Fiscal Year 2027 Defense Bill

next you guys don't you ready

so we're redoing all these events

you're right

i feel like we have to yeah i'm right

we have to make it a one-time meeting and then we can have a meeting once again and then we can have a meeting call this meeting the appropriations committee to order once again

mmm ok

i want to uh welcome everybody to today's mark up which will cover our final bill defense appropriations measure for fiscal year twenty twenty seven uh tomorrow the full house will consider the energy and water development and national security department of state and related programs uh will be on the floor in next couple of days that uh measure means that we need to complete our committee's work on the defense bill today so we do not have a a mark up going on and and be on the floor at the same time i know something the ranking member and i work really hard to avoid if we possibly can so uh having said that just mean we will be here until we're done so we don't conflict with what we're doing tomorrow i have the uh good fortune of telling you that uh what you have capital grill for lunch uh and what chairman calvert assures me is really good chinese food for dinner so you won't starve but you will be here for a while uh with that uh we've got a lot to uh get through so we will begin and i will recognize Chairman Calvert, to present the bill.

Thank you, Mister Chairman, and I would like to thank you, uh, Chairman Cole, for your leadership and guidance throughout the fiscal year tw- twenty-seven process. It's quite remarkable feat to have all twelve full committee markups completed before the July fourth break. So thank you, Chairman Cole, and congratulations on a job well done uh to get to this point. I would also like to thank the distinguished ranking member, Miss McCollum, along with the full committee ranking member, Miss Deloro, for their efforts in partnership for many years. I greatly value their inputs to ensure we produce a bill that will support our men and women serving in harm's way. The fiscal year twenty-seven Department of Defense Appropriations Act provides for a total discretionary allocation of one trillion, seventy-two billion dollars. It provides funding for a host of programs and platforms that are vital This bill enhances America's strategic military advantage, strengthens support for service members and military families, optimizes the Department of Defense, and disrupts transnational drug trafficking. The bill before us represents a historic and overdue investment in national security at a critical inflection point, given the current threat environment. As the United States faces enormous and complex technological, industrial, economic, diplomatic challenges, the nation must navigate an increasingly contested security environment with persistent threats across every domain. It's imperative that the U S armed forces and our entire national security apparatus are sufficiently equipped to dominate any battle space, deter conflict when possible, and adapt to rapidly evolving threats. This bill reflects a thoughtful commitment to meet the challenge and pace of progress presented by our adversaries and competitors to the nation. To this end, the bill supports the President's budget request to appropriately prioritize critical modernization efforts. Numerous next-generation weapons systems are advancing through various stages of development including sixth-generation air dominance platforms, hypersonic weapons, and unmanned systems. Priority investments also include aggressive shipbuilding aircraft procurement. integrated command and control systems, long-range fires, air and missile defense, advanced autonomous systems, and enhanced counter drone systems. Among the most critical are the components of the nuclear triad, all undergoing concurrent upgrade and replacement. The land, sea, and air strategic forces have not been modernized in decades, with critical systems nearing the end of their reliable service lives. This bill includes resources to drive the Sentinel program, the Columbia-class program, and the B-twenty-one radar toward timely success. This recommendation also prioritizes the high ground in space. The race for presence, situational awareness, influence, and ultimately dominance in the space domain has not only arrived but is continually intensifying. The Space Force has made remarkable progress maturing into a true war-fighting capability and and service. accelerating the uh the delivery of critical capabilities and prioritizing resilience across its architecture. The bill makes critical investments in space, around architecture, consistent with the President's budget request, with robust funding in the space launch, missile warning, satellite communications, and global positioning. Similarly, the extraordinary advancement of artificial intelligence has become a critical new arena of competition. essential to both the national and economic security. This technology presents unprecedented new opportunities and efficiencies that are already being realized. Additionally, the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence poses significant national security threats, and we must remain actively engaged in all of these areas. This bill continues recent prioritization of innovation. The recommendation equips the Department of the Funding and Authority to support new entrants into the national security industrial base. In conjunction with the administration's efforts, it creates expedited processes to support and reward innovation and risk-taking, and incentives uh to uh to private investment in the expansion of production capability and capacity, amplifies research and development capability. The unprecedented resources recommended in this bill will ensure the department and its industry partners can continue to accelerate innovation, to create new economies of scale and increase output to help meet the challenges and threats that have already arrived, along with those emerging in the coming years. Accelerated development and production of munitions, for example, has been a shared priority by both the department and the committee. The bill recommends more than thirty billion in discretionary funding for munitions procurement. Last year we provided multi-year procurement authority for eight munitions in order to incentivize private investment and production capability. drive down unit costs, and signal to the department industrial base greater stability and predictability. Unfortunately, the funding that is required to execute the multi-year procurement authority that was provided in fiscal year twenty-six was requested largely as mandatory funding in the President's budget request for fiscal year twenty-seven. We all know as proud members of the Appropriations Committee that mandatory funding is provided through a separate reconciliation process. that is uncertain and unaligned with the annual appropriations cycle. Outside the jurisdiction of this committee, rather than using the reconciliation process as a tool to scale up and accelerate investments beyond the base budget, the mandatory request includes funding for several critical efforts, such as munitions, which should have been built into the base discretionary request. The two legislative vehicles are on entirely separate tracks. with different timelines, committees of jurisdiction, and approval processes. This approach is risky and uncoordinated. This bill also fully funds military personnel requirements, including the proposed service members' pay raise and over forty-three billion for military health program. In addition, it provides over twenty-five billion investments supported by the President's Golden Dome for American initiative, over thirty billion for depot maintenance efforts, twenty billion for facility sustainment, restoration and modernization, over four billion for defense security cooperation efforts, and one point two billion for drug interdiction and counter-drug activities. Finally, I'd like to end my remarks on a note of sincere thanks to the staff. I would like to thank Ben Walters and Mary O'Brien, with the government publishing office, along with the entire team, with GPO who's helped edit and format throughout the process, and assisted in producing the searchable report for the first time. I would also like to thank Andrea uh Koenig and the team from the Congressional Budget Office. Also like to thank Brendan Gallagher and the team with the House Office of Legislative Counsel. And also like to thank Eric Jackson for his support throughout. Also, I want to especially thank the subcommittee majority staff, starting with our clerk, Adam Sullivan, along with Colleen, Dan, Adam, Kyle, Kerry Lynn, Max, Gina, uh, Keaton, Jackie, Ariana. and Taylor, and my personal office team of Rebecca, Danny, Will, and Jeremy. And lastly, my thanks once again to my partner on this bill, Ranking Member, Miss McCollum and her staff, Jennifer, Ed, and Jason. Their hard work has provided a bill that I think we should all be proud of to support. This bill invests wisely to meet the obligations to the warfighter, keep this nation safe from ever-growing threats. And all this bill meets the nation's most pressing national security imperatives, reflects dedicated stewardship, of taxpayer funds and will help insure that the United States is prepared to meet the challenges of the next two hundred and fifty years with strength and security. With that, Mister Chairman, I yield back.

I thank gentlemen, I would now like to recognize the uh ranking member, Miss McCollum of Minnesota for remarks on the bill.

Thank you very much um Chairman Cole. I wanna start again just echoing what the chair just said. I wanna thank the majority and minority staff wanna thank jennifer jason and ed on the minority side taylor carrey lynn gina colleen max ariana jack daniel adams we have two adams adams squared and i'd also like to thank my personal staff uh ben peterson and my military fellow from the united states army robbie for his work on this each year they're given a tremendous task our staff to put forward a challenging bill and this year was no different fiscal year twenty twenty seven the defense appropriation act totals one point zero seventy two trillion dollars is an unprecedented top line equal to the president's request now i'll address some of the concerns i have with the bill shortly but first i'd like to say chairman calvert i thank you i thank you for writing this bill that that as of now only includes one partisan writer uh that the uh minority objects to and i object to that basically on germanious reasons it doesn't belong in the bill and we uh on the democratic side but i think every single one of us in the committee should applaud the chairman's decision and the staff's decision to do this because at the end of this day and the end of everyday we want a bill that takes care of our war fighters to do their missions to do them you know swiftly successfully and to come home to their families and we want to also um support the civilian employees who serve I want to also to applaud the chairman's decision to reduce the department's general transfer authority from six billion dollars to three. If the department and OMB have less leeway to move money around, they will be more inclined to provide us with the information that we need to conduct our oversight. That's our responsibility under the constitution. The majority has also worked to include a broad range of priorities that are important for many members and their constituents. I thank the chairman for working with us in such a bipartisan fashion. But that's why I also have to say that I'm disappointed that I'm unable to support this bill as it's written today. The bill provides the Department of Defense over one trillion dollars, an unprecedented top line. And that comes at the cost of deep cuts to other appropriations bills. For example, labor health uh and human services and education bill was cut by nineteen billion dollars. a nine percent reduction. The education and workforce programs were deeply impacted with these cuts. And that includes an eight billion dollar cut to the Department of Education, and a two billion dollar cut to teacher training opportunities. I've said this before, cuts to education will have a negative downstream impact on our national security. Engineering, math, science, cyber, computing programs, they will all be impacted by these cuts. These cuts undermine our future national security workforce, and the programs that we fund in the defense bill will suffer because of that. The majority also cut the State Department funding bill a shocking twenty-two percent from last year's level. That would diminish diplomatic and development efforts around the world. At the same time, threats to America are growing. Over one trillion dollars in the defense bill is not going to keep Americans safer if we've mortgaged our children's future and our strategic diplomacy efforts to pay for it. Regarding the funding in this bill, there are several areas where I believe funding could be reduced or redirected. First, seven hundred and five million dollars for the National Guard Mobilization Unit in Washington, D. C. The operations has not reduced violent crime in Washington, as the President claims. The only thing it has reduced is the readiness of these soldiers. They've lost valuable training and exercise time that's necessary for them to be ready for the conflict with a peer adversary. Second, the bill includes two hundred and sixteen million dollars for the National Guard Reduction Force. The National Guard does not need new funding to develop law enforcement capabilities that are outside the scope of its jurisdiction. That's simply not the military's job. Congress has rejected similar ideas during the previous administration after the January sixth insurrection. The US government has plenty of first responders, federal, state and local, trained to handle criminal activity. Third, one billion dollars in advanced advanced procurement for a so-called battleship that has not even been designed yet. Reportedly, one ship could cost upwards towards seven seventeen billion dollars i wanted to make sure i got that right one ship seventeen billion dollars the subcommittee has spent years working to get ship building back on track the industrial base still has challenges such as the backlog of seventeen virginia class submarines or the recent cancellation of the constellation class frigate we should not spend money on ships and boats that have not been designed in this case ships that have not even been designed yet is simply financially irresponsible. Fourth, I'm disappointed that the funding for Ukraine was not included in this bill, particularly because the House just took a bipartisan vote in favor of continued assistance for Ukraine last month. Failing to include Ukraine sends a wrong signal to both Ukraine and to our European allies, especially as the president continues to reduce the military presence in Europe. I'm also concerned about these troop reductions. President Trump is giving Putin the impression that the US will not stand with our NATO allies in the event of future Russian aggression in Europe. America's national security has always been tied to Europe and NATO has been the cornerstone of peace for almost eighty years. We need only to look to the Arctic, to see the threats on our own borders, and to secure them we will need to work with our NATO allies. So, Mister Chairman, I hope we can restore this funding. And finally, I am concerned that the bill includes a new provision which indiscriminately cuts one billion dollars with no congressional direction. We have seen this administration use a full C full year CR and mandatory money in the reconciliation bill for the Department of Defense, to circumvent congressional direction. So why would we wanna give permission for the department to take more discriminatory cuts? If we provide them with this authority, We simply have no idea how they will use it. And separate from the base bill, I have real concerns about the administration's requests for defense funding outside the annual appropriations process. First, we've been hearing rumors for months of a supplemental to cover the cost of the large scale military operations around the world. SouthKom operations uh operations southern spear cost six hundred million dollars. And CENTKOM, president Trump's disastrous war in Iran has cost taxpayers over thirty-one billion dollars. Neither of these operations have concluded or have been authorized by Congress. We don't know when they will end, and nor do we know what the full cost will be. If the administration will request a supplemental, we need to see it as soon as possible and not in the press. We must have full and detailed accounting of these operational costs. Only then will we be informed enough to determine what additional funds the department requires. Second, The reconciliation processes the chair pointed out, and I agree with him totally, is the wrong way to fund the Department of Defense, and we all know that here in this room. I'm deeply concerned that the president's proposal for a three hundred and fifty billion dollar mandatory funding for defense will have no appropriations input on the enactment. That's not the right way to fund the Department of Defense, because it took the department ten months to explain to Congress how they were going to spend the one hundred and. fifty billion dollars in mandatory funding they received last year. It's unacceptable and I have no confidence and the department will do a better job responding to us in the future. There's also no guarantee that a a reconciliation bill will pass. If it does not pass, it will be nearly impossible to fix what's called the broken glass that could occur by forcing these priorities into the base budget. When the department makes mandatory funding requests and the authorizers fail to, include it, The DOD looks to the appropriations process to solve their problems. And that means we must reopen the bill in conference and then, yes, make cuts. That will put this committee in a very difficult situation. But, Mr. Chairman, I am confident. I am more than hopeful that we will have an opportunity to resolve these issues as the process moves forward. And I want you to know, Mr. Chairman, you personally have my commitment to do that in a bipartisan way for the defense of our nation. As I said, I cannot support the bill as written, but I look forward to working with you to improve the bill and I yield back, Mister Chair.

