National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024
Floor Speech
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I claim the time in opposition.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Three quick points here. First of all, it is interesting. You can go back to 2008 and look at John McCain's campaign and, entertainingly, Sarah Palin's Vice Presidential statements about how climate change was an existential threat, and this was a bipartisan issue where we talked about why this was a significant challenge that we needed to address.
Then, of course, Barack Obama had the audacity to get elected President and pursue that agenda, so suddenly it became political.
I just want to make this very, very clear. The belief here is that digging up fossil fuels from below the ground and burning them is bad for life, it is bad for the planet, and it will eventually exterminate the planet.
Now, if you want to disagree with that, you want to have a little argument about whether or not that is true, we can. I mean, the overwhelming majority of scientists seem to agree with that, but let's hear the argument. It just kills me to sit here and listen to the other side claim that this is a political agenda.
Now, I understand why they do that, because that skips past the messy part of where you have to actually argue the facts and you can just dismiss it as politics and everyone robotically goes: Oh, yes, politics, that is bad. We can't have that.
If we can have an actual discussion about this, if you believe, as the administration does and as, again, I don't know, 80 percent of the scientists believe, that climate change could destroy the fricking planet, then it is worth saying that that's a national security threat at least equivalent to China.
Yes, there is the possibility of global nuclear war with China that could exterminate the planet, but climate change, the argument is, would exterminate the planet, so I think that is worth thinking about.
Please believe me when I say this is not a political agenda. It is a heartfelt belief that we have a distinct problem here that needs to be addressed.
Second: How to address it. Come up with alternative sources of energy and make those investments. This is also very important, because even if this wasn't destroying the planet, our dependency upon oil has been problematic.
I know there is this fantasy that we are going to become energy independent. Nobody is energy independent. Oil is a global marketplace. Even if we generate enough energy, we sell it overseas, and Saudi Arabia and OPEC therefore have an enormous amount of control over that market.
As I have said over and over again, the true answer to this problem is, when gas prices go up, wouldn't it be great to say: That is wonderful, but we don't need that, we have other sources of energy to go to. Nothing is more important in the military than energy and access to it. Wars are started over having access to the energy that you need. To say that this doesn't involve national security literally hurts my brain. You need these alternatives.
The last argument is on the market: We will let the market decide. The market subsidized the living hell out of the oil industry for 175 years. They have an enormous advantage. The pipelines, the system, the entire thing that was built, was built on our taxpayer dollars. Now, what we are saying is if we are going to develop an alternative to that, then we are going to have to help that, as we helped nuclear energy, and a whole of bunch other different things.
I don't think I hear the other side complaining about the government subsidizing nuclear energy because that fits within their politics.
If I ask nothing else, could we please just have a rational discussion that understands that this is a legitimate policy issue? It isn't a fetish. It isn't a political debate. It is the fate of the planet and how we manage energy policy, both of which--I am going to take a real bold step here--actually impact national security. I believe that they do, and I believe that anybody would agree with that statement.
Please, defeat this amendment.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I would just note that we actually are making investments in nuclear power. It is really expensive and difficult to develop, but the investments are being made. That is part of the agenda.
Mr. Chair, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from California (Mr. Garamendi).
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Stanton).
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I yield myself 2 minutes.
Mr. Chair, I will have remarks in a moment while, regrettably, I am not supporting this particular bill. That doesn't change how much respect I have for the process and for all the people who participated in that process. I want to make sure we understand that.
One of the things I always say, I believe in democracy more than I believe in my own opinion, which means that the process is important and the way we put that process together and that we move through it.
In particular, I definitely thank the staff, certainly our staff on the House Armed Services Committee that has done an outstanding job, the Rules Committee staff, as well, but also the floor staff and the parliamentarians and the folks who have to put the amendments together and put the legislation together.
Throughout this process from the very start, when the original bill was introduced, to all of the amendments, we have to run through these numbers, it is in the thousands, basically, of amendments and ideas that are submitted.
From the moment we put together the initial bill, we amend it in committee, they deal with Rules, they amend it on the floor--we are talking literally thousands of different pieces of legislation and ideas that have to be brought together. Members don't do any of that.
We spout out ideas, and a whole bunch of staff work really hard to get that done. I thank them very, very much for all of that work to make this process go forward.
Mr. Chair, it is a good, robust bipartisan approach. We have the amendments, we have the debates, and we resolve it. One thing I will make clear, I am not thrilled with the outcome of the Rules Committee, but that is the nature of being in the minority.
When you are in the majority, the Rules Committee does what the Rules Committee does, and the minority complains about it. That is the way this place works. That is fine. I might have done it differently in terms of trying to figure out how to pass the bill.
At the end of the day, I don't have any process objection here. The amendments were put on the floor, and they passed. I am not concerned about that. I am concerned about the outcome, and I will explain that later.
Mr. Chair, I will take a moment to really make it clear how much I thank all the people who put this process together, in particular, I thank Chairman Rogers for his work.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I yield myself an additional 30 seconds.
Mr. Chair, it is not as easy as it looks. Let me just sum that up. There are a whole lot of things you have to manage, including the minority part. Chairman Rogers has done an outstanding job of doing that in his first year as chair, and I appreciate that and I respect that. I thank everybody for the process they put together.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Houlahan), who is a member of the committee.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I yield myself the balance of my time.
Mr. Chair, I thank the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania, who summed it up reasonably well, but I really want to make sure people understand why we are opposed to this bill.
