity, and that is unacceptable for our national security. It is all about national security. It is all about defense for why we are opposing this bill. We can't go on like this and have an adequate national security. We have to lift the budget caps. I will say one other thing. We have to raise taxes somewhere. In the last 14 years, we have cut taxes by somewhere in the neighborhood of $7 trillion. Now, granted, there are unquestionably places in the budget we can cut, and we cut.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time is remaining on each side.

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

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

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I agree with a lot of what the gentleman just said about how critical national security is, yet the Republican majority insists on maintaining those budget caps that are devastating to our national security. They will not lift the caps that are causing precisely the problems that were just described, and 151 of them voted yesterday to defund the entire military by shutting down the government. So if we really believe in all of those national security priorities, let's start funding them. Lift the budget caps and actually pay for it. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Davis).

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes. Mr. Speaker, first of all, the reason that we are at the ragged edge of what defense needs is because of the budget caps. That is the issue. That is the substantive issue and why this is important. Tied into that is a regrettable fact. The chairman says repeatedly, look, this is the authorizing bill. Don't talk to me about the budget. Don't talk to me about appropriations. The defense budget is over half of the discretionary budget. So, unfortunately, the defense bill is about the budget and about the appropriations process. As long as we have those budget caps locked in place, we will be at the ragged edge of what we can do to protect our national security. We shouldn't be there. We should lift the budget caps. This NDAA locks in those budget caps and uses the OCO dodge, which, as I have pointed out, the Senate isn't agreeing to, so the $38 billion isn't going to be there. Even worse, what Secretary Carter has also said is that the OCO funding simply perpetuates the 5 years of budget cuts and uncertainty, of CRs, of government shutdowns, of threatened government shutdowns, and of not being able to plan. Secretary Carter has been very clear. He opposes this bill because the OCO funding is not an adequate way to fund defense because it is 1-year money. It is a budget gimmick. It doesn't give them the ability to plan and do what they need to protect our country and take care of our troops. So opposing this bill because of the OCO funding is enormously important to our troops and is a substantive part of this. We cannot simply dodge the budget issues. Mr. Speaker, I just want to respond briefly to the comment about the committee vote. We in committee said we didn't like the OCO funding and that we needed that to be fixed. But we are coming out of committee. We are going to give it a chance to work its way through the process. No changes were made, so we opposed it on the floor. We didn't just wake up yesterday and oppose this. Democrats voted against this bill when it came through the House in the first place. The critically important issue that we absolutely made a point of in committee was not fixed, so that is why we are opposing this bill. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.