Thank you, General Lady, for her remarks. I now recognize myself for remarks on the bill. I want to start by thanking Chairman Calvert for his leadership on this legislation and for his unwavering commitment to America's national defense. I also thank Ranking Member McCollum for her partnership throughout this process, as well as ranking member delora for her continued engagement and leadership on the full committee. before i focus on defense bill before us i want to take a moment to recognize what today's mark-up represents. this is our twelfth and final fiscal year twenty twenty-seven appropriations bill before the full committee. reaching this point uh required long hours thoughtful deliberation and a tremendous amount of work from committee members and staff. it is an accomplishment we should all be proud of. And it's fitting that our final mark-up focuses on national defense, for there's no higher responsibility of the federal government than safeguarding our nation and the American people. There's no denying that our defense uh defenders are the greatest force for good and freedom the world has ever seen. History has shown that time and time again. It's also uh revealed that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. yet i would argue that vigilance without preparedness is merely observation true deterrence requires strength readiness and a military capable of meeting any challenge and deterrence of course is not self-sustaining it must be renewed strengthened and funded the threat environment before us reiterates that point the warning signs are visible in every region of the world iran remains uh reminds us that threats must be met with strength and china russia and other bad actors are not standing idle they are building armies expanding arsenals strengthening industrial capacity and pursuing strategic advantages at a relentless pace their aim is not merely to compete with the united states is to eclipse us with uh where they can challenge us where they must and constrain our ability to lead this bill reflects the strategic crossroads at which we find ourselves today it prioritizes the historic and necessary resources to rebuild readiness, modernize aging capabilities, and strengthen the deterrent power that has preserved american security for generations the choice before us is not between spending and saving it's between preparing for the threats of tomorrow or paying a far per greater price later this legislation chooses preparedness it chooses strength and it chooses to ensure that the united states remains the world's preeminent military power the need for these investments is not theoretical much of the equipment that underpins our defense today was designed decades ago for a different era and a different threat environment the average air force aircraft is now more than thirty years old some of our b-fifty-two bombers are projected to remain in service for nearly a century a large portion of the navy's fleet is approaching or has surpassed two decades of service even as demands on our maritime forces continue to grow our service members should not be asked to deter and defend twenty first century threats with twentieth century capabilities president trump recognizes this point and so do house republicans the truth is that in some areas we are no longer preserving an unquestioned advantage we are working to regain one this bill helps uh close those gaps the bill modernizes our force through investments in next generation aircraft hypersonic weapons autonomous systems missile defense cyber capabilities and the technologies that will define the future battlefield it also strengthens our ship building and submarine industrial base accelerates innovation expands munitions production and reinforces the supply chains necessary to sustain military readiness during a prolonged conflict. i am particularly pleased with investments in the e-seven airborne early warning and control aircraft which will help uh replace the aging e-three awacs fleet at tinker air force base in my district in oklahoma just as importantly this bill invests in the men and women who volunteer to wear our nation's uniform it provides a pay raise for our troops strengthens support for military health and ensures our war fighters remain the best trained best equipped and best supported fighting force on earth the world is becoming more dangerous not less the answer cannot be to hope that our adversaries slow down uh the answer is to ensure america remains unquestionably capable of outmatching them this legislation ensures sustained stable funding advances that critical objective. I thank chairman calvert for crafting a bill. It will help ensure America never finishes second in the fight. And that our adversaries continue to understand. The cost of challenging us before a conflict ever begins. I also thank ranking member McCollum for her work throughout the process. As well as the staff on both sides of the aisle. For their diligence. And commitment to getting this bill across the finish line. i urge support of this legislation and with that i yield back i now recognize my good friend the ranking member of the full committee mr. law of connecticut for her opening remarks

thank you very much mr. chairman and chairman calvert and ranking member mccullum thank you thank you for

yes

your uh work together in uh in uh bringing forward this bill today i wanna say a thank you at the outset to the subcommittee staff for their work on this bill jennifer chartrand jason gray ed edscombe on the minority side and adam sullivan and his talented team on the majority side

yeah

thank you for your hard work on this bill

thank you i'm a little bit tired

as this is our last full committee mark-up our twelfth and final bill i want to reiterate my gratitude for the entire committee staff on both sides of the aisle for all of your work throughout this process your dedication uh and your commitment With special thanks to Susan Ross and Matt Diller, who have assisted Chairman Cole to smoothly run the markups. Thank you, one and all, for your exceptional work. Now, on to the measure before us today. I rise in opposition to the bill under consideration at a time when American families are begging for relief from high prices. The Trump administration is deaf, to their please. Instead of providing relief, they are cutting domestic programs that support families who are struggling with the cost of living. Across the board, Republicans are cutting nearly thirteen billion dollars from non-defense programs that support the working class, middle class and vulnerable Americans. They are cutting investments in education, job training, housing assistance, energy development, transportation, rural aid and more. At the same time they are cutting these programs, they are proposing the most expensive military budget in American history. more than one trillion dollars for the Pentagon. That's a two hundred and thirty-four billion dollar increase. And that does not even account for President Trump's so-called Golden Fleet, replenishing munitions or any other any of the other additional costs associated with President Trump's war of choice in Iran, a war that has taken thirteen American service members' lives, left the Iranian regime in place and emboldened costs at least tens of billions of dollars, and for which we still have no detailed accounting. It is the most expensive military budget in history. And the administration still may come back to the Congress for even more funding, through a supplemental request or through reconciliation. It is a one point one trillion dollar floor, but who knows how high the ceiling will be. Despite the astronomical increase in funding proposed in this bill, it does not include funding. For the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, how can it be that even with the largest military budget in the world, that we do not have enough resources to support a key ally as they defend their country against Russian aggression? Our partners and our allies deserve better than broken promises. This bill also continues the deployment of National Guard troops to the District of Columbia for the so-called quote " beautification" of DC. This week they are guarding the reflecting pool. They have been asked to protect it against algae growth. This is a gross misuse of military resources, a disservice to guard soldiers whose time and energy should be spent training, supporting legitimate operations, or responding to emergencies where their skills are sorely needed. They are committed and dedicated men and women, and we are putting them and having them to defend here the reflecting pool. Think about how we are using our resources. Deploying guard soldiers for this purpose is not only unfair and, quite frankly, disrespectful to them, but reduces our readiness, putting all of us at greater risk. President Trump says we do not have money for child care, Medicare, Medicaid, because we are quote " fighting wars". That was not a slip of the tongue, it was a statement, a policy. The Trump administration is prioritizing foreign entanglements at the expense of domestic investments, regardless of the consequences or the cost. That is exactly what the House Republicans have done. Our committee has not bothered to follow regular order and formally adopt a full slate of subcommittee allocations. We have only actually voted on six of the twelve allocations for our bills. And only now that all twelve bills have been released, we can see the full picture. House Republicans are following the President's blueprint. The spen- defense spending goes up by two hundred and thirty-four billion dollars, while domestic investments that support working families struggling with the affordability crisis are cut by nearly thirteen billion dollars. The President's war of choice are pushing higher prices, but he said that he does not think about Americans' financial situation at all. Recently he said, and I quote, " he loves inflation, even as costs rise faster than wages." Last week the president signed a sixty-day cease-fire extension in Iran, uh, which Iran agrees to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which of course was opened before the war began. It opens the door to Iran potentially extracting extraordinary sums of money through various fees in the future. They have already gotten immediate sanctions relief with regard to their oil and we have committed to providing three hundred billion dollars for them in the form of reconstruction funds, it's really reparations. We spent tens of billions of dollars dropping bombs on Iran and now we are promising to find them three hundred billion dollars to rebuild what we just blew up. The hard-line repressive Iranian regime is still in power. The Iranian people are not free. Their ballistic missile program is intact, their nuclear ambitions are unchanged, Their proxies are emboldened, their sanctions are being lifted, their oil revenues are increasing, their leverage is greater than it has ever been before, and we have nothing to show for it. Why did we go to war? Further, while all eyes and attention are on the conflict with Iran and the Strait of Hormuz, very little attention is being given to Gaza. It's only two points of the twenty-point plan. That was fashion. Between the United States and Israel and Gaza, only two points have been implemented. Settler violence in the West Bank is increasing, as more territory is annexed by Israel. The Israeli military continues to push further into Lebanon as air strikes batter Beirut, and the humanitarian conditions in Gaza worsen by the day. It is unconscionable. CENTCOM forces are currently working with their counterparts in the counterparts in the civil, military, and courier Coordination Center, which I was able to visit during a recent trip to the region. It is my hope that they continue their activities toward a real peace. It was an impressive operation, which I am sorry that has been uh uh curtailed at the moment. To be clear, I support a strong national defense. I support the courageous men and women who serve our country in uniform, and I understand the need to make investments accordingly. But we need not cut non-defense programs that lower costs and help families afford basic necessities like groceries housing child care and health care. We ought to work together to provide a relief for American families. That is what I intend to do as we continue our work on this committee. In the meantime, I oppose the bill under consideration as it abandons a key U. S. ally in their fight for independence from russian aggression emboldens his reckless administration as they continue to pursue wars of choice around the world and it continues the misuse of military resources for president trump's vanity projects and does nothing to bring down the cost of living thank you and i yield back

thank you general ladey for her remarks general ladey from ohio miss captor is recognized for her remarks on the bill

Thank you, uh, Mister Chairman, uh, Ranking Member DeLauro. I rise today, uh, to thank you for your hard work, uh, Chairman Calvert, uh, Ranking Member McCollum, and the regular order proceedings that we are abiding by. But unfortunately, I rise in opposition to this bill and I, uh, fully recognize important, very important areas of bipartisan cooperation throughout this process, particularly communicating to the administration that the Department of Defense should be primarily funded through constitutionally mandated regular appropriations. Congress must exercise its power. OMB must be held in check, not rampaging across federal accounts with no oversight. Unfortunately, I do not believe this bill to date is the most responsible use of taxpayer dollars. Significant levels of defense spending uh is not a new reality. But we must not surrender to permanent US debt increases of hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars more, year after year, that ratchet up the US debt. We have to pay our bills. In particular, the Pentagon has yet to pass an audit. Further, especially now when this administration is not clearly communicating to Congress, It has serious plans to implement desired projects, such as the Trump class battleship. Please recall the quote, " The price of liberty is eternal vigilance." And such is this moment in the history of NATO and Europe, our closest allies, and intergenerational partners in liberty's quest and defense. Let me express deep concern that this bill does not contain assistance to Ukraine, the latest victim of Russian brutal, unprovoked aggression. Russia is a vast nation with eleven time zones. Ukraine has but one time zone. Russia has more than four times the population of Ukraine, yet Ukraine has held the line. As leader of the free world, we should support ways to allow liberty to triumph there. Could it be that some members of Congress have forgotten the history of what our nation sacrificed for liberty as hundreds of thousands of our beloved countrymen died across Europe during World Wars One and Two, and then, the nearly half century of the bitter Cold War that followed, perhaps you're too young or maybe absent-minded. The most unselfish generation, the most unselfish, bequeathed liberty to us. We didn't earn it. Could we now be so ungrateful, and indeed unconscious, of what eternal vigilance to liberty requires? None of us did anything to achieve freedom from fascism or communism. Subsequent to World War Two, it took our forebears another half century to defeat the predatory Soviet Union across the newly freed formerly subjugated Nations of Europe, I remain in awe of what they accomplished. Their advance of liberty was profound and utterly sacrificial. American cemeteries across Europe testify to the sheer valor and sacrifice by hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens. Have too many here forgotten? Are we spoiled?

Hmm.

In nineteen ninety-one, the entire Soviet Union collapsed of its own dead weight, trip-wired by the solidarity movement that had started in Poland through the nineteen eighties with its victory over Soviet domination in nineteen eighty-nine. Liberty advanced. President Trump and his team thus far have had many opportunities to negotiate to end Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. The scrimmage line For liberty in Europe today is Ukraine and Central Europe. But his administration seems to have historical amnesia. They've not even tried. Public opinion is also seriously in favor of sending reasonable military assistance to Ukraine. This bill is written, doesn't stand with our proven allies. We must force Vladimir Putin to accept that his dream to restore the Russian empire is a fantasy. Further, this administration's efforts to withdraw US forces from Europe are dangerous. Our nation must stand with our NATO allies and deploy the necessary assets to defend every inch of NATO soil and airwaves from Kremlin aggression. Vladimir Putin knows well the structures of Europe, a former intelligence agent in the Soviet Union. He's coveted every square inch as far west as Germany and beyond. But in memory of every single American soldier, sailor, airman who rendered their lives and fought in the twentieth century, so our generation would be free, I refuse to abandon the free peoples of Europe to but the latest vicious dictator perched inside the Kremlin. I know many on this committee disagree with efforts to withdraw forces from Europe. And I hope we use every measure possible to strengthen our force posture on the eastern flank. Please let me extend my thanks to committee leadership and staff for their hard work. This includes key expansion of our hypersonic testing and production, while investing in the critical assets, forages and factories which form the backbone of America's defense industry. We know American shipbuilding is in crisis. The chairman of this subcommittee fully understands that, and is well aware of the challenges. Indeed, this bill makes a good faith effort toward progress there, but we must be bolder with American industrial innovation. And in closing, I want to say, it just can't be, Industrial innovation just can't be about multimillion dollar tech systems and artificial intelligence. We must revive the deep and talented workforce in defense and manufacturing at scale that built the arsenal of democracy, and the Great Lakes region did its job before and we're ready to do it again. We must make, not just import, the essentials of life in America. Thank you to my colleagues for your hard work to craft this bill. We must not accept an administration that is asking for a blank check. and an omb that is rampaging through the federal government with and wants blank checks i look forward to continuing efforts to improve this bill as it moves forward and to support our allies i do oppose it in its current form thank you and i yield back

thank you gentlelady the gentleman from florida mr. rutherford's recognized remarks on the bill

thank you mr. chairman and i'll be brief i um i rise today in support of the fy twenty-seven defense bill uh this bill provides the resources necessary for the department of war to maintain its readiness and to protect our nation it invests in our critical munitions our military industrial base our counter-drug operations and most importantly our war fighters specifically i'd like to thank chairman calvert for his leadership and support this bill brings home important wins for northeast florida including funding for the procurement of the e two d hawkeyes which are built in saint augustine florida and they provide vital protection for our carrier strike groups worldwide it also supports critical infrastructure naval air station jacksonville the fleet readiness center and and i really appreciate that uh and finally it's has language supporting continued investment in utilization of the the littoral combat ships which is

mmm mmm

i think critical to our mixed fleet strategy

mmm

uh by the navy and so this is a strong bill that is worthy of the sacrifices

mr. trudeau

that are being made by our servicemen and women in warfighters everyday so

mmm yes

i just wanna thank you mister chairman think we have a great bill i yield back

oh strategic comparison

thank you gentlemen for his remarks gentlemen from georgia mister bishop is recognized for remarks on the bill

thank you mr. chairman uh ranking member uh uh chairman calvert and ranking member mccullen and thank you to both the majority and the minority staffs i appreciate the work that has gone into bringing this fy twenty seven defense appropriations bill before the committee Uh, providing for the common defense is one of Congress's most solemn constitutional responsibilities and it is a responsibility that we must approach with seriousness, discipline, and respect for the men and women who wear the uniform. I wanna begin by recognizing the parts of the bill that I support. The bill makes major investments in our service members, military families, readiness, military health care, depot maintenance, installation, sustainment, shipbuilding, aviation, munitions, and the defense industrial base. Those are not abstract priorities. They directly affect our ability to deter our adversaries, to respond to crises, and to take care of the people who carry the burden of defending our nation. For Georgia, and particularly Georgia's second congressional district, these investments matter. fort binning marine corps logistics base albany robins air force base and the supporting civilian workforce all play a direct role in maintaining military readiness and sustaining the force when we invest in training logistics maintenance healthcare family support and installation readiness we're investing in the people and the communities that keep our national defense strong i'm also pleased to see continued attention to military pay tri-care and private sector care impact aid counseling support the fisher houses red cross and the uso and the other programs that support service members and their families no defense bills should be measured only by the weapons systems it buys it must also be measured by whether it supports the families who support uh who serve alongside our soldiers sailors airmen marines guardians and civilians at the same time i have serious concerns about the bill as it is written a defense bill of this size requires strong oversight clear priorities and transparency congress should not write a blank check without ensuring the taxpayer dollars are tied to real military requirements executable plans and measurable outcomes this defense bill is lopsided a trillion dollars plus uh but the committee has really uh done this by enabling uh uh it has enabled this lopsided uh appropriation uh by cutting domestic investments uh nutrition healthcare education diplomacy all of which are critical to supporting our national security i'm particularly concerned by the omission of the ukraine security uh at a time when the ukraine continues to resist russian aggression and all our allies are watching closely to see whether the united states will remain a reliable partner i'm also concerned about the broad one billion dollar reduction tied to business process modernization and artificial intelligence without sufficient clarity about which programs or counts may be affected innovation is important but savings must be real transparent and come at the expense of readiness of service member support. I'm also I also remain concerned about provisions related to domestic National Guard deployments. The Guard is an essential component of our national defense and emergency response capability. We must ensure that Guard resources are used in ways that strengthen readiness, not in ways that politicize of the force or distract from co-emissions. So today, my approach is straightforward. I will support efforts to strengthen this bill, protect service members and their families, preserve readiness, support Georgia's defense communities, and improve oversight. But I cannot ignore the serious concerns about transparency, accountability, and strategic judgment that the current version of the bill ignores. We can and must have a strong national defense, but strength is not measured by top-line numbers alone. It's measured by whether we make responsible choices, support our people, uphold our alliances, and ensure every dollar advances security of the American people. Although I cannot support the bill in its current form, I look forward to working with my colleagues to improve this extremely consequential legislation and right-size it to create a responsible, effective, and balanced effort to fund our national defense so as to always keep America strong and safe. I yield back.

