National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024

Floor Speech

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Mr. KHANNA. Mr. Chairman, I thank Ranking Member Smith and Chairman Rogers for their support of my bipartisan amendment to require the Department of Defense to track whether their equipment is made in the United States. I was surprised that the Department of Defense does not know whether essential weapons equipment today have component parts that are made overseas and what percentage are made overseas.

We have a problem in this country in terms of our industrial base. Of the top 15 steel companies in the world, 9 of them are in China. Not one is in the United States. We just realized, in terms of artillery to Ukraine, that we don't have enough conventional artillery, forcing us to be considering cluster bombs.

We need to build our industrial base, and to do that, we need to figure out where the Department of Defense is getting weapons and the component parts, what are essential weapons and essential supply chains, and how we can ensure that those essential supply chains are made in the United States of America.

This bipartisan amendment will help us get that information and that data.

Mr. Chairman, again, I thank Ranking Member Smith and Chairman Rogers for including this in the NDAA.

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