We are opposed to this bill because it is our firm belief that this will undermine our ability to meet the national security objectives of this country.
I want to explain why. We can start with the issue of access to reproductive healthcare for women.
Because of the Dobbs decision, there are many States now across this country where you cannot get access to that care. The Department of Defense, faced with that and having a large number of women and family members of servicemembers in those States, set up a situation to allow those women to get access to that reproductive care. This bill takes that away.
Mr. Chair, if you are a woman concerned about your ability to get an abortion, first of all, or concerned about if you are a servicemember who has a family member who might be concerned about that, you are going to be less likely to join the military.
I really do want to emphasize one point that came up during this. I understand a lot of people oppose abortion. They want to ban it outright, and that is why they feel this way. However, do understand the negative impact that that will have on a lot of women's willingness to join the military.
It goes beyond abortion, as we have sadly seen. The worst case of this is a woman who miscarries midway through her pregnancy cannot get treated for that. There was one particular case that was cited during the debate of a woman who wound up in the emergency room fighting for her life because of an infection because she could not get that care.
If you are a woman, Mr. Chair, or if you are a man who is considering, ``What about my spouse, and what about my children?'' then you will be less likely to join the military knowing that you have that challenge. So, we are going to have fewer qualified people willing to join the military because of what was passed. That will not make our military stronger.
We have also now said, and the debate seems to imply, that trans people don't exist so they are not welcome in the military either. Now, I am not a doctor and, therefore, don't want to presume what treatment someone should have who is in a transgender situation, but what this bill says is: Nope, we are not even going to consider it.
Again, Mr. Chair, if you are a trans person, you are going to be less likely to join the military, or, Mr. Chair, if you are someone who thinks, ``What if I have a child who is a trans person?'' The military is not going to accept them. So, now, Mr. Chair, you can take trans people off the table. They are not going to join the military either.
Then, we have the most difficult aspect of this, and that is the diversity, equity, and inclusion piece. This is a very widely misunderstood thing, and I tried to explain it throughout the debate.
Believe it or not, we have a history of discrimination in this country. We have a history of bigotry. You can go through slavery, Jim Crow, the Ku Klux Klan, and a whole bunch of different things, Mr. Chair. We also have a history of incredible discrimination against women.
I cited this before, but as it came out during debate, women who join the military, I think, have a very strong understanding that they are going to have to work twice as hard, basically, to get the same opportunities that a man gets in the military. That is sort of understood.
Because of that historical discrimination, Mr. Chair, you also have to wonder, if you are a person of color, whether you are going to get a fair shake in the military.
Now, I will admit there are a lot of people who, even faced with those odds, even knowing that they are going to have to work twice as hard and face that discrimination, will join, but some will not. So, again, there is another group of people who we have now taken off the table.
I want to take a special moment to recognize, on that last point, the willingness of people to join the military even if they are facing discrimination.
Where I live in the Seattle-Bellevue area, we have a lot of Nisei veterans and family of Nisei veterans, and it is a particularly compelling story. These are Japanese Americans who fought and died, in many cases, for our country during World War II while their family members were unfairly incarcerated back home.
I know that there are people who will step up and take on that challenge anyway, but there will be fewer of them.
Basically, Mr. Chair, you have this huge group of people now who are going to be less likely to join the military because of what this bill does.
I will slightly paraphrase a line from ``A Few Good Men.'' Basically, all this bill does is weakens our country. It weakens our ability to respect all the people who should be allowed not just to serve but to serve with an equal chance of advancement. Whether you are talking about women, whether you are talking about trans people, whether you are talking about people of color, Mr. Chair, this bill says that we are going to make it more difficult for you to get a fair shake in the military.
I do understand the DEI argument, but let me just say two things about that as I bring this to a close.
First of all, there were a lot of very disturbing arguments made. I think the base renaming commission argument, even though technically it really didn't matter, was the most disturbing of all as we, once again, heard all these speeches about how we need to honor our history and honor our heritage.
These are the exact same arguments that were made over 100 years ago when this country went through a very concerted effort to make sure that we could establish white supremacy as the law of the land. The very same arguments that erected these monuments and named these bases and gave us the Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crow were made on the floor of this House.
It is shocking that those arguments were made. It is appalling that those arguments carried the day and actually won on all of these amendments and found themselves inserted in the bill. All of that is very concerning.
I do understand that there is a different set of arguments and a very respectable set of arguments that says that the way we are attempting to address the historical discrimination of this country is problematic, and that is primarily critical race theory.
There are certainly some in this country who have a view of this that our country is nothing but racist and that basically we have heard--I think Mike Waltz actually read this out in committee, and it is very accurate: There are some who believe that all White people are racist, that if you are a White person, you are by definition an oppressor, and you need to think about that.
I have seen that, and I have witnessed that, and it is wrong. In my opinion, it is not the correct way to approach that. How should we handle that? The way we have chosen to handle that is to get rid of diversity, equity, and inclusion completely and totally, and that is the problem.
Mr. Chair, if you wanted to say that we are not going to do that part of it, fine. That is not what we did.
To the argument of, ``Well, gee, all that does is makes it fair. We shouldn't consider race. We shouldn't consider any of these things in determining excellence,'' the problem is that for 400 years we did, and at the end of that, one particular group of people got all the advantages.
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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Chair, I urge opposition to this bill, but I do thank the people for the process that was put in place.
Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
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