Ike Skelton National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011

Floor Speech

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Mr. McKEON. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, today I rise to speak with a heavy heart for a couple of reasons. One is the process that has brought us to this point. And the other is that this will be the last defense bill for my good friend and partner on the committee, Ike Skelton, our chairman.

He has been a force on the committee and within the defense community for decades. The way he has conducted business on the committee sets an example for all members of the committee and for this Congress to follow.

Considering Ike's legacy, the actions of the Democratic leaders in the Senate and the House are all the more frustrating to me. They have made it completely clear that they place a higher priority on repealing the Pentagon's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy than on the National Defense Authorization Act.

The procedure that is set up in the House for passing legislation is, for the House to pass a bill, it goes through committee, goes through hearings. Finally it is passed by the committee, passed on the floor. And then a similar process should be followed in the Senate. And then once those two bills have been passed, we have conferees appointed. The conferees get together and negotiate the differences in the bills, and final bills are brought back to the floor.

To this date, we have not had a Senate bill passed on the floor. So this brings us to this point without a Senate bill and giving individual Senators the opportunity to have a line-item veto on the House bill after we pass it here and send it back over.

Many of the provisions that we have passed in our bill went through a semi-conference, and some of the provisions which were championed by the House, including a higher pay raise for our troops than the statutorily mandated pay raise of 1.4 percent, a provision which would have exempted critical force protection and medevac personnel from any troop cap in Afghanistan, and several provisions regarding the Nation's nuclear and missile defense policies, those found themselves on the cutting room floor of the conference. Most of those provisions have significant support in the House of Representatives.

Mr. Speaker, the American people have spoken. And in the process that we had, the election, they are demanding a process that is better than the one that got us to this point. They want a legislative process that works to provide our troops with the resources they need, not a process that is held up for months and then rushed through in the waning minutes of a lame duck session.

The process in the Senate, coupled with the Democratic leadership's goal of advancing legislation to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell ahead of the annual defense authorization bill, has politicized the National Defense Authorization Act, and it's indicative of a flawed process with misguided priorities. In a time of war, Mr. Speaker, this is unconscionable.

One thing I can promise to the American people and to our military: They will no longer be used as a political football. We will return to regular order in the next Congress, and I think that is something that we can all look forward to with pleasure.

Now, back to my good friend, the chairman on the committee. I want to commend him for years of service to this Nation, to this Congress, to the people that he has represented. We all owe him a debt of gratitude, and I have appreciated working with him, especially in these last 2 years, as I had the opportunity to serve as the ranking member alongside him. We will all miss him. Ike, we owe you much and appreciate your service.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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