FY17 National Defense Authorization Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. ISRAEL. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to express my disappointment with the way the Majority has undermined the welfare of our troops by inserting poisonous language into the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2017. Last week I unfortunately had to vote against the FY 17 NDAA. I want to state that it pained me to take that vote. Throughout my career I have supported our service members in every respect. I have worked tirelessly on veterans issues. I have worked closely with Department of Defense leadership to ensure our troops on the front lines have had every resource they needed to be successful and that our troops and their families at home were well taken care of. Last week, the Majority injected their reckless ideology into the bill: a provision that would explicitly allow defense contractors to discriminate against LGBT employees. The language seeks to nullify an executive order prohibiting federal contractors from laying off or otherwise punishing employees because of their sexual orientation. Instead of passing a bill supporting our troops, they hid behind our troops in opposing LGBT Americans. In doing this, the Majority placed the welfare of our troops in jeopardy, potentially robbing them of much needed resources, and undermined protections for LGBT employees of federal contractors created by a Presidential Executive Order. As I stated earlier, this was a difficult vote to cast. However, I also know that this was the correct vote to cast. This body should not be risking national security nor sanctioning discrimination. I urge the Republican Majority to delete this language in a House- Senate conference. They should not play politics with our national security.

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