Adam Smith

Mr. SMITH of Washington

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, this is the amendment that will enable us to eventually close the Guantanamo Bay prison. There are several compelling reasons to do this. First of all, we have reached a point where we are now spending $2.7 million per inmate at Guantanamo Bay. To contrast that, an inmate at a supermax Federal prison facility here in the U.S. costs roughly $78,000 a year. This is only going to become more expensive as the temporary facility at Guantanamo Bay is forced to last longer and longer. So the cost alone is reason, I believe, to close it. Also, we have the larger issue. President George W. Bush wanted to close Guantanamo Bay, as did Secretary Gates, as did Senator McCain. Many very conservative Republicans came out in favor of closing Guantanamo back in 2008. Why? Because the military told them that it was harming our ability to effectively fight al Qaeda and affiliated forces, that the presence of Guantanamo Bay was recognized as an international eyesore that undermined U.S. credibility with our allies abroad as we tried to prosecute that fight. There is no need for Guantanamo. So argument number one is all of the problems with it. Argument number two is that there is no need for it, because what we could do would be--154 inmates who are in Guantanamo Bay, first of all, some number of them, I think it is roughly half, have been deemed not to be a threat to the United States. We just don't have anyplace to send them. So we can do foreign transfers, which we are beginning to work on. The rest of them that are a threat can be housed in supermax facilities in the United States of America. Now, we constantly hear the argument that we can't bring terrorists to the United States. The way that argument is stated, it is like we are bringing them here and setting them free. We are not. We are going to lock them up and hold them. In fact, there was a recent ruling of the courts that made it clear those inmates would not be freed in the United States under any set of circumstances. In addition to that, we have the ability in the United States of America to hold dangerous people. I will submit to you that if we didn't have that ability, we would be in a whole lot of trouble regardless of the people at Guantanamo Bay. We currently house over 300 terrorists here in the U.S., including Ramzi Yousef, The Blind Sheikh, and a number of others. We have been able to successfully hold terrorists in the United States. We also hold mass murderers and gang leaders and mobsters. We have the ability to safely hold these people in the United States of America. So there is no downside to doing this. The upside is to finally do what President George W. Bush recognized back in 2007 and 2008 that we needed to do, to close down Guantanamo Bay because of the international perception that it goes against our values and because of the very fact that it does go against our values to have people locked away in a prison that was originally set up under the hopes that somehow we would be able to avoid habeas corpus. Well, the Supreme Court said no, Guantanamo Bay is effectively under U.S. control, so habeas corpus applies anyway, so same amount of rights, same everything. It is simply an international eyesore that we keep open for no good reason. This bill has prohibitions on closing it. My amendment would put in place a plan to close Guantanamo Bay by the end of 2016 and enable the steps necessary to accomplish that. With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I offer the amendment.

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

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I now yield 1 minute to the gentlelady from California (Ms. Lee).

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

Mr. SMITH of Washington. I now yield 1 minute to the gentlelady from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee) to talk about her very important amendment dealing with Boko Haram, as we all know, a significant problem that needs to be addressed.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlelady from California (Ms. Speier).

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Cleaver).

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

Mr. SMITH of Washington

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, on Monday, May 19, 2014, I was unable to be present for the last vote in a series of recorded votes. I would have voted ``yes'' on rollcall vote No. 219 (on the motion to suspend the rules and pass H.R. 685, as amended).

Mr. SMITH of Washington

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gallego), a member of the committee.

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

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I now yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Massachusetts (Ms. Tsongas), the ranking member of the Oversight and Investigation Subcommittee.

