National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024

Floor Speech

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Mr. ALFORD. Mr. Chairman, I thank the chairman and ranking member for the hard work putting this NDAA together.

I rise today in support of the National Defense Authorization Act because I am deeply, deeply concerned about the current direction of our military.

We are at a critical juncture in our Nation's history. This unclassified chart you see here shows the threat of the Chinese Communist Party; they are in red; we are in blue.

It is a sad story. They are outpacing us at every aspect in the military. With escalating tensions in the Indo-Pacific, China's blatant threats against Taiwan, and our military recruitment falling here in the U.S., we face significant challenges.

We came to Washington because we believe in America. We believe in a brighter future for our children, and we believe that we are the greatest country on Earth, but our military is being weakened from within.

The woke ideologies are killing confidence, killing motivation, killing recruitment, and the excellence of our military. These woke policies of diversity, equity, inclusion, and critical race theory must stop. The enemy does not care about the color of the skin of our servicemembers and does not care what pronoun they use.

We must make changes, and the NDAA starts those changes. It starts with leaders willing to take a stand.

Mr. Chair, again, I urge all of my colleagues to support the NDAA.

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