Thank you, gentlemen, for his remarks. Gentleman from Alabama, Mister Strong, is recognized for remarks on the bill.

Thank you, Mister Chairman, I rise in strong support of this defense appropriation bill, and I commend Chairman Calvert, uh, Chairman Cole for putting America first and our war fighters first. Uh, this bill delivers the resources our troops need, a real pay raise for our service members and their families, and additional investment into, uh, counseling services, ensuring that our men and women in uniform receive the very best resources and training. This bill strengthens America's military superiority by investing in counter-UAS, missile defense, space programs, including the Golden Dome for America, twelve point five billion for Missile Defense Agency and thirteen billion for missile warnings and tracking programs. We're also reloading America's clip by providing nearly three billion dollars rebuilding our industrial base and over ten point six billion in munition procurement. We're committed to ensuring our troops have the ammunition and technology and weapons needed to execute their mission, defend our nation, and deter our enemies. Let this bill, let this bill be a clear message to every adversary who doubts America's resolve. The US military remains the world's strongest, most lethal fighting force, and we will always ensure our warfighters are ready to meet the challenge. I urge my colleagues to support this bill, and, Mister Chairman, I yield back.

Thank you, gentlemen, for his remarks. The gentlelady from Florida, Miss Wasserman Schultz, is recognized for her remarks on the bill.

Thank you, Mister Chairman. How about we spend a trillion dollars helping people lower their bills? How about we spend a trillion dollars making life more affordable? for the people that we represented sent us here to be their voice cause no one's talking to me at home about spending a trillion dollars more on our military industrial complex we certainly have to make sure we protect our national security but right now um americans are more worried than ever about how they'll pay for their electric bill their health insurance so their rent or even how they're gonna afford to fill up their gas tank. They face the ugly choice of buying milk and lunch meat, or medicine, or the agonizing alternatives of renewing an insurance plan are just going without health coverage. Yet all that seems to be lost on the majority of this committee and the Trump administration as they ask us to approve a one trillion dollar defense bill. And it's a bill that's full of Trump vanity projects and gives Pete Hegseth unchecked power all while america's long-term security readiness and our allies get shortchanged this bill does not deliver solutions for today's challenges which is why republicans are already talking about a defense supplemental for trump's war with iran which remains so unpopular and reckless that they want to ram the package through a partisan reconciliation process but this is now par for the course we thought that we would have an energy and water bill on the floor this week. Um, that doesn't appear to be in our near future anymore, but that bill does far more to help secretary of rights, DC office staff, than it will to lower the cost of electricity in my home state of Florida. Mister Chairman, what frustrates me most is that this is not how it has to be. We all can, and we should, and we have, work together to protect our nation and invest in a strong department of defense just as we started this appropriation season with the bipartisan military construction veterans affairs bill we've shown it's possible and yup i'm never gonna start stop bragging about it mister simpson because we've shown it's possible when we work together there are certainly positive provisions in this bill but we are far away from a good bill i've been able to vote for the defense bill coming out of the appropriations committee no matter who's been in the majority. I wish that I was in that position today, especially when you take a step back and look at this bill as a whole. The two hundred thirty-four dollar, the two hundred and thirty-four billion dollar increase to this bill is greater than the entire labor health and human services appropriations bill. That's enough money to fund the Affordable Care Act premium assistance for eight years. Eight years of peace of mind. that when you're sick you can afford to go to the doctor as opposed to a trillion dollars to fund the military industrial complex and all this new money is in addition to the slush fund that the department of of defense got in the first republican reconciliation bill that we still know very little about this bill also provides five billion dollars for the f forty seven program that's a program that's part trump trump vanity project and part fiscal disaster i absolutely agree that we need to invest in our next generation fighter but we're talking about a program that was paused because it's going to cost three times more per plane than the f-thirty-five lightning-two which was already a program plagued with cost overruns and one of the most expensive fighter jet programs in the world as the ranking member of the milcon va subcommittee i can tell you that we have very real needs for military construction to support our service members their families in improved readiness judge carter when we stand up and present our bill talk about that need all the time but our our bill received an inadequate top line to meet those needs to meet the quality of life needs and the readiness needs of our service members under this grand plan we will have billion dollar war planes that will sit in hangars hangars that are about to collapse in on themselves i've gone overseas and seen them I know many of you have as well. Our troops will continue to live and work in buildings that are borderline unsafe and not fit very often for their uh for their intended purpose. Military families will continue to do it rough with inadequate housing, child care centers and support facilities. And all of this sacrifice for what? A new five hundred million dollar Air Force one that Trump will donate to himself at the end of his term? We all know that's coming. Some ships and fighter jets named after your dearly This isn't just putting the cart before the horse. We're throwing the cart and the horse, along with our security, right over a cliff and hoping for the best, just so we don't risk upsetting Donald Trump. As a member of Congress who proudly represents South Florida with its rich diversity as the gateway to the Americas, my constituents and I know the value of a strong defense, and we do not shrink from it. But this bill doesn't deliver a strong national defense. It throws too much money around to stroke egos. And it hopes to hide the clear lack of planning and vision from this Department of Defense and this administration. Our service members and their families need us to deliver for them, not help boost the vanity of the man sitting in the White House. This bill does not reflect our values. It does not reflect the needs of our troops or our allies. And I would bet if we had some private conversations, many of you would acknowledge that. And it does not meet the moment that President Trump himself has put us in. I urge my colleagues to vote no, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Thank you, generally, for remarks, the gentleman from Texas, Mister Cuellar, is recognized for remarks on the bill.

Thank you, uh, Mister Chairman. I wanna thank the, uh, Chairman Calvert and the ranking member, Miss McCollum, and all the staff on both sides for all the long hours and days that they put in, uh, putting this bill together. As we all know, this is a process, this is just the beginning of the process, and, uh, we all hope to get there together, uh, at the end of this process. Uh, in the meanwhile, I do wanna say there's uh several good things, a lot of good things in this bill, and then one of them that I wanna talk about is one of the requests that I've added for the last couple of years and that has to do with, uh, human performance optimization. That is to make sure that our military folks are all ready to go. And this is something that, uh, we've added funding, I certainly wanna thank you all, uh, for doing this. We started this some time ago at the, uh, University of Texas, San Antonio, where they've been doing, uh conducting groundbreaking research and performance. Uh it's not only the exercise, but it's what they eat and how they sleep and how they think. And this human performance uh has been uh this research has been groundbreaking, so I want to thank the committee for adding that language. The other thing is I want to thank the the committee for uh adding funding and language on what we call the Air Force Talent Pipeline Modernization initiative that uh will improve the recruiting, uh reduce the hiring timelines, and create a stronger pipeline in aviation. That includes training high school students to fly. I've seen this uh in one of my part of the uh my district in Atascosa in Pleasanton. And I think we all should have this in our district um uh to make sure that we start uh training our young kids the ones who are interested in aviation. it's not only the military but in homeland also the air marine and other folks that are short on pilots and i think if we start them off early uh this will allow us to get uh ahead if you look at our competitors uh for example china as an example has invested heavily in exposing young people to aviation and technical careers long before they start the workforce uh and we um uh we gotta make sure that we uh start this early and it's amazing uh the programs that we have right now. I also want to thank uh the uh the committee uh for the seven percent uh increase to our junior enlisted service members the six percent to our senior uh non-commissioned officers and uh company grade officers and the five percent to our senior officers this is uh important and i want to thank the chairman and the ranking member uh for adding uh this increase. finally i wanna add one thing that i think we're all very familiar and that is the united service uh organizations known as uso uh and that again has bipartisan support and as you know it's important to our deployed service members and to the families and i wanna thank the committee for adding uh this um uh language and monies so uh mr. chairman as you know this is a uh starting uh part of the process and we look forward to being like we've always been there at the end when we get the input uh from everybody so with that i yield back the balance of my time thank you

thank you gentlemen for your remarks the general lady from maine miss pingree recognized for remarks on the bill

thank you mr. chair uh and thank you to the chair and ranking member of the subcommittee for all the work they're putting into this bill and all the work i know they'll continue to do uh to make the bill better uh i'm gonna trust my colleagues because i know there have been a lot of opening remarks and they'll continue to be to uh make sure that everybody understands the problems and challenges to this bill but i do wanna emphasize that is a trillion dollars that's a trillion dollars for the pentagon at the same time we're cutting and we've all been through a lot of subcommittee hearings here markups we're cutting over thirteen billion dollars for domestic programs that would actually support working families while we're spending this much on defense and we all know what we've been cutting childhood cancer research farmers to the usda education housing, child care, it's all on the chopping block and every time we fight back someone says, but there isn't enough money, but there's always enough money for this bill. This bill also abandons our allies in Ukraine, continues the unchecked spending on authorized operations in the Middle East, it's got a lot of big challenges in it. But I want to use my time just to focus on the impact on our navy and on shipbuilding in that industry.

Wow.

You know, maritime competition is intensifying, especially in the Indo-Pacific. But this bill provides funding for only one DDG fifty-one destroyer. These ships are the backbone of our Navy and they are essential to preserving our military superiority. That's only one of those ships is provided for in this bill. I often hear bipartisan agreement about how we need a larger, more capable free fleet. And last year the president himself said he wanted to resurrect the American shipbuilding industry. But without investment, or a strategy that is just talk, and it's especially just talking a bill that gets over a trillion dollars. If we're serious about naval readiness, we cannot continue under-investing in our ships and in our shipyards, and the workforce that is needed to sustain that fleet. I'm sure many of you remember, uh, because I love to talk about it, that Bath Iron Works, uh, one of our important defense shipyards is located in my district. We're very proud of the shipbuilders and the work that gets done there. and we love to say that bath built is the best built because they do an amazing job building ships and for all of you when you take your vacation in maine this summer to get a lobster roll and ride on a ferry i hope you'll come by and get a tour of this ship bar yard because it's an amazing thing it's a miracle to watch these ships come together they're complex they require incredible skill and incredibly skilled workers stability in the prediction of how many ships are gonna be built, and having sufficient orders is what helps to recruit and retain a workforce. These workers can't just be reassigned if there's no ships to build, until there's more money or until there um is sufficient procurement planning done. Many of them are machine operators, highly skilled, highly specialized. They've been there for years, and not having ships impacts the production line. Multi-year contracts lower the cost, ultimately saving money, I know the chair in his opening remarks talked about advanced procurement and how critically important that is in these complex industries that happen in our country. It's especially difficult to hear about the lack of sufficient shipbuilding in this contract when you put it in a broader context and that is Russ Vogt and OMB now signaling that they're thinking about buying ships from foreign shipyards. I'm gonna say that again. They're thinking about using their waiver authority to actually buy ships offshore. And we know how important our six six shipyards here are here in this country. and it's antithetical to think that they would ever suggest that but a senior omb uh official has said if you look at the average cost of a destroyer construction in japan japan or korea a billion dollars is fairly nominal cost associated with destroyer construction just yesterday i was driving in for votes and i turned on c-span radio in my car and i heard president trump talking to a big pennsylvania gal during i think he was at a mac truck facility saying how important american workers and american manufacturing was and how he's on top of that and that's what we're gonna do in this country and in fact when we got out of votes and i drove away you'll not be surprised that the president was still talking to the pennsylvania gathering and he was still talking about american workers and american unit manufacturing yet his official at omb is now saying we're thinking about building ships offshore in other countries really our defense industry we're thinking of moving that manufacturing offshore This bill's increase over FY twenty-six is more than the entire funding of labor age and education. And we're talking about buying destroyers from foreign nations rather than investing in our own shipyards. I appreciate that this committee has put language in to curb the president's authority to do so, but the fact that it's even being considered is shameful. Adding this language, uh, while still selling our shipyards short, doesn't make sense. We need to use this bill to make strategic investments in American readiness, which includes a skilled workforce, a skilled union workforce, and we cannot stand by while the administration drives decline of our investment, and of our industrial base. I yield back, and I thank the chair.

Thank you, General Leidy. The gentleman from Texas, Mister Elsie, is recognized for remarks on the bill.

Thank you all for being here today. I'd like to thank the Chairman and Ranking Member for working so well together. It's it's truly a joy to watch Ken and Betty work on these bills and uh work together to uh to make sure the defense of our nation is never in doubt. Woodrow Wilson got re-elected based on the premise that he kept us out of war until he didn't. FDR got re-elected based on the premise that he kept us out of war until he didn'T. And in both of those cases, our nation was woefully unprepared and underfunded in order to prevent war. We have a generational opportunity here today in this committee to do what's most important for the defense appropriation subcommittee, and that's prevent war first. Because war is a cataf- catastrophic waste of irreplaceable souls. And as someone who retired fourteen years ago, but for whom the sounds of combat still ring in my ears. And as the father of a fourteen year old son who, I want to be a pro baseball player, it seems bound and determined to be a Marine someday. Just like Lois's son. The only thing I think about every day is how do we prevent war in this country through the funding of an appropriations process. The Defense Department has been underfunded for many, many years. The requests that are in this bill are those that come from the experts that we, or at least in the Senate, have deemed the experts in their field that say this is what we need to prevent war, but if we are required to go to war in a way that the winds of war haven't blown since nineteen thirty-eight like they are today, with genocidal dictators in charge of nations who are determined to wrest control of the free world from the West in ways that truly are frightening. The unrestricted warfare used by the Chinese right now already seems to indicate that they are actively moving forward in the philosophy of soon-sue to never have to fight your enemy to win the war. This bill that we're talking about today, and the way we vote today, sends a message and a signal to those adversaries that we're talking about, that will determine whether or not they choose to push forward or they recognize that the United States, for all of our differences, understand that we are united in one concept, that the job, primary job of any government is to protect our people. And I, like you, would much rather prefer to decide if there are enough jobs in the country, enough health care in the country. But with this bill, I'm voting to make sure that we worry about those things, but we don't worry about whether or not they're gonna be more gold star families in this country because we go to a world war. So this bill provides us the start, and just the start, of getting us ramped up to where we should be on federal funding to provide for a defense that the Chinese, the Russians, the North Koreans will choose not to challenge. In this bill are dollars for a number of companies and new technologies that four years ago we would not have imagined indeed a year ago, we wouldn't have imagined having to spend money on. But now it's not an either-or negotiation, it's an all of the above. With the invasion of Ukraine by Putin and his and his army to kill thousands of Ukrainians. Just like they did starting in nineteen thirty one, where they killed eight million Ukrainians through with their Holodomor. They've had aims on this forever. We understand that, and we need to be prepared for it and respond to it. And with this bill, the ability to build new munitions much, much cheaper than we ever thought possible to re-establish our magazine depth, which is lower than we'd like right now, is an absolute must. A number of patriotic companies, manned and owned by young men and women, patriotic Americans, all who want to establish a nation second to none, that will never be challenged again, are waiting for the go signal from this committee and from this Congress, that we are ready to make sure that nobody ever challenges us again. But if they do, we win, and we win quickly, with the least loss of life. I think we're all singing from the same music. I'm not sure we're all singing in the same key. But I'm asking you on the other side of the aisle, today, to send a signal to our adversaries and to the American people that we are ready to unite again. And I'd urge you to vote yes on this bill. Thank you.