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

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Davis), ranking member of the Military Personnel Subcommittee.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. First of all, I want to join the chairman in thanking him for the working relationship that he and I have enjoyed now through 4 years and four national defense authorization acts. It is one of the main principles of our committee in that it is bipartisan, that we work together, and we produce a product every year--52 straight years, the National Defense Authorization Act. That doesn't happen as a starting point, unless the chair of the committee takes the responsibility very seriously to make sure that our committee remains bipartisan. We have had a whole series of chairmen during my tenure who have done that, and Mr. McKeon has followed that tradition just as well as his predecessors. He has worked very closely with us. We do not always agree, but we work closely together, understanding that, at the end of the day, we have to produce a bill. So I thank him for that, and I recognize that this will be his last NDAA. In fact, this is the Buck McKeon National Defense Authorization Act. Mr. Thornberry and I were proud to cosponsor the amendment in committee to name this after Buck, for his great service to our committee. As always, I also want to thank the staff. I can't thank them enough for the work that they do and for the hours that they put in. They spent yesterday going through 320 amendments. Their expertise that they bring to this process is invaluable, and someday, I hope that the House Administration Committee recognizes that and actually gives us the amount of money we need to keep them. That is just a little sidenote on a different piece of legislation. This is, by and large, a good bill with one significant problem, which I will get to in a minute. First of all, as the chairman notes, we are still at war in Afghanistan. I would say that I think, at this point, our continuing commitment to Afghanistan is up to the Afghan people and, most importantly, is up to the next Afghan President. We need the bilateral security agreement to be signed. It has been agreed to. President Karzai has refused to sign it, but hopefully, the next President will. We have troops in harm's way, and this bill prioritizes protecting them. Nothing is more important than what we do here today. I am also pleased that this bill prioritizes Special Operations Command and cyber warfare, recognizing, as we heard in the previous piece of legislation about Boko Haram, that the main threat that we face going forward is from terrorism and asymmetric threats. I think we reflect that in this bill by funding those portions in the Defense Department that deal with those issues, and I think that is incredibly important. However, we do have a budget problem, and put simply, we have a lot less money now than we thought we were going to have. So that means that 3 years ago, when the Pentagon was planning what they were going to spend over the course of a decade, they had a much larger number than they have now. There are a whole bunch of reasons that number has gotten smaller, but it has. It will get even smaller if 8 more years of sequestration come to pass. Now, the administration put out a plan 3 years ago when they looked out 10 years and said: What should our strategy be? Then they looked out 10 years and said: What are the likely resources? When they put that plan out, they said: we know we are going to have to live with, roughly, $500 billion less than we thought we were. We can do it. Here is the strategy. Here is the plan that fits that. Since then, the budget has been shredded. It has been cut by even more. The plan they put forward now recognizes the fact that it doesn't fund what they would like to fund because Congress passed a budget that cuts the Defense Department by more than they would like. In fact, the administration asked for an additional $28 billion this year and an additional $150 billion over 5 years, in order to fully fund that. That, apparently, is not forthcoming, so what they did is they put forward a series of proposals to try as best as they could to save money in a way that protects our force, and they did it in a number of different areas. They proposed a BRAC; they proposed about $2 billion in savings over 5 years to various personnel accounts; they got rid of the A-10; they got rid of the U-2; they proposed laying up 14 ships. Those were the main proposals out. I am sorry. I forgot that they proposed shifting air assets in the Guard and Reserve to save $12 billion over 5 years. Those were the proposals they put on the table. The problem with this bill is that it rejects every single one of those proposals. How do we make the money work on that? Primarily by creative accounting; with the Guard and Reserve, for instance, we say no changes can be made in 2015. They weren't planning on making any changes in 2015 that were going to cost money, but if this stops them from doing it going forward, they are put into a deep hole. On the 14 ships that they wanted to lay up, we raid the modernization account to pay for keeping those 14 ships operational. So we get creative about it, but next year, the reckoning will come, frankly, sequestration or no sequestration. If sequestration happens, it is going to be really bad; but even if it doesn't, we still will not have addressed the long-term needs of our budget. I will have a couple of amendments, one on BRAC and one on those 14 ships, that will give us an opportunity to, I think, make a better choice because the other way that we are able to preserve those programs is that we cut from the President's budget about $1.8 billion in readiness. $1.2 billion is clear. The other 633 was to save the A-10, and it comes out of OCO. A good chunk of OCO goes to rebuild readiness; so basically, we take $1.8 billion out of readiness, which puts us down the path to a hollow force that none of us wants. As we go forward to conference, we are going to need to make some of those tougher choices. I do thank the chairman for his work and for what is contained in this bill. I look forward to debating the amendments, and I look forward to--knock on wood--passing for the 53rd straight year the National Defense Authorization Act, as is our primary responsibility. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Langevin), the ranking member of the Intelligence, Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee. (Mr. LANGEVIN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. McIntyre), the ranking member on the Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlelady from California (Ms. Loretta Sanchez), ranking member of the Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. It sort of depends on why the Forest Service wants to limit that use. If there are other legitimate interests in the area and if the Forest Service doesn't want them test-firing whatever it is they are test- firing, I think we need to have a balance between those interests. It is conceivable that the Forest Service might have something they are trying to protect that the DOD has not thought about, and I think a balance of those interests is better than making one agency paramount over others. The Forest Service does not know much about the Department of Defense, but I would submit that the Department of Defense doesn't know much about what the Forest Service is trying to protect. It is a matter of both sides doing their jobs and striking the proper balance, so I would simply urge a ``no'' vote. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, there are a lot of competing interests for public lands. Certainly, national security is one of them, but it is not the only one. There is domestic aviation, and there are all kinds of considerations. This is not terribly binding, as it is a sense of Congress, and so it does not change the law. I do, however, think it sets a bad precedent that, somehow, the Department of Defense is going to hold sway over public lands over all of their interests, regardless of what they are. We have had many, many interests in our public lands. Certainly, defense is one of them. I don't think it should be paramount. Therefore, I oppose the amendment. I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I strongly oppose this amendment. It really doesn't make any sense whatsoever. What the bill does is it says you can't touch these things since until 2021. Now, we don't like that in the first place because this is micromanaging, again, DOD's ability to make decisions about how best to make sure that we maintain our nuclear deterrence. This is a fine example of why DOD is going to be in so much trouble down the road. Any effort they make to save money is going to be blocked by parochial interest. The people who are from there will rise up and say: No, you can't do that, basically because it negatively impacts my constituents. The thing that is truly awful about this one is it doesn't negatively impact constituents. It says 2021 sunset. And it is not a hard stop date, regrettably. It is 2021 when it sunsets, and any Congress that wants to extend it between now and, I guess that is 7 years from now, can go ahead and extend it. DOD should not be forced into a position of saying if a silo exists it has to be maintained forever, which is basically what this amendment says. It says it is completely impossible that under any set of circumstances might it be in the best interest of the Department of Defense and the national security of this Nation to get rid of even one silo. That doesn't make any sense. The underlying bill more than protects the parochial interests of the sponsors here by making sure that DOD can't touch it until 2021. But that is not enough. They have got to offer an amendment to strip it out so that it goes on forever. That simply doesn't make any sense. This is, again, micromanaging for parochial interests. It is just like when DOD wants to move five C-130s from somewhere. The people from there rise up and say we have to stop them. No, we don't. We have to let DOD make intelligent decisions to spend money wisely to best protect national security. At a minimum, we ought to be able to have a sunset 7 years from now without having to remove even that tiny little possibility that a sensible decision might be allowed to be made by the Department of Defense. I urge opposition of the amendment.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I yield myself the balance of my time. The problems are there in the drafting of this amendment. Yes, first it does ask for the Afghan Government to step up and find money and do this; but if they don't, it does put DOD in the position of reimbursing them. You can say that would just come from money that they would give to Afghanistan anyway, but that money they are giving to Afghanistan, I am not sure if that is true, first of all. Second of all, whatever money we are giving Afghanistan, we are giving it to them for a reason. So I think there is a problem here. There is also the problem of do we have a list of these contractors who have been illegally taxed versus legally taxed? How do we sort through all of that? I am not going to belabor the point. I am going to oppose the amendment. I know how this works. I am going to lose. We will work it out in conference. I do have serious concerns about this amendment and the way it is written and urge a ``no'' vote. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I am very sympathetic to the problem. This is certainly something that the Afghan Government should not be doing. As I understand the amendment, however, this would require the U.S. Government to reimburse those private companies and then seek reimbursement from the Afghan Government. At the end of the day, that is the problem and concern that we have on our side is that if we want to take all the deliberate steps that we can to try and require the Afghans to repay this money, that is great-- I can see the little gathering of staff over there that disagrees with me, so maybe we will have to work on this. But as I understand it, if that reimbursement cannot be achieved from the Afghan Government, this would require the U.S. Government, the U.S. taxpayers to reimburse these companies. For that reason, I would be opposed unless someone can convince me otherwise. I reserve the balance of my time.