Presidential Veto of NDAA

Floor Speech

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Mr. RUSSELL. I thank the gentlewoman from Missouri for all of her hard work on the Armed Services Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I served my country 21 years in the Infantry in the United States Army and have deployed operationally to Kosovo, Kuwait, Afghanistan and Iraq.

As a combat Infantry veteran, I know firsthand the hardships and dangers that our warriors face. The question that we have to ask is: Why has the President increased the hardship and danger to our troops? Has he forgotten that we have troops in the field that are still fighting?

Has he forgotten that he has committed to contingency operations that created new hardships, new deployments, unscheduled training, unscheduled maintenance? And now, after asking them to turn everything on their heads, he is not even going to support it.

A Presidential veto blocks needed funds for our ongoing combat operations and for our emergency operations and contingencies.

The President claims that we need to do this right; yet, he has created the foreign policy mess that has required our troops to deploy on contingencies and then has asked this body to get additional Congressional authorization for those efforts. And now he adds to their burden.

The veto eliminates crucial planning time just for normal peacetime operations in training from 3 to 6 months, forcing the military to waste millions of dollars as they play a catch-up game, usually in the spring, by having to deal with such efforts to try to make up for lost time.

The veto reduces certainty in our overall national security posture. The veto also blocks a revised retirement program benefiting 83 percent of our warriors that are not currently covered, and it denies expanded access to health care and blocks access to needed drugs.

It continues to leave our warriors defenseless at recruiting stations, camps, posts, and bases by denying their ability to carry firearms in their defense against terror threats.

The veto also blocks a mediocre pay raise that the President himself already reduced by 1 percent, and now they will not even get that pathetic 1 percent pay raise, 1.3 percent.

Mr. Speaker, a Presidential veto makes one thing crystal clear: Nothing is too good for our troops and nothing is what he is going to give them. That is why we will fight to overturn this veto, so that he can hear the people of the United States and our constitutional requirement to defend this republic.

We will overturn this veto, and we ask, Mr. Speaker, that the Nation join us in this fight.

I thank the gentlewoman from Missouri.

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