Thank you gentlemen for your remarks. General Lee from Florida, Miss Frankles, recognize for remarks on the bill.

Th- thank you, Mister Chair. Um, let me just thank everybody here and those who who have served and who are serving. Uh, I'm I am the proud mother of a United States Marine War veteran. More importantly, or as importantly, I am the grandmother to two uh young boys who uh like all the children I hope will grow up secure and with with opportunity. I I join those who believe in a strong America, who believe in protecting our service members, who believe in standing with our allies, and believe in defending this nation against any threat that comes our way. But let's remember this, a nation's strength is not measured only by the weapons it builds, not only by the battleships that sail or by the size of its fighting force, a nation's strength is measured by the people it lifts up, the families it supports, the children that it educates, the communities it strengthens, and the opportunities that it creates. Because a country is not truly secure when its people are struggling, and today many Americans are struggling. Families are working harder than ever, but they can't afford the basics. Groceries cost too much. gas costs too much grant costs too much healthcare costs too much and this bill provides more than one trillion dollars in defense funding more than ever before in our history while donald trump is cutting and scrimping on the very investments that protect and strengthen families here at home and while pushing tax breaks for the super wealthy pursuing pet projects like a golden ballroom in allowing special interests and political allies to benefit while working, families are asked to sacrifice. So I ask my colleagues, how can we call that security? How can we say America is stronger when families are weaker? A mother who is sick, who cannot afford to see a doctor, is not secure. A parent who cannot find a uh for child care and has to leave the workforce is not secure a senior choosing between a medicine or paying their uh for their groceries is not secure a a hungry child sitting in an overcrowded classroom without tools tools to succeed is not secure and a family working harder every day but still unable to pay the rent is not secure yes america needs a strong military but i'll say it again america's greatest strength has not come only from the battleships it's not only come from the fighter planes it's not only come from our weapons america's greatest strength has always come from our people and when people when families are healthy america is stronger when our children learn america is stronger when workers succeed america is stronger when communities thrive america is stronger that's the real strength that's the real security and that's how we build america that is truly still safe and this bill before us shows that donald trump has forgotten the simple truth real security means investment not only in weapons to defend our nation but the people who make it worth defending taxpayer dollars should be used to make lives more affordable not to reward powerful and privilege or rig the system against working families and not just for war and for that reason i cannot support this bill i urge my colleagues to reject it i believe we can do much better and with that uh you're back

thank you general lady gentlemen from hawaii mr. case is recognized for remarks on the bill

thank you thank you mr. chair um as i was listening to the uh opening comments of uh chair calvert and ranking member mccollum uh i was reflecting um that we in this area of national defense agree on far more than we disagree on and i was also reflecting as i listened to mister elzey uh that those of us that are privileged uh to serve on the defense appropriation subcommittee know that if you all would just leave this to us we would get the job done except that i will never sing in key with mister l z at all so uh that's pretty clear and so um it's with a great deal of uh regret that uh i rise in opposition to this particular bill not because i disagree with the critical importance of investing in our military and national security but because on several points too many points this particular measure in its form fails in context in substance and especially primarily in the oversight and assertion of congress's constitutional powers and responsibilities to supervise an incredible part of our budget. Let's just go back to the critical importance and drive that point home. I agree that the threats that we face are real, the threats from the PRC, the threats from Russia, the threats from the Middle East. I agree with Mister Elzey that deterrence um through strength is the best way to avoid war. I agree uh with my chair of the subcommittee that we need to move with rapidity and speed and fluidity to develop the next generation of kit that we need uh in mass i agree that we need to reform a still broken procurement system i agree that we need to invest in our service members and all of that is in this bill and all is acknowledged and agreed to i also agree with what my chair says many many times and that is um, that our consistency and credibility with our partners and allies in terms of our own investment in national defense is on the line right now. Uh, we ask our partners and allies to invest five percent of their GDP, and yet today we spend two point eight percent of our GDP, which is well below our fifty year average of four point one percent of GDP. That is the cost of defense, the cost of freedom. We're not bearing it. I agree with all of that. So I'm not at all reluctant to consider responsible, um, responsive, um, reasonable national defense in the big picture, in- including a huge increase in national defense as warranted. But, um, in this particular bill there are critical and fatal deficiencies uh that have to be addressed before we go to there. Number one of course, uh, is the mixed use of reconciliation. This bill is confusing, uh concealing in many cases and not transparent in terms of what it's actually going to take um last year or more accurately the current fiscal year of course we are spending well over one trillion dollars in the combination of discretionary and reconciliation uh we haven't uh supervised the reconciliation at all and now let's not forget that we still have outstanding a request for three hundred and fifty billion dollars of reconciliation and a supplemental budget that we haven't even seen yet And that is a disjointed, uncoordinated, and not a transparent approach. And until we are able to put this together in the whole context, understand it in the big picture, and decide it in one particular bill, I don't think we should go down any one part of that road. Number two, we have not demonstrated that the Department of Defense has any capacity to execute on a huge fifty percent increase in one fiscal year, uh, budget, and much more than that if you look at two fiscal years. Um, let's focus on the general accounta accountability office's report just recently that showed a ten point seven percent reduction in department of defense personnel in just eleven months i'm sorry more accurately thirteen months that is not sustainable when you increase the budget at that level and we should settle that before we throw more money at defense number three we have not demonstrated the capacity of our defense industrial base uh to absorb this we all know our defense industrial base has to step up to the plate here and yet uh we have not solved that problem and this bill does not solve that problem and all we are doing is is is inviting a massive uh build-up in in the production uh backlog as well as extortionate costs uh from uh in imbalance between supply and demand number four i have substantive disagreements with the bill, ukraine we're gonna talk more about the absolute destruction of the merit system number five a complete imbalance that my colleague Miss Frankel has always already talked about. We cannot maintain public support uh for a total budget that skews to sixty forty defense, non-defense. And finally, we just have not acknowledged the consequences to our national debt. We're pretending as if we can increase our defense budget by this amount without having to do anything else. And that is unsustainable as a matter of national debt. these are all flaws that can and should be addressed in this bill and i certainly hope they are and can be because if and as they are i'm certainly willing to go down this road i yield back

thank you gentlemen these gentlemen from new york mr. morelli is recognized for comments on the bill

thank you

you uh mr. chairman uh And I do wanna thank uh Chairman Kelvert and the staff once again. Um, they work incredibly hard and I know uh both in our uh public and in our classified briefings uh how much he cares about the work we do and make sure that everyone is heard from and everyone has an opportunity to express themselves uh also wanna thank uh the ranking member Miss McCullum for her great work her great leadership and her friendship and certainly to the uh full committee uh chair and ranking member how much we appreciate them and the entire staff. You know, the committee has a solemn responsibility to invest taxpayer dollars wisely in a matter that reflects our nation's priorities including importantly our national security our service members deserve training equipment and support necessary to carry out their mission and I will always support investments that strengthen our military and protect our nation national security however is about more than defense spending it relies on strong communities good schools affordable health care reliable infrastructure and economic opportunity it's why i'm troubled by the bill before us which provides more than one point zero seven trillion dollars for the department of defense two hundred and thirty four billion above current funding levels that increase alone exceeds the entire labor health and human services and education bill and now house republicans are slashing those programs that help our families afford groceries housing health care and other basic necessities. President Trump captured that approach earlier this year when he said, we're fighting wars, we can't take care of daycare. I disagree. And the President's eagerness for reckless endless wars, no justification for increased spending. The scale of this bill is particularly difficult to justify when the Department of Defense still cannot fully account for the resources Congress has already provided. Taxpayers deserve no to know that their funds are being spent effectively in accordance with the appropriation laws set by this congress. The bill grants secretary Hegseth broad discretion over spending, discussions and decisions while providing no assurance that taxpayer dollars will be managed responsibly. And lastly, as I serve as the ranking member of the committee of house administration, which has jurisdiction over federal elections, I was gravely concerned when President Trump said he regretted not deploying the National Guard following the twenty twenty election. what a incredibly difficult uh thing it is to conceive of such a thing happening. And comments like those raise alarming questions about whether the American people had could have confidence in an administration that understands the legal and constitutional limits on the use of military personnel in connection with our elections. At a subcommittee hearing earlier this year, I asked the National Guard, a bureau chief, to provide assurances to the American people about the deployment of troops around polling places in November. General Nordhaus, to his credit, clearly stated that the National Guard will follow the Constitution and will follow the law and I intend and I'm sure many members here intend to uh guarantee that that's the case we will continue to hold this administration to that promise. So, Mister Chairman, while non-defense spending is being slashed, oversight remains inadequate and defense spending is reaching unthinkable levels, This bill sadly moves us in the wrong direction. So for these reasons, I cannot support this legislation. With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.

Thank you. Gentleman, the uh gentleman from California, Mister Levins, is recognized for marks on the bill.

Uh, Mr. Chairman, um, our service members are the finest in the world. And, uh, what my friend from Texas, Mister Elsie, said certainly resonated with me. I also have a fourteen year old son. He also wants to be a pro baseball player. He may wind up a United States Marine, you never know. I'd be honored and grateful if that's uh the direction he took. Uh, and uh, my commitment to our military and our service members uh will always be rock solid. And there's a great deal in this bill that I do support. It has a lot of important investments to support our service members, critical support for the Marines and sailors that I represent, uh, and uh continued investments in impact aid security cooperation programs innovation all those are great things and i really do want to thank the chairman and the ranking member uh for their hard work and their collaboration there are a few areas where i hope we can improve the bill and they're significant enough that unfortunately i cannot vote for the bill in its current form the first is something that's so critically important to the region that i represent which is the congressionally directed medical research program cdmrp. It's one of the most effective dollar-for-dollar investments we make. It's delivered breakthroughs in cancer, traumatic brain injury, and other conditions that hit our military families and veterans the hardest, and it's long enjoyed bipartisan support on this committee. Unfortunately, this bill cuts cdmrp by three hundred and fifty-three and a half million below fiscal year twenty-six levels and those cuts fall hardest on specific lines funding for autism, melanoma, and vision research is reduced, epilepsy, hearing restoration, and military burn research is eliminated entirely. It's a tough outcome coming off a fiscal twenty-five continuing resolution that had already reduced CDMRP funding significantly. Even with the substantial increases elsewhere in this bill, CDMRP would not reach the level we funded back in fiscal twenty-four under a Republican majority. I would ask that as we move forward, we look for a way to restore these accounts. I believe there is common ground here, and I'd welcome working with colleagues on both sides to find it. The second concern is a challenge that has been recognized across administrations of both parties for decades. As far back as two thousand three under President George W. Bush, the department warned that a destabilized climate could destabilize the geopolitical environment and create new security risks abroad. That assessment has been echoed by military leaders ever since. At the same time energy demand is surging, prices are climbing for families across the country, the sources we can build fastest, and that can keep our constituents' energy bills in check, include clean energy. Getting more of it onto the grid is squarely in our national and economic security interests. It's why I'm concerned that the review process for wind energy projects have effect has effectively stalled at every stage from initial determinations of presumed risk to ma- mitigation agreements to the signatures and transmittals, to the federal aviation administration that allows projects to proceed. Developers tell us that the pipeline is ground to a ho- a halt. And this puts at risk at least thirty gigawatts of plant generation capacity that could be powering American homes. And roughly a hundred and fifty thousand jobs. It's a hundred fifty thousand jobs in the red states and the blue states alike. And that helps sustain communities in many of our districts. And delaying these projects works against both American energy independence and our national security, two goals that I know every member of this committee shares. So these are the reasons I cannot support the bill is written and I say that with tremendous respect again for the effort behind it and a genuine willingness to keep working toward a bill that I hope we all can support. So I hope we get that uh process moving and uh that will have a a better outcome in the weeks and the months ahead. So thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back.

Thank you, gentlemen, for these remarks. General Leidy from Pennsylvania.

thank you chairman and thank you to uh the ranking member and the chairman of the subcommittee on defense and the uh ranking member as well

uh

i rise in support of our men and women of the military and of their families and yet i rise in opposition to this bill which provides more than one trillion dollars yes one trillion for the department of defense This is a more than two hundred billion dollar increase compared to last year, while Republicans continue to slash domestic programs that help everyday Americans afford sky-high costs of living. Annual inflation has hit four point two percent in May, the highest level in three years. One of the largest drivers of that number? Skyrocketing energy costs, a direct result of this administration's illegal, reckless, dangerous war with Iran. We've all paid the price at the pump, and at the grocery store, and elsewhere, all while this administration spends billions on a war that has undeniably left us in a worse position than where we started. Moody's analytics estimates that the cost of the war such so far is one hundred and thirty-two billion dollars. I wonder if that number is a low estimate. From what we know of the president's MOU with Iran, which is on again, off again, chaos, it is a far worse position for the United States and for the world than President Obama's nuclear deal, a deal we all know the president maligned as disastrous. So I guess where we are now is worse than a disaster in the president's estimation. One might call it a catastrophe. And this comes after the deaths of thirteen service members, hundreds of civilians,

Yeah, but the ass.

thousands of s- civilian casualties, hundreds of school girls, extensive damage to the United States military bases in the Middle East, damage to dozens of US aircraft, and a depletion of our stockpiles. And for what? Here we are, and now the majority party abdicates our constitutional authority, responsibility to declare war or to stop the president from declaring war, and puts us in this chaotic, dangerous space. all while we turn our back on the Allies, including Ukraine. This per- bill provides nothing for Ukraine, nothing to prevent this administration from withdrawing US troops from Europe. Investing in Ukraine not only makes us safer, but it will also save us money and resources in the long run. Who knows what the cost will be if we continue to allow Russia to continue unchecked. Further, we are continuing to abdicate our power of the purse to this administration. including by going along with secretary Haegs's arbitrary cuts, under the assumption that AI will save the day.

