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Mr. NORCROSS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding and certainly for his leadership in bringing this bill to the floor and to the ranking member, Mac Thornberry, for his years of service to this country. We certainly appreciate it.
This bill continues the Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee's long tradition of bipartisan work to make America's land and air forces the best in the world.
Despite challenges imposed upon us during this COVID crisis, this bill is the result of the hard work under very unusual and demanding circumstances. I thank the members of our committee, certainly our staffs and all of them for their hard work in these challenging times.
I also thank the ranking member, Mrs. Hartzler, for her leadership and her contributions and certainly working as a bipartisan committee. Our cooperation kept us focused on what truly is important. We have delivered a defense bill that meets the modernization readiness needs of our Nation.
This bill carefully manages our military resources while increasing needed oversight of DOD programs. The bill specifically includes aggressive oversight of the strike fighter aircraft programs, including the F-35, the most expensive program ever attempted by the Department; the Department's development, sustainment, management of manned and unmanned intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft; and continued oversight of the Army's new modernization strategy with respect to Army aviation, including the Chinook helicopter, combat and tactical vehicles, air and missile defense, the network and soldier lethality.
This defense bill also includes what I believe is one of the more important issues: Buy American provisions, which show we are truly serious about building things here in the U.S. and supporting American workers. I also worked to ensure that the executive branch cannot strip the collective bargaining rights of our vital citizen defense workforce.
I am proud of the hard work this committee has done to serve America's national security interests in this great bill. It deserves our support, and I urge all my colleagues to vote ``yes.''
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