Extension of Direct Spending Reduction for Fiscal Year 2024

Floor Speech

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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

There are a number of problems with this piece of legislation. One of the biggest ones is just the process of it. This has been dropped on us at the absolute last minute. In fact, on a bill that has profound impacts on the budget in a number of different areas, we just, moments ago, received a broad outline of a score of how it is going to impact that budget--moments ago. We did not have time to consider this legislation adequately to figure out what impact it was going to have on the budget, but there are a couple of things we do know about it that creates a major problem.

Yes, in the short-term, this pleases two constituency groups. It pleases veterans, and it pleases doctors by giving them the money that they want. But what was not mentioned in the speech talking about this bill in favor of it is how it is paid for. It is paid for by adding another year to sequestration.

Now, there are a couple of interesting things about this. First of all, that is 8 years from now. We have heard nothing but, from the other side of the aisle, about how government is spending too much money, about how the deficit and the debt are out of control, and yet here we have up-front money being spent on the promise that 8 years from now we will cover those costs. And what is worse, 8 years from now, the way we are going to cover those costs is through sequestration, across-the-board cuts that will cut other entitlement, other mandatory spending programs. So we are really simply robbing one group of deserving people to pay another group of deserving people. That is hardly responsible and hardly helpful.

There are a couple of other specific aspects of this that I want to mention from the Department of Defense standpoint, focusing now just on the portion that addresses the cost of living reduction.

I want to make sure we understand what exactly that cost of living reduction was. In the military, if you serve 20 years, you can retire at that point with your full pension, which is basically half of your pay at that point. This bill took, for those people between the ages of 42 and 62, working age, and reduced their COLA by 1 percent. It didn't reduce the pension. It reduced how much that pension would be increased by each year by 1 percent.

Now, I don't deny that that is a hit and a cost, but what is it offsetting?

The Pentagon has to pay this cost, or at least a portion of this cost. They have to pay--the old bill, and again, I am just getting the new score. But in the old bill, it was roughly $700 million a year that DOD had to take out of their operating budget and put in to paying for this pension. So, by doing this, we are taking roughly $700 million a year out of the Pentagon budget.

What does that mean? What it means is a further blow to readiness. Now, Republican and Democratic members of the Armed Services Committee have rightly screamed that we are cutting readiness to the point where we are not training our forces to prepare to fight the fight that we ask them to fight.

Now, the gentleman made an excellent point that, basically, what is going to make people want to sign up for the military? And he mentioned making sure that we take care of our veterans. I certainly think that is an issue. And I will tell you, for the last 10 years we have increased the GI Bill. We have increased pay every single year. We have made dramatic increases in combat pay. I applaud this Chamber for the bipartisan way in which they have taken care of our military veterans. But one other major issue that is going to determine whether or not people want to join the military and stay in it is whether or not we train them and prepare them for the fight we are going to ask them to do. And what the consequences of this are going to be is it is another blow to that.

If you are a pilot, you will not have enough fuel or enough fixed equipment to train as often as you need to. If you are an infantryman, you will not have the bullets to practice as much as you need to. Doing this creates the one thing that everyone has said we don't want, and that is a hollow force, a force that exists but is not trained to fight the fight that we ask them to do.

In fact, there is a great and compelling story told by the chairman of the Armed Services Committee in an argument for why readiness is important, and that was the Korean war, and those were the troops that we sent over in the initial effort to stop the North Koreans. Those troops were not trained, and men died because they were not trained and they were not prepared for a battle that we sent them into.

So we are robbing one portion of the Pentagon budget to pay another, and I think we are robbing precisely the portion that we can least afford to rob. And I don't think there is anything noble about standing up and taking money away from the readiness that is going to train our troops to fight fights that we, as politicians, send them to fight.

Now, I will say, on the SGR fix and the doc fix, that is a short-term problem, and we need to deal with it. Step aside. I would be very, very happy to pay for that, and I support that very strongly.

I do not like the pay-for. Personally, I would be more than willing to raise taxes or cut spending in other places other than to, once again, go back to the sequester option and also to kick it out 8 years from now.

This is an irresponsible bill that approaches very, very real problems. But make no mistake about it. You can stand up and talk about what you are paying for, whom you are giving the money to, but I do hope people will address whom you are taking the money from. You are taking the money from other recipients of mandatory spending by doing sequester again. And as importantly, you are taking the money away from the readiness accounts that will train our troops so that they are able to fight, so that we will hopefully not do the one thing that I think would be utterly unconscionable, and that is to send troops to a battle that we have not prepared them for.

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

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