I agree.

We all know that these types of unthoughtful, chaotic, arbitrary cuts end up costing us more in the long run. We know that as members of this committee. We are also doing nothing to rein in this administration's wasteful deployment of the National Guard. Drive around this city. The National Guard is everywhere. Ironic for a president who couldn't call upon the National Guard when this very capital was being attacked. But here we are in DC performing, they are in DC, performing activities like trash cleanup or policing the failed Reflecting Pool project, all at a cost of more than a million dollars per day. They and we deserve better. This is all from the party that claims to carry the mantle of fiscal responsibility. The hypocrisy is staggering. But maybe it's not hypocrisy. Maybe it's just a straight-old showing of our values. Because as we always say, values are revealed through our budgets. A one trillion dollar cut from Medicaid and the big, beautiful bill. A trillion cut. Today, we're considering a trillion to be added here to defense. And let's not forget the more than two trillion in tax cuts for the very, very wealthiest. That reveals values of this president and of this majority party. I'll end with what the president said himself. He said, quote, " We're fighting wars. We can't take care of daycare. It's not possible to take care of daycare, Medicaid, and Medicare." Such a statement of values. I urge my colleagues to say to the president, these do not reflect our values. They do not reflect who we are as Americans. i urge my colleagues to uh join me in opposing this bill and i yield back

thank you general lady are there other members wishing to make general comments about the bill the gentleman from maryland is recognized

thank you very much mr. chairman i rise uh in concern about this bill and yes i will oppose the bill as it's currently written i listened to my dear friend mr. elzey mr. elzey and i have become dear friends i have extraordinary respect for him and i agreed with what he had to say up to a point uh first of all let me associate myself with the remarks of our ranking member about process There is no three O two B. This bill could be any figure. I could offer a trillion dollar uh addition to this bill and nobody could respond. The chairman couldn't respond. Oh, this is beyond the three O two B. There is no three O two B. There is no budget. There is no concept of what the trade-offs are in this bill. That is its uh procedural weakness. There is no pay for for this bill because there is no three O two B so we don't know how much will need to be paid for. So that we are all speaking about a trillion dollar bill and who's gonna pay for it? My children, your children, our grandchildren. But we say this is critically important to put on the table s- to make our country secure. I I think there's nobody probably other than Hal Rogers in this committee who's served longer and supported more defense bills than I have. I was a very strong supporter of the Reagan bill though. Uh, the MX missile approval and the deployment of the Pershing missiles uh that the Russians thought we couldn't get done politically in Europe, that accomplishment, in my opinion, led to Gorbachev's being able to to convince his military industrial complex uh you need to go Glasnost and Perestroika cuz we cannot compete with the Americans. So that I believe that investing in our defense is important. But I think even more important than that is our performance with respect to defense. It is my belief, and I will discuss this further when the amendment on Ukraine is offered that our failure of the west in twenty fourteen to respond to the russian stealing of crimea is the mother of this war that we now have in ukraine because it said to putin we're not gonna respond to your criminal act now a president that i supported was president of the united states at that point in time Congress, nor the President responded in a vigorous way that would say, no sir, you cannot do that. Today, uh we have a bill that has a trillion dollars plus in it. We have spent apparently somewhere in the name of seventy nine billion dollars over the last four months for an effort in iran the failure to respond effectively to crimea's theft and the extraordinary chaos and ineffective action that we have taken which i call the art of the sellout there's no deal a deal implies both sides are gonna do something. But very frankly, I would call your attention to a article in the Washington Post by Max Boot, uh, three days ago. On the extraordinary failure of this administration and of the Secretary of Defense and the DNI and, frankly, the Secretary of State who seems to be like Pontius Pilate, washing his hands of this effort in Iran because he thinks it is so abysmally a failure. Uh, we remove a naval blockade. Uh, we wave export Iran's uh con crude oil sanctions. We release twenty four billion dollars in frozen funds. Uh, we facilitate three hundred billion dollars for a reconstruction, economic development in the Islamic Republic of Iran. We terminate all types of sanctions. And we allow, after sixty days, for Iran to charge fees in international waters for passage. What kind of message does that send to Russia? What kind of message does it send to China? What kind of message does it send to Iran? Iran thinks properly at this point in time, they've won. And yet we are about to invest in that leadership a trillion dollars plus. a failed leadership. This secretary of defense calls eight hundred of the top ranking officers, flag officers, in the world to come to the pentagon for a meeting does he have anything to so subsequently to say he did not mister chairman i'm gonna vote against this bill but i'm gonna argue that we certainly need to spend money we need to spend the money on industrialization we need to spend money on acquisition and we need to spend money on personnel but i would add and and thank you for your time I would add that underfunding the civilians who are so critically important to our defense effort in the Pentagon and in other agencies in government is a very bad mistake which we have avoided in the past by having some degree of equality between the civilians and the military both critically important to our national security i yield back to balance my time i'll have more to say later

well can we deduct the the two minutes from the next one

no

uh

thank you

no i i i

you're very kind

i try to be generous with the clock i i would ask we are gonna have a long day so we can stay uh within the time limits i think that would be helpful to everybody but again i i appreciate what my friend always has to add to any debate um with that general lady from texas miss escobar is recognized for her

thank you so much mr. chairman i wanna begin by thanking chairman Calvert and ranking member McCollum for their leadership on this subcommittee and of course also uh the chairman and the ranking uh member of the committee of the whole but i also wanna recognize as many of my colleagues have the incredible staff i know that this appropriation season can be really challenging on the teams that support us and and I wanna publicly recognize and acknowledge their incredible devotion to the work that we do. We are only able to do this work because of their talent and their brilliance, and I'm really grateful. As the representative for Fort Bliss, home to the historic first armored division and the ever-important thirty-second Army Air and Missile Defense Command, I know how crucial it is to maintain a strong national defense and ensure that our service members and their families have the resources they need and the support from Congress that they have earned. There is much in this bill that I do support. The bill makes important investments in munitions production, Patriot and THAAD interceptors, army modernization and defense innovation, which I find particularly uh exciting in this bill. Those investments matter to my district, but they also matter to our national security, and they prepare us for our future fights. Fort Bliss is home to the army's premier army and defel defense missile enterprise, and the soldiers of the thirty-second army air and missile defense command continue to face extraordinary operational d- demands across the globe. Ensuring that they have the equipment, inventory, and sustainment necessary to accomplish their missions is a national security imperative and it is a top priority for my team and for me. Likewise, investments in armored vehicles, army, aviation and long-range fires directly support the first armored division and Fort Bliss's role as one of the army's premier power projection platforms. I'm also encouraged by the bill's emphasis on innovation, autonomous systems, drone and counter drone technologies, and especially defense manufacturing and strengthening the industrial base. Congress is appropriately recognizing that future conflicts will be won by our ability to adapt, innovate, and produce faster than our adversaries. I've worked hard. Long before I was in Congress, I've been working to ensure that El Paso is positioned as a growing center for deve- defense innovation, aerospace and advanced manufacturing. And I'm so proud that this bill reflects an important reality. The future of American national security will not be built in just a traditional, uh, in just a handful of traditional defense hubs. It will be built in communities like El Paso as well, with the talent that we have been so proud to support and grow locally. Unfortunately, despite those strengths, I am not able to support the bill as currently written. This bill provides more than one trillion dollars for the Department of Defense, while significant reductions are proposed elsewhere in the federal budget. National security is not achieved solely through military strength. A secure nation also needs a strong workforce, good schools, affordable housing, accessible health care, and effective and strong diplomacy. Second, I remain concerned that this bill does nothing to stop the continued use of the military for non-military issues. We still have National Guard personnel engaged in domestic activities that have little connection to military readiness, as well as immigration facilities at my installation of Fort Bliss that have hurt military readiness and wasted billions of taxpayer dollars. At a time when our military faces growing demands, we need our military to be focused on training and preparedness rather than missions better suited for civilian agencies. But the most important issue is the broader strategic backdrop against which we are being asked to fund this budget. The administration's answer to nearly every international challenge has been escalation. More threats, more military pressure, more unilateral action, and in turn, more demands for increased defense spending. I eagerly work with my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. I always look for bipartisan solutions. This is one of the most important bills that we pass. i hope we can get to a place where bipartisan support gets this bill across the finish line thank you mr. chairman i yield back

thank the gentlelady are there other members wishing to make remarks about the bill seeing none uh i would like to recognize chairman calvert to offer a manager's amendment

uh thank thank you mr. chairman i have a amendment at the desk i ask for dispensing the reading

uh without objection the reading is dispensed with and the gentleman is recognized to explain his amendment

this amendment is agreed to by both sides makes technical and conforming changes to the bill includes non-controversial bill and report changes and have been cleared by both majority and minority I urge the members to support it thank you

next gentleman gentlelady from minnesota miss mccullum is recognized to address the manager's amendment

chairman cole chairman uh calvert in addition to several non-conforming uh changes the manager's amendment makes changes to the bill in the report that address a number of topics important to members of this full committee i urge the adoption of the amendment and i yield back

thank you gentlelady uh gentleman from texas mister cuillard is recognized to address the manager's amendment

thank you mr. chairman uh just briefly i just wanna thank the chairman and the ranking member for adding one of my provisions so we've added to every uh appropriation bill and that is the uh language the cause for outcome-based reviews, performance management oversight. Uh, and I want to say thank you. And again, if we're going to find efficiencies, effectiveness, we need to start looking for this type of work. With that, I would want to say thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member. Uh, you're back.

Thank you, gentlemen. Do any other members seek recognition to address the management? General Ladey from Washington.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Um, I would like to

I rise in support of the amendment and a provision within it related to Gold Star Advisory Council. Um, on March fifth, Petty Officer second class Tyler Jaggers succumbed to critical injuries sustained on February twenty seventh during a maritime medical evacuation mission offshore Cape Flattery, Washington. His death is absolutely heartbreaking for his family and the entire Coast Guard community. And it was also historically significant. It was the first fatality in the line of duty in more than a generation of Coast Guard. And the aftermath of Petty Officer Jaggers' death i've sought answers we need to understand the circumstances of his tragic death and take to make sure it never happens again but i've also had the privilege of speaking with his family and loved ones about how i can support their efforts to honor his memory through those conversations i've been reminded that the sacrifice of military service extends beyond an individual and uniform into the entire family it's like walking around with your heart outside your body um and their lives are forever changed by a loss of a loved one the secretary in defense and i might have disagreements but i was encouraged to learn that the secretary's work to establish a council to give surviving uh families of fallen service members a direct channel to share their experiences elevate their family's concerns and honor the memory of fallen service members um it's my understanding that the council currently does not have representation from families of fallen coast guard members and given the coast guard's unique role as both an armed service and a component of the Department of Homeland Security, it's important that these families aren't overlooked and that their perspectives are represented alongside those of families from the other military services that's why I appreciate the support of my provision that would direct the Secretary of Defense to work with the Secretary of Homeland Security to include representation for the family of fallen Coast Guard service members on the council the families of Coast Guard service members uh have made um an ultimate sacrifice, and they deserve a seat at the table. for the family of Petty Officer Jaggers and for every family of a fallen Coast Guardsman, I urge adoption of the provision and I yield back.

Thank you, gentlelady. Are there other members wishing to address the manager's amendment? Gentlelady from Florida.

Thank you, Mister Chair. I I was I rise in support of the manager's amendment and I wanna thank the chair for including the provision uh I submitted to strengthen holocaust education within the department of defense and what what this provision requires is a department's report to congress on the steps it's taking and the opportunities it can expand to ensure that our service members understand the history and the lessons of the holocaust importantly it focuses on opportunities for our troops serving in the united states european command theater uh the very region aware uh the Holocaust unfolded including the possibility of visits to historic sites and museums and engagement with Holocaust survivors, descendants and academic experts because remembering history is not just about remembering the past, it is about protecting the future. Our service members wear the uniform of the United States, they stand for freedom, they stand for tyranny, against tyranny, and they represent our values. around the world and as part of this mission is understanding what can happen when hatred, anti-semitism and extremism is allowed to grow unchecked. And today we are seeing a dangerous rise in that same hatred around the world. Jewish schools and synagogues have been targeted, holocaust memorials have been vandalized, Jewish families have faced threats and violence, simply because who they are. We saw a horrific attack of course in Israel on October seventh, the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust. And we have seen anti-semitic violence in Europe, including the firebombing of synagogues, attacks on Jewish communities, and mobs hunting Jewish soccer soccer fans through the streets of Amsterdam. Uh, these anti-semitism acts are fueled by the same poison and hate that led to one of humanity's darkest chapters. And yet knowledge of that history, of course, I'm talking about the Holocaust. The knowledge of that history is fading. A recent survey found that only fifty-three percent of American adults knew that sixty six million Jew Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. One in five Americans are unsure how many Jews were killed. Less than half could name a concentration camp. Those numbers are not just disappointed. They're a warning. Because when we forget history, we risk repeating the most darkest days. And at a time when anti-semitism and hate are rising across the globe, we have a responsibility to make sure the next generation understands the consequences of hate. And that includes more than the eighty thousand American servicemen stationed in Europe, many serving just miles from places where the atrocities of the Holocaust occurred. The Holocaust was not inevitable. It was a result of hate left unchallenged. Education is how we remember. Education is how we honor the victims. Education is how we make never again, more than a phrase, we make it a promise. Thank you, uh, chair and ranking member, for including this important provision. I yield back.

Thank you, gentlelady. Are there others wishing to address the amendment? Seeing none, the gentleman from California, Mister Kalva is recognized for one minute's close.

I urge the uh passage of the amendment, and yield back.

That was wonderfully eloquent.

Yes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh, questions now on the amendment? All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

All those opposed say no. Taking the chair, the ayes have it. The gentlelady from Minnesota, Miss McCullough, is recognized for purpose of an amendment.

Mister Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk and I ask that the reading be dispensed with.

The amendment will be read. Oh, do you say dispensed with?

Dispensed with, yeah.

OK,

I'm trying to give you some time here, sir.

I thank the gentlelady, without objection, the reading of the amendment is dispensed with. The m- gentlelady is now recognized for remarks on her amendment.

