Conference Report on HR 1735, National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2016

Floor Speech

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Mr. SMITH of Washington. I yield myself 1 minute just to make two
quick points.

Mr. Speaker, first of all, we will have a motion to recommit that
takes the money out of OCO and puts it into the base budget. So this is
a problem that our bill could fix.

We didn't have to buy into the OCO dodge and put money in there that
we knew wasn't going to exist. Our motion to recommit will make that
obvious. We will simply take it out of OCO. We will put it in the
base budget so that you can do long-term planning with it and so that
we actually get out from under the budget caps.

The second point that I will make is that the previous speaker said
that voting against the Defense bill was all of those bad things. Well,
people have voted against the Defense bill.

In 2009 and 2010, all but seven or eight Members of the Republican
Party voted against the Defense bill. They voted against the defense
bill because they didn't like Don't Ask, Don't Tell in one instance and
because they didn't like adding LGBT people to hate crimes in the other
instance.

So they all were perfectly willing to vote against the troops and do
all of the awful things that the previous speaker said for social
policy reasons that had nothing to do with defense.

So voting against the defense bill does not mean that you don't
support the troops, and that is proof because most of the people who
are now saying that it does have voted against the bill in the past.
I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).

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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.

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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.

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