Thank you, Mister Chairman. My amendment with strike section uh eighty one forty four of the bill is p- found on page uh fifty uh one fifty four if you wanna follow along uh this is what gives the secretary of defense the authority to cut one billion dollars from the bill in a proposed and possible savings of of things with uh all ai now this section does not dictate that the funds cannot come from it does not dictate i wanna be clear that the funds cannot come from salaries from military or civilian personnel and that means uh so only if there is programmatic cuts that are gonna happen. So it dictates that funds cannot come from salaries, but that leaves the programs wide open. Ceding our authority to the secretary of defense or any secretary, no matter uh what that administration uh is, is of great concern to me. It's our job to craft legislation that provides the executive branch

Sorry.

with appropriations in such a way that we know how exactly programs are to be executed. who here would be willing to give the administration uh uh the ability to cut one billion dollars without knowing what program will be cut ahead of time again congress would have no ability to deny that cut no ability to stop that cut from happening and that's a precedent we should not set if programs need to be cut we have the constitutional responsibility to make that cut and to understand what the impacts will be but that's not what's in this bill the underlying rationale for this cut is based on a premise uh in a study that was uh published in twenty fifteen by the defense uh defense group board uh anyways the study indicated that savings could could would be enacted from using um ai that's an eleven year old study and uh it still might have some use however i think until we have an updated assessment of how it's done based on the current understanding of how ai usage and impacts would be i oppose uh this provision now if the majority would seek to first understand the present scope of possibly saving through the report from the department and give us assurances that they will be targeted cuts then i might be able to support such language in the future. But we have a ways to go before I get to that point. My amendment would offset the one billion dollars by cutting the same amount from the advanced procurement guided uh missile battleship. Now the administration has requested this funding even though the navy has not completed the ship's concept design. I ask every member in this room, if you were gonna build a house yourself, would you pay for it? before it had even been designed and i think the answer would be a resounding no so why should we do that with a ship that reportedly could cost seventeen billion dollars apiece it's no secret that this navy ship building has been plagued by many problems there have been many uh instances where we have appropriated funds for ships that have not been built one recent example is for the constellation class frigate We invested at least seven billion dollars into a frigate for only a program to be canceled this year by the Navy. From the start, the Navy sent multiple change orders to the contractor, and that means that there were several changes to cost assessments and delays to the construction of the ship. The Navy couldn't get the frigate straight from the start, and now we can be sure that they know that the cost of this ship is estimated without a design to possibly be seventeen billion dollars per ship so it's design is critical to controlling costs and we just don't have that so we need the navy to tell us what type of ship they want to build with specific details included before we provide them with any funding including advanced funding because of what i just mentioned what happened with the frigate so i believe that's responsible thing to do uh like members to take this common set approach. Mister Chair, we can work about refining this language into the future, but the way it stands right now, uh that is why I'm offering my amendment and Chairman Call, that's why I'm yielding back.

Thank you, gentlelady, for amendment, the gentleman from California, Mister Kalbert, is recognized to address the amendment.

I thank you, gentlemen. Uh this amendment uh strikes provision that asks DOD to find cost savings from modern business practices and uh ai technology uh the bill includes one billion dollar savings for the reductions i i think the flexibility to cut one billion in a trillion dollar budget is not too extravagant so those reasons i oppose this amendment and yield back

thank you gentlemen the general lady from connecticut mr. law is recognized to address the amendment

thank you very much mr. chairman uh i rise in support of this amendment first let me say that ceding any authority for cutting defense funds to the secretary of defense is a big mistake. We are appropriators. That is what our job is. This amendment would strike this language to ensure that funds in the bill remain balanced. We are cutting the advance procurement request for the guided missile battleship. The concern with these large vessels is not that the Navy does not need more ships, they do. The concern is that that's me This may be the wrong kind of ship to spend billions of dollars on. Modern naval warfare is moving towards smaller, more spread out, networked and unmanned systems. We have seen how Ukraine, a nation that started with a war with mu- a much smaller navy than Russia, has been able to effectively c- contest control of the Black Sea and even sink much larger advanced Russian vessels uh vessels such as the moskva primarily using small naval drones and shore based missiles long range missiles drones submarines and other modern threats make very large surface ships harder to defend this proposed battleship would be a ship of the past not a ship of the future meanwhile a giant battleship puts a lot of money weapons and people into one very expensive target. And these ships will be incredibly expensive, estimated at nearly seventeen billion dollars per unit, nearly seven times more expensive than a modern Flight three Arleigh Burke destroyer. Representative Joe Courtney from Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Commi- uh Committee of the Sea Power subcommittee, called the Trump battleship, and I quote, " the exact opposite of every lesson uh uh uh from the recent ship building failures. The Navy already has serious needs, including submarines, destroyers, unmanned systems, munitions, shipyard capacity, and maintenance backlogs. Every dollar spent on this unproven, untested design is a dollar not spent on missiles, submarines, destroyers, or autonomous systems. Those trade-offs mattered. before congress spends billions of dollars on a new battleship class the navy should explain why this ship is needed what will it cost and what other priorities may be delayed or cut to pay for it thank you and i yield back

thanks general linday are there other members wishing to address the amendment seeing none then general linday from minnesota is recognized for one minute to close

Well, thank you, uh, Mister Chair. I just wanna reiterate again, uh, a billion dollars is a lot of money to be cut from this bill. And, um, you know, when you look through the bill and you look at the president's requests, and you look at the president's priorities, sometimes they don't allow with uh align with the priorities of this committee. So will they cut health research? Will they cut the research that goes into our universities to tackle the problems with um hypersonics uh uh you know more more understanding of what's going on with AI? could they cut quality of life we would hope that they wouldn't and just as i said earlier we would not any of us hand a check over to a builder without seeing the design for the home and so that's why i oppose in this current form the way this is written and with that i yield back

thank you general lady the question is now on the amendment offered by the general lady from minnesota all those in favor say aye

aye

all opposed say no

no no

Any other chair that knows how to? And the motion is not adopted. General Lady from Minnesota, Mister Collins, recognized for purpose of an amendment.

Mister Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk and that I ask that it be considered read.

Without objection, the reading of the amendment is dispensed with, and the General Lady is recognized for remarks on her amendment.

Now, Mister Chairman, I rise to strike the funding in the bill that would support the National Guard's deployment to the District of Columbia for the safe and beautiful task force for the National Guard quick and for the National Guard quick reaction force I want to start by thanking the members of the DC National Guard and the other state's National Guards who have been deployed to Washington DC they have done their duties honorably we were all horrified when two members of West Virginia National Guard were shot in Washington last November and one of those soldiers lost their life. But the department has spent over six hundred million dollars in the last fiscal year on DC beautification programs. And the administration is requesting another six hundred and five million dollars for fiscal year twenty twenty seven for these activities. Now the president says he wants the guard to remain in DC until the end of his term when he leaves office in twenty twenty nine. Our soldiers do not need to be patrolling monuments or picking up garbage as they're currently doing and now they're standing guard over a reflecting pool guarding algae watching paint peel well their job is more important than that their job is to train to fight pure adversaries and respond to emergency situations the idea that any of the guards activities in Washington has improved readiness for conflict is not based in reality A recent study by a nonpartisan think tank stated that the deployment of these troops had no effect on the number of violent crimes in the district. Again, no effect on the number of violent crimes being reduced. The researchers also called the deployment a blunt and expensive instrument. CBO reported that the costs were about one point five million dollars a day for current troop levels. Now I know several other domestic programs or even programs in the Department of Defense for training and equipping our National Guard could be used more effectively. In total, the cost of this deployment has been one point two billion dollars over the past year alone. I believe that this is a misuse of taxpayers' funds. As I also mentioned in my opening state, the bill includes two point six million dollars for the National Guard Reaction Force. Now the National Guard does not need new funding to develop law enforcement capabilities that are outside of the scope of its jurisdiction. The US government right here in Washington, DC has plenty of first responders, federal, state, local, that are trained to handle criminal activity. It's not the military's job and we should not be funding this request. For these reasons, Mister Chair, I hope you and my colleagues will support my amendment and I yield back.

Thank you, General Lady. The gentleman from California, Mister Kalbutz, recognized to respond to the amendment.

I thank the gentlemen. This amendment uh strikes funding for the National Guard mission to keep DC safe and beautiful it's one thing to disagree with the policy but we should all agree that the National Guard cannot be left without the resources uh to pay them and what they need so I for those reasons I oppose this amendment. Yield back.

Thank you, gentlemen. The General Lady from Pennsylvania, Mister Deans, recognized to address the amendment.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I rise in strong support of Ranking Member McCollum's amendment, which cuts funding for President Trump's wasteful deployment of the National Guard for the DC safe and beautiful mission. Let me start by saying my tremendous respect for our National Guard's men and women. They do extraordinary work responding to national disasters and other domestic emergencies. in addition to supporting combat missions abroad. I am so grateful to the men and women in this country who choose to serve our country through the National Guard, as my late father-in-law did. I've had the opportunity to interact with so many of these patriots recently, which is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because they are truly extraordinary, hard-working, service-minded citizens, dedicated to this country. But a curse because the reasons for many of my interaction in the National Guard's is their unjustifiable presence here in DC. For those watching remotely, who haven't been to DC recently, you might not realize the extent of the National Guard's presence here, and just how dystopian it feels. If you go for a walk along the National Mall, if you go to any Metro station, you will encounter multiple patrols of National Guardsmen. The administration claims they are necessary, and they are a presence to deter violent crime. In reality, studies have found that while the deployment has perhaps led to a small reduction in opportunistic crimes it has no meaningful impact on violent crimes. All of this at a cost of one point five million dollars a day, according to CBO, and that's before the so-called summer surge. Do my Republican colleagues truly think this is taxpayer money well spent? How could you? One point five million dollars a day to deter criminal activities? like touching the reflecting pool or touching a piece of peeled paint to assist in picking up trash and putting down mulch. This deployment is a waste of resources and talent. It is disrespectful, uh, to the mission and reputation of our National Guard. I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting our National Guard and their proper training and employ- uh, and, uh, deployment. And I ask you to please support this amendment. I yield back.

Thank the gentlelady. Are there others wishing to address the amendment? Seeing Oh, where? Oh, the gentleman from Cal- California is recognized.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Men, I rise in support of Ranking Member McCollum's amendment preventing funding for this and this bill for the deployment of the National Guard reserves uh for the beautification task force. Not only is it an egregious misuse of funds, uh to spend a half a billion dollars so the national guard can continue to pick up uh trash in d. c. and also more importantly for this subcommittee's work it impedes uh our readiness and deprives our soldiers of valuable training opportunities the brave men and women of the guard deployed in d. c. could've spent the last ten months preparing for a fight against our adversaries supporting legitimate military operations or responding to emergencies instead of militarizing local neighborhoods in d. c. but instead they've been robbed of these opportunities because the president's insistence that the nation's capital needs to be cleaned up in reality this operation has done little to reduce violent crime in washington which was already trending downward before trump took office providing more funding for this unnecessary and expensive deployment is a disservice to our national security and to the national guard troops who serve our country That's why I urge an aye vote on the McCollum amendment, and I yield back, Mister Chairman. Thank you.

Thank you, gentlemen. The uh gentleman from Maryland, Mister Ivey, is recognized to address the amendment.

Thank you, Mister Chairman. I rise in support of the amendment. You know, this is one that's been of significant concern to me since it was first instituted for a couple of reasons. One is, as you've heard, the amount of money, the expenditure on this Um, it's frankly outrageous, um, and totally misdirected. If you really wanted to spend the money to try and help make the streets of Washington DC safer, hiring police officers would be much better than assigning National Guards folks, uh, for a variety of reasons. One is the National Guards' a band-aid approach. These guys are gonna leave eventually, um, and go back to doing the things that they ought to be doing. And I hope that comes sooner rather than later. Hiring police officers though, uh, would be much more beneficial to the community, A, because they're trained to actually police the streets of Washington DC, or whatever community they're in, as opposed to the National Guard, which is not. Uh, and their training should remain on other things unrelated to policing, but, but the policing piece is a particular concern to me because part of the training is making sure you know how to use force on the street. And so if you're on the street, and you have a situation where you need to use some sort of force to resolve a criminal activity,

I'm sure.

regular police have a whole range of options and tools that are available to them. It's called the force continuum. And it can be, yeah, you know, les- lethal force at the the far end, weapon or s- or, but it can also be a nightstick or a taser or something in between. National Guard d- is not equipped with those tools by and large. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen any of them with those. And so the problem that creates is that a relatively minor situation puts them in the position of having to make a decision about whether uh instead of having a taser or some sort of intermediate tool that you could use, it's nothing or it's the M four. And we don't really need that. That's not what we need to be. And we've seen that from years and years of of excessive force issues on the street, where police officers have made decisions that, in my view, uh have been bad and dangerous and have led to criminal prosecution. So let's not put these National Guard personnel in the situation that they haven't been trained to deal with and don't have the tools to deal with. And then finally, I'll I'll say this. Um, with respect to actually trying to make the streets safer, it's not just enforcement that's been effective in communities across the country and as my colleague from California noted a minute ago, he's violent crime trends have been going down for years already anyway, including in the District of Columbia, and they continue to go down in cities where there's no National Guard presence that's been made. That's in part because they don't use just an enfor- an enforcement as a tool, they also use intervention prevention mechanisms to try and bring criminal activity down. And it's been effective. Why don't we actually try and use the tools that are effective to reduce crime in our streets? Uh, my colleague from Illinois was just showing me an article a few minutes ago. about research that's been done in Chicago just along these lines. And it's something that we really ought to continue to try and expand. Sadly, when the Trump administration came into office, they slashed the funding for many of these programs, um, which is really distressing in a, in a number of ways, because violent crime on our streets, especially gun violence on our streets, has, you know, will continue to move in the wrong direction if we don't use solutions that we've developed and tested and realized that they work. So let's get the National Guard back to doing what they're supposed to do. And if you really wanna bring down crime on the streets of Washington DC, use the funding instead of one point five million dollars a day for these National Guard folks that aren't trained to be out there. Let's put it towards people, whether it's enforcement tools or police, whether it's violence interrupters, whatever you wanna use, let's use people out there on the street who are actually trained to handle these situations and can truly make a difference. So, I urge you to support the amendment. And with that, I yield back.

Thank you, gentlemen. Are there others wishing to address the amendment? Seeing none, the gentlelady from Minnesota is recognized for one minute to close.

Thank you, Mister Chair. I think the people who volunteer for our National Guard are very special to each and every one of us in our state. And then there special to us as they are often called on to deploy nationally in this total service of this country. Uh, many of us have been with them at their posts, uh, out in theaters and, uh, they put their lives on the line, uh, for us every single day. They need to be used effectively. They need to be used with dignity and honor. And so I ask the committee to support this amendment.

Question is now on the amendment offered by the gentlelady from Minnesota, all those in favor say,

aye aye aye

all those opposed say no

no

no

being the chair of the nose have it roll call has been requested sufficient support has been demonstrated or we'll call the roll

mr. adderhall mr. aguilar mr. aguilar aye mr. alford mr. alford no mr. amadei mr. amadei no mrs. bice mrs. bice no mr. bishop mister calvert

no

mister calvert no mister carter

no

mister carter no mister case

aye

mister case aye mister siskamani

no

mister siskamani no mister klein

no

mister klein no mister cloud

no

mister cloud no mister kleiburn mister kleid

negative

mister kleid no mister kohl

no

mister kohl no mister qr miss dean

aye

miss dean aye mr. loro

aye

mr. loro aye mr. diaz-balart

no

mr. edwards mr. edwards no mr. elzey

no

miss escobar

aye

miss escobar aye mr. espeat mr. fleishman

no

mr. fleishman no miss frankel miss frankel

yes

miss frankel aye mr. franklin mr. franklin no mr. guest mr. guest no mr. harter

aye

mr. harter aye dr. harris dr. harris dr. harris no mrs. hinson mr. hoyer

aye mr. hoyer

mr. hoyer aye mr. ivy

aye

mr. ivy aye mr. joyce

uh oh

mr. joyce no miss captor mister lolota miss lee

aye

miss lee aye miss letlow mister levin

aye

mister levin aye miss milloy miss mccollum

aye

miss mccollum aye miss ming

aye

miss ming aye mr. molinar

no

mr. molinar no mr. moore

no no

mr. moore no mr. morelli

aye

mr. morelli aye mr. mervan mister newhouse mister newhouse no miss perez no miss pingree miss pingree aye mister pokan

aye

aye mister pokan aye mister quigley mister quigley aye mister russenthaler aye no mister russenthaler no mister rogers mister rogers no mister rutherford no no mister rutherford no mister schrieff no mister schrieff no mister simpson mister simpson no mister strong no no no mr. strong no mrs. torres

aye

mrs. torres aye miss underwood

aye

miss underwood aye mr. valadeo

no

mr. valadeo no miss washington schultz

aye

miss washington schultz aye mrs. Watson-colman mrs.

aye

Watson-colman aye mr. womack mr.

no

womack no mr. zinke

no

mr. zinke no

are there members wishing to vote or change their vote gentlemen from south carolina

aye

mr. kleiburn aye

gentlemen from georgia

aye

mister bishop i

gentlelady from florida

no please

which already in

no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no good luck good luck i'm not the gentleman from florida

the the gentleman from uh florida

yes no please

gentlelady from

mister diaz-ballart no

gentlelady from ohio

miss captor i

gentleman from new york

no

mister lolota no

gentleman from texas

no please

mister lz no

gentlelady from utah

miss malloy no

gentleman from indiana

mister immervant aye

here

oh gentlemen from alabama

no

mister adderhall no

are there others wishing to vote or change their vote seeing none i'll call real time

let's see there are seven candidates

on this vote the ayes are twenty five the no's are thirty three the amendment is not adopted general lady from connecticut mr. law is recognized for purposes of amendment.

Thank you, Mister Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk, and I ask that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Without objection, the reading of the amendment is dispensed with, and the gentlelady is recognized for remarks on her amendment.

Thank you so much, Mister Chair. Uh, my amendment would apply the same responsible guardrails that we have agreed to in this committee on a bipartisan basis to the funding of uh the Pentagon receives through reconciliation. These are not unreasonable constraints, they are not needlessly burdensome regulations. They are fundamental protections against waste, abuse and corruption that both sides have agreed should apply to the funding that we approve. For example, we prohibit funds from being used to award government contracts to companies that are deficient in their taxes. or that have been found guilty of a felony within the past two years. Do my Republican colleagues really believe the same standard ought not to apply to reconciliation funding? Should tax cheats and corporate criminals be eligible for lucrative government contracts simply because the money was passed through a different process we include language in this defense bill to prohibit the use of funding for torture. Is torture somehow more acceptable because it is funding through funded through reconciliation rather than appropriations? Is it any less a crime against humanity because of a legislative technicality? We include a prohibition on the use of funds to contravene a war powers resolution, rightly asserting Congress's constitutional prerogative, not only the power of the purse, but the power to declare war. There are dozens of these guardrails that we routinely include in the bills that we passed through the appropriations process. But the Trump administration has argued that these do not apply to the money they have received through the reconciliation process, that those funds come with no strings attached. That is a direct affront to the institution of the Congress. Allowing these funds to flow without the guardrails that we consistently, we we consistently see fit to include on our bills is an abdication of our authority, not only on this committee, but in the Congress as a whole. Our constitutional responsibility is to allocate funding on behalf of the American people whom we serve. Refusing to apply these guardrails to reconciliation funds refusing to remove any doubt as to where the power of the purse lies, will come back to haunt us in the future. These are reasonable provisions that we have already agreed to on a consistent and on a bipartisan basis. I encourage my colleagues to support this amendment and assert our power of the purse. I yield back.

Thank you, General Leidy. Uh, the gentleman from California, recognize to address the amendment.

I thank the gentlelady for her amendment. Um, we uh, already uh, the one big beautiful bill or the first reconciliation bill, whatever we wanna call it, uh passed and we shouldn't uh reopen the debate during uh this mark-up. We should focus on the bill that's before us and work together on how we can improve it, move forward providing for the common defense. So for those reasons I oppose this amendment. You're back.

Thank you, gentlemen. The gentlelady from Minnesota, Miss McCollum, is recognized to address the amendment.

Thank you again, Mister Chairman, I rise in full support of this amendment. Everyone in this room is an appropriator. We pay the bills, we manage the funds. With that in mind, it's my hope that we can have a unanimous approach to this amendment. This amendment would bring the defense funds that were appropriated last year into public law, ni one hundred and nineteen dash twenty-one, under the purview of this committee. is necessary for proper congressional oversight. As I said in my opening statements, the Department of Defense took ten months to get us an adequate spend plan on the one hundred and fifty billion dollars from the reconciliation bill. We should never accept that kind of a spend plan time line with an annual appropriation funds. These funds should be subject to the same terms and conditions as every other dollar we allocate to the Department of Defense. is just not responsible for the departments of DOD's programs to fully uh utilize funds that are subject to one's offset rules versus another. We all agree reconciliation is not the right way to do business. This amendment would correct those concerns and abuses, and I support its adoption and I yield back.

Uh, General Lady, are there others wishing to address the amendment? Saying none, the gentlelady is recognized for one minute to close.

Thank you, Mister Chairman, um I I just this this is really not reopening a debate. This is about applying um the the same as I say rules that we uh engage in in this committee uh with appropriations bills to what is a in essence an appropriations bill, uh but it has gone through a different process, but it still the uh advocates uh it is still appropriation of funds and the this is the power of the person which belongs constitutionally uh to the congress. The amendment doesn't add any condition to any funding that we have not already agreed upon in this committee. It simply applies the standards that we have set for ourselves on how the money congress approves ought to be spent to the money that is provided outside of this committee. If we do not believe these provisions should apply to the funding that Congress provides, then why are they included in this bill we consider today? Why have my colleagues not stripped them out entirely? The answer is because they are eminently reasonable provisions that we have found common ground on. We've agreed to this. We cannot forfeit our power of the purse. We cannot abdicate our responsibility on this committee. We cannot continue to write blank checks for the executive branch. That is not how the Constitution envisions our role in this institution. I encourage my colleagues, support this amendment, apply these basic guardrails to the vast sums of money that are being funneled to the government, outside of this committee, and to a person in this committee. We really do not believe that reconciliation is a a a laudable process, uh, for appropriating dollars. Why not? apply these guardrails uh uh uh uh to to funds that are being uh appropriated if you will, outside of the appropriations committee. Thank you and I yield back. I ask your support for the amendment.

Thank you, General Lady, the question is now on the amendment offered by the General Lady from Connecticut. All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

All those opposed say no.

No.

Being the chair of the no's have it. Roll call has been requested, sufficient.

mister adderhall

no

mister adderhall no mister aguilar

aye

mister aguilar aye mister alford mister alford no mister amadei

no

missus bice missus bice no mister bishop

aye

mister bishop aye mister calvert

no

mister calvert no mister carter mister carter no mister case

aye

mister case aye mister siskamani mister klein

no

mister klein no mister cloud

no

mister cloud no mister kleibern

no

mister kleibern aye mister kleid

negative

mister kleid no mister kohl

no

mister kohl no mister qr

jim

miss dean

aye

miss dean aye mister laroe

aye

mister laroe aye mister diaz-balart

no

mister diaz-balart no mister edwards

no

mister edwards no mister lz mister elze no miss eskabar mister espiat mister fleischman miss frankel miss frankel aye mister franklin mister franklin no mister guest mister guest no mister harter doctor harris doctor harris no mrs. hinson mister heuer mister ivy aye mister ivy aye mister joyce aye mister joyce no miss captor mister lolota mister lolota no miss lee no low aye miss lee aye miss letlow mister levin mister levin aye miss milloy aye miss milloy no miss mccullum

alright

miss mccullum aye miss ming

aye

miss ming aye mr. molinar

no

mr. molinar no mr. moore mr. moore no mr. morelli

aye

mr. morelli aye mr. mervan

aye

mr. mervan aye mr. newhouse mr. newhouse no miss perez

no

aye

miss perez aye miss pingree miss pingree aye mr. pokan

aye hi mr. pokan

aye

mr. pokan aye mr. quigley mr. quigley aye mr. russenthaler mr. russenthaler no mr. rogers

aye no

mr. rogers no mr. rutherford uh yes mr. rutherford no mr. shreve no mr. shreve no mr. simpson mr. simpson no mr. strong no no mr. strong no mrs. torres

aye

mrs. torres aye miss underwood

aye

miss underwood aye mr. valadao no mr. valadao no miss washington schultz miss washington schultz aye mrs. watson coleman mrs. watson coleman aye mr. womack

aye

no mr. womack no mr. zinke

mmm

no mister zinke no

are there other members wishing to vote or change their vote gentlelady from ohio

miss captor aye

gentlemen from texas

uh chairman solymand is voting

mister quayre aye

gentlemen from uh california

aye

mister harter aye

gentlemen from tennessee

no

mister fleishman no

gentlemen from arizona

no

mister syskemani no

are there other members wishing to vote or change their vote gentlemen from maryland

aye

mr. hoyer aye

general lady from texas

aye

miss eskebar aye

uh again there are others wishing to vote or change their vote seeing none the clerk will tally green on this vote the ayes are twenty seven the no's are thirty two the amendment is not adopted excuse me a gentleman from michigan mr. molinar has recognized the purpose of amendment

thank you mr. chairman i have an amendment at the desk and request unanimous consent to dispense with the reading

the reading of the amendment is dispensed with and the gentleman is recognized for

Mister Chairman, my amendment would fully fund exercise Northern Strike that is held at Camp Grayling in Northern Michigan. Northern Strike provides realistic and robust training, experiences for units and leaders to strengthen joint all-domain war-fighting capabilities. It is at the forefront of UAS and counter-UAS training that provides service members critical exposure to current real-world threats. Additionally, our partners and allies travel from around the world to participate. It was publicly reported that hundreds of troops from Taiwan were included in the specialized training last year. I greatly appreciate Chairman Calvert's and the subcommittee staff's work on this bill. It's a great bill that I will not hesitate to vote for today. Yet, there are all always difficult choices when crafting these bills and Northern Strike was a casualty this year. While I'm going to withdraw this amendment, I look forward to working with Chairman Calvert on securing this funding through the conference process. Thank you, Mister Chairman, and I yield back.

Thank you, gentlemen. The amendment is uh withdrawn, but the gentleman from California is recognized to address remarks.

Just wanted to let a gentleman know I'm looking forward to working with you as we move this process forward. I know it's an important training exercise and uh is supported by many members and uh will

continue to work with you on this program thank you yield back

thank you gentlemen the general lady from minnesota has also uh she's declined

ok

um there's no further debate the gentleman is recognized for one minute to close

well thank you mister chairman for your leadership and willingness to work together and i withdraw the amendment yield back

thank you general man a general lady from connecticut miss delores recognized for the purpose of an amendment

thank you mister chairman um I have an amendment at the desk and I ask the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Without objection, the reading of the amendment is dispensed with, and the gentlelady is recognized for remarks on her amendment.

Thank you. Um, my amendment would block a proposed regulation put out by the Office of Management and Budget that would overhaul how federal grants are dispersed across the government, including congressionally directed medical research programs. The change would require all federal grants to be approved by President Trump's political appointees. I repeat, all federal grants to be approved by President Trump's political appointees. It is just the latest attempt by OMB Director Russ Vot to exert unmitigated control over federal spending. The proposed rule is more than four hundred pages long. It is not written to be read, but buried in this obscure document is an extraordinary and unprecedented political power grab. The rule proposes to give President Trump's political appointees complete control over grant making. it no longer requires that peer review be binding, it allows active grants to be terminated any time for any reason. It severely limits foreign research partnerships. In practice, this gives political appointees a veto over any science that conflicts with the current administration's ideology. It in fact dismantles the post-World War Two system used for the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, NASA, and nearly every science agency. Um, under this rule, a political appointee can simply override the scientific community's judgment with no finding of cause. I find that pretty extraordinary, my colleagues. Um, the political allies, it's a veto over any science that conflicts, again, with the current administration's ideology. No longer will grants be dispersed in the manner Congress envisioned. No more will the recipient be evaluated on their merit or their qualifications or according to science. The test is a simple one. Are you conforming to the president's political ideology? Let us take the congressionally directed medical research program as an example, which is uh uh uh uh withi- within this uh bill. The programs support crucial, lifesaving breakthrough research into a wide array of afflictions. Duchenne muscular dystrophy, bone marrow failure, breast cancer, ovarian cancer, prostate cancer, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, traumatic brain industries, psychological health, uh, military burns, tick-borne diseases, spinal cord injuries, toxic exposure, the list goes on. But this rule under OMB puts the sustainability of this research at risk. CDMRP is a grant program. It awards funding to institutions to conduct research on behalf of the federal government. If the proposed rule were to take effect, political appointees in the Trump administration would make decisions on who received these awards, not based on any empirical or uh or evidentiary uh standard, not based on whether the recipient is well equipped to conduct the research, but on whether they are politically aligned with the current administration. This is an extraordinarily dangerous precedent that's being set. It reduces the likelihood that the research we fund will yield a breakthrough, and as awards granted according to politics and not merit, will undoubtedly yield research of a less quality. There is a recent article published in the New U- New England Journal of Medicine, and it notes the incredible harm this rule will inflict if it is allowed to take effect. I have I will be happy to provide and I will provide you with copies of what the New England Journal of Medicine has said here. Um they go on that given political appointees ultimate authority to determine determine federal grant funding as proposed by the OMB, would politicize and weaken biomedical research. And uh It's staggering um what the effect of this rule would do. The article says, and let me quote it, "A non-scientific process for determining what is scientifically sound has not worked in the past, it will not work now, it continues, and I quote, erratic funding would fundamentally undermine innovation and dramatically impair America's ability to address today's health challenges." This rule undermines our authority as a co-equal branch of government. Our prerogative is to provide funding that will support the American people, not just the people who are politically aligned with the president. It is a circumvention of our constitutional authority, It is a spoiled system applied to medical research. We will be worse off for it. I encourage my colleagues understand what's happening here, support this amendment, reassert our power of the purse, refute the administration's cynical attempt and the OMB's cynical attempt to exploit the power of his office for political gain. I yield back. I thank the chair for the time.

I I thank the General Lady for her amendment. Uh, the gentleman from California, Mister Kalva, is recognized to respond to the amendment.

Thank you, Chairman. Uh, thank you, General Lady, for her amendment. This amendment would block the Trump Administration's proposal to reform the framework for federal agencies' competitive grantmaking. The Administration's proposal seeks to strengthen oversight, increase transparency into federal grants. It seeks to ensure federal grants align with the agency priorities, and are in the best interest of the nation. So those reasons I oppose this amendment and I yield back the balance of my time.

And gentlemen and gentlelady from Minnesota is recognized to address the amendment.

Mister Chairman, I rise in strong support of this amendment.

Nice.

During last year doge cuts, the entire federal government, including financial assistance, was in chaos. My constituents didn't know what to do. If your offices were uh like mine, I suspect your casework also was a nightmare. OMB's proposed rule would codify that chaos by building politically charged uncertainty at the beginning, in the middle, and the end of every single grant process. This is not how the grant approval process is supposed to work. Our constituents, our states, our local governments, our counties, our cities, they deserve predictability. And Congress is charged by the Constitution with the power to ensure that once a law is enacted, it is carried out in a fair way. for the benefit of all our constituents of all americans and that includes the programs in this bill like lifesaving congressionally directed medical research programs that the chair just uh that the ranking member just spoke to these are research programs that depend upon science and politics has no place in them we cannot let only be needlessly political uh politicized research and many of our military service members and their families and lives depend on And on a side note, as a state that did not support President Trump in the last election, it's a state that stood up and resisted um the ice surge of four thousand people into uh Minnesota we've watched our grants be cut, we've watched the political actions take place, it has no business in doing that in those instances, but it certainly doesn't when it comes to medical research. With that I yield back and approve the adoption of this amendment.

Thank you, General Lee. General Leidy.

thank you mr. chairman i also rise in support of ranking member deloro's amendment which strikes down yet another authoritarian maneuver by the trump administration omb's proposed rule would bring unprecedented corruption and partisanship to our federal grant making process under the guise of increasing transparency It would allow political appointees near total control of how and where federal dollars are spent. I I it's incomprehensible to me how our colleagues on the other side of the aisle would want that. In place of a merit-based review process, it inserts President Trump's culture war crusaders directly into the system that funds critical scientific research, community development, disaster recovery, and countless other priorities. The rule gives the Trump administration blanche to deny funding based on vague and subjective ideas like anti-Americanism sounds McCarthy ask to me mister chairman the president has very different ideas of what is anti-American than me and my constituents ripping families apart without due process using taxpayer dollars to build a ballroom a ballroom or pave over the everglades those are anti-American The federal grant-making process is designed to be fair, rigorous, and free from political influence. It has given us cancer therapies, semiconductors, the internet, and the list goes on. When we insert political preferences into this process, we lose scientific objectivity. What is good for the American people and for our future is not always necessarily politically convenient for Republicans or Democrats, for that matter, or for President Trump. This rule, would allow President Trump to continue his scorched-earth revenge tour, yanking funding at any time from whoever has most recently offended him, with absolutely no accountability. Federal grant awardees need consistency, objectivity, and stability to carry out the public good and advanced projects that they've been chosen for, whether it's building housing, researching disease, or cleaning up our environment. The looming threat that Trump could pull their funding at any time would have a chilling effect on recipients. stunting innovative research and scientific advancement we all saw the chaos that unfolded when trump allowed doge to illegally freeze all federal grants this is pure insanity we can't let that nightmare be repeated there is too much on the line stop the madness collision course out of control roller coaster ride this president has taken us on we need to get off before it's too late. I urge my colleagues to vote yes on this amendment and I yield back.

Thank you, General Lady. The General Lady from Maine, Miss Pink, please recognize to address the amendment.

Thank you, Mister Chair. And uh thank you to uh Mister Loro for submitting this amendment and I speak in wholehearted support of it, and echo the remarks that my colleagues have already made. I mean this is so simple. Um, it just says that no funds can be implemented, can be used to implement the OMB's outrageous proposed rule to rewrite how we make grants and regulations related to this. With this rule, RASVO, the chief architect of project twenty twenty five and one of the most nefarious and destructive forces in this administration, would give veto power over every single federal grant to administration loyalists like himself. now let let's just be simple here federal grants you want to believe and you wanna be able to say to your constituents back at home that their tax dollars are invested in a process that is nonpartisan driven by the actual needs of people and communities there should be no ideological litmus test in any of these things these should be based on the very factors that the uh ranking member mentioned merit qualifications, science, things like peer review, that give us a sense that this was actually looked at by a group of peers who know that this is necessary research or that it's appropriate science. But this administration has been doing just the opposite. Haven't we lived through enough of this in the past two years? This administration, and we've seen it countless times, has blocked grants, rescinded grants, taken back the money, or blocked something because they just mentioned a few words, climate, race, gender. How many times have you had to intervene for institutions and organizations in your districts and try to call someone at the administration and say, why in the world are you taking back this perfectly innocent money that goes to a good purpose? Do you recall last year, I recall it very well, in April where it was revealed that there were a hundred and ten words at the USDA. And if your grant used any of those words, they could take the money back or stop your grants. Now it seems like those must have been, oh my gosh, what kind of words were they? Must have been big. But here's a few. Now I know you're not all farmers and you don't know all these things, but really, you couldn't use the word " tile drain". You couldn't say " safe drinking water" or " clean water". I mean, really? That could make your grant be rescinded? And that still goes on to this day. Uh, remember that video of the young punk kid who worked for Doge? And he said, yeah we just use some ai we look for those words and then we cancel your grant he didn't know a thing about the subject matter area he didn't know anything about what was going on remember doge do we wanna bring it back and that insanity i too come from a state where my governor got in a fight with the president at a governor's lunch last year she got in a tiff with the president over something he didn't like going on in the state of maine and she said i'll see you in court oh my god that unleashed a firestorm of cutting school lunch programs of cutting funding at the university for agricultural research projects they even interfered with our um social security administration on enrolling babies in social security saying people would have to bring the baby into the office that was rarely even person didn't always have someone there uh instead of just doing it in the normal process i mean it's outrageous what this administration could possibly do has done And this just goes against every kind of process in the administration that we know we can't trust to believe in science, we know we can't trust them to be balanced and fair, and we cannot let partisan hacks decide how the money is spent that we appropriate in this committee. It needs to be fair, and we cannot let this process go forward, and I think the only way to stop it, um, is to support this amendment and get it approved today. So I yield back and I thank my, um, colleague for this amendment.

I thank General Levy. Are there other members wishing to address the amendment? Seeing none, the General Levy is recognized for one minute to close.

OK. Um, I I thank my colleagues for speaking in support of the amendment. Um, I think we could all agree that federal funding should be awarded uh according to objective criteria and not political. Preference. When we're talking about applying a political filter to all of the federal grants, think about that. Grants is one word, but think about FEMA and disaster relief, where some political person, some person who doesn't know jack about your district or what happened and so forth, will say yea or nay. Transportation, the Safer Grants, the COPS Grants, my colleague from Maine talked about agricultural grants. rural grants in your community any grant that we deal with and we provide the funding in this committee for these efforts and they're gonna say that our judgment is flawed that we don't know what we are doing but some political lackey is gonna make that decision on behalf of your constituents and my constituents why in god's name would we turn it over to these to these folks it's not transparency it's not waste or fraud or abuse but i tell you when your grant gets challenged and you scream from the rooftops or you call the administration and you say you have to reverse it then you'll know what is being wrought here we should not be conditioning access to critical resources that support medical breakthroughs and that's the program we're talking about in this bill like i i have introduced I asked for funding for ovarian cancer. Others have asked for funding in this bill that they care about deeply, and I mentioned that, that they could just say no to it because they don't like the program. The award should be granted on merit, honest qualifications of the recipient, awarded to ensure the greatest likelihood of success. And we owe that to the American people. Read, I'm gonna get distributed the OMB and the politicization of science in the New England, of of medicine. My God, let's look at the trusted resources that we have over the years. I urge my colleagues support the amendment, oppose a dangerous precedent this administration is attempting to set. I thank the chair for the time and I yield back.

You're welcome. Uh, again, chair would just remind everyone, please, try to stay within the timeliness. The chair will continue to be generous with the clock. This is gonna be a long day. uh question is now on the amendment offered by the gentlelady from connecticut all those in favor say aye

aye aye

all those opposed say no

no no no

any of the chairs and no's have it

roll call

roll call has been requested sufficient support has been demonstrated carl will call the roll

mister adderhall

no

mister adderhall no mister aguilar

i

mister aguilar aye mister alford mister alford no mister amity mrs. bice mrs. bice no mr. bishop alright mr. bishop aye mr. calvert

no

mr. calvert no mr. carter

mr. carter

mr. carter mr. carter

yes

no

no

mr. carter no mr. case fine mr. case aye mr. siskamani mr. k mr. klein mr. klein no mr. cloud no no mr. cloud no mr. kleiburn alright mr. kleiburn aye mr. kleid mister clyde no mister cole

no

mister cole no mister cuillard

aye

mister cuillard aye miss dean miss dean aye mister loro

aye

mister loro aye mister diaz-ballart

no

mister diaz-ballart no mister edwards

no

mister edwards no mister lz mister lz no miss eskebar

aye

miss eskebar aye mister espayat

no

mister fleischman

no

mister fleischman no miss frankel miss frankel aye mr. franklin

no

mr. franklin no mr. guest

no

mr. guest no mr. harder

aye

mr. harder aye dr. harris

no

dr. harris no mrs. hinson

ok oh missed oh

mr. hoyer

oh my god

mr. ivy

aye

mr. ivy aye mr. joyce

what

mr. joyce no miss captor

aye

miss captor aye mr. lolota mister lolota no miss lee miss letlow mister levin

aye

mister levin aye miss malloy miss malloy no miss mccollum miss mccollum

aye

miss mccollum aye miss ming miss ming aye mister molinar mister molinar no mister moore

no

mister moore no mister morelli

aye

mister morelli aye mister murvan

no

mister newhouse mister newhouse no miss perez

aye no aye

miss perez aye miss pingree miss pingree aye mister pokan

yes aye

mister pokan aye mister quigley

aye

mister quigley aye mister russenthaler

no

mister russenthaler no mister rogers

oh

mister rogers no mister rutherford mister rutherford no mister schrieff mister schrieff no mister simpson mr. simpson no mr. strong mr. strong no mrs. torres mrs. torres aye miss underwood mr. valadeo mr. valadeo no miss wasserman schultz miss wasserman schultz aye mrs. Watson- Coleman mrs. Watson-Coleman aye mr. womack mr. womack no mr. zinke mr. zinke no

are there any members wishing to vote or change their vote gentlemen from arizona

mister siskamani no

gentlemen from indiana

mr. geraint mr. geraint aye

i was gonna get to the gentlemen but thank you

oh i'm sorry

that's alright gentlemen from indiana

alright

are there others

mister mervan aye mister heuer aye

wishing to vote or change their vote seeing none the clerk will tally

that's why i came in sat down to see if they'd answer sat down

do you have any other things to do do you have any other questions

a gentleman's uh it's a gentleman from nevada recorded

i'm not a secret service

please record me as a dog

mister amity no

no mark amity amity yeah is this a is this a pass or a no

on this vote the ayes are twenty five the no's are thirty three the amendment is not adopted gentlelady from ohio miss captor is recognized for an amendment

thank you uh mr. chairman i ask to dispense with the reading of this very worthy amendment

thank you gentlelady without objection the reading of the amendment is dispensed with and the gentlelady is recognized for remarks on her bill or amendment

i rise today in support of my amendment with the support of my co-leads congressman mike quigley of illinois and congressman stenie hoyer of maryland Our amendment would appropriate four hundred million dollars to the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative. This will allow funds to be available until twenty, twenty nine. This program has long had significant bipartisan support, including from members of this committee, who have previously voted in support of it. It's unfortunate that this provision was not in the original bill. And I would like very much to see this amendment agreed to. But I recognize that the best way to ensure this program continues uh for is for necessary negotiations to occur in conference with our Senate counterparts. This is a massive bill of which this amendment is but a mere part. Um The Senate is likely to pass seven hundred and fifty million dollars for the Ukraine security assistance initiative. This House just passed the Ukraine Support Act And I'm heartened to see Congress is reassuring itself to fund strategic programs, such as this security initiative, that carry broad bipartisan support. I would encourage my colleagues to work in good faith with our Senate colleagues, to ensure this support continues as long as necessary. The flame of liberty is priceless and it flickers with our every move, and thus I offer my amendment as a model for how this can be done without new costs on the American taxpayer. Secondly, our colleagues in the House of Armed Services Committee have included in the defense authorization bill that the BBGX battleship program should not move forward until it is actually designed. I also thank the chair and ranking member of our subcommittee for voicing that sentiment during our Navy budget hearing. My amendment would retool some of the funds from that paused program. Supporting our Ukrainian allies isn't charity. It is a strategic and rational move to support American interests, essentially freedom's interests. When our soldiers were under attack by Iranian uh, murder drones in the Middle East with Russia helping in supplying Iran,

Right.

it was Ukraine that sent hundreds of experts to help intercept and defend our soldiers, our people. Ukraine again came to our aid. It is time for us again to come to Ukraine's aid and rightly stand on the side of liberty. This isn't really a very hard choice. I've been pleased to see positive steps from the administration in recent weeks, including agreement at the G-seven to accelerate the provision of air defenses to Ukraine and licensing production, of air defense and long-range strike capabilities to that country, and I would encourage this committee to support these efforts. We and our European allies are stronger with Ukraine than without it. The United States urgently needs to boost production of air defense, long-range strikes, and to work with Ukraine to learn from its path-breaking experience in unmanned systems. By extending and investing in the USIA and Ukraine's capability, we're investing in a powerful partner and future ally, as well as our own defense industry. And there's a reason that almost every member of this committee has voted in support of USAI in the past. I hope to see that support continue going forward. Thank you and I would yield back for the moment.

Thank you, gentlelady, the gentleman from California, Mister Calvert, is recognized.

Thank you, Chairman. Uh, thank you, General Lady, for her amendment. The amendment adds four hundred million dollars in funding for Ukraine. I've long supported and continue to support Ukraine's efforts to defend itself from Russian aggression. Our current approach is to maintain a high level of support using the assistance of our European allies and partners. The administration asked our allies and partners to step up, and they have in a big way, through the uh, Pearl Initiative, our preferences to stay on that path. uh with that uh i understand that you uh miss captor uh after your remarks you may uh offer to withdraw your amendment but uh i'll leave that up to you

i'll wait for people to speak

the thank you mister chairman we do have two people that wish to speak

but

ok

certainly

what

prior to my withdrawing the amendment

so then

more than that

thank thanks shirley

more than that

uh general lady from minnesota mr. columns recognized to address the amendment

more than that well i'm more than that

mister chair i rise in strong support of this amendment on june eleventh the war between russia and ukraine reached one thousand five hundred and sixty nine days which means it's gone on longer than world war one this war has also gone on longer than our own involvement in world war two as we fought alongside many allies ukraine still fights this war alone but ukraine continues to surprise russia with its innovative and inexpensive inexpensive drone attacks in the last few weeks ukraine has been able to successfully attacked both saint petersburg and moscow hitting critical oil and infrastructure targets targets has seemed unreachable in the past russia has taken over one million casualties during this war think about it it's simply astounding no major power has had that number of casualties since world war two the loss of life is tremendous and it's sad the ukrainians have had success however in defending their homeland their democracy because they have continued to provide we have continued to provide material and intelligent support to them we must continue our support to ukraine we need to continue to provide assurances to our european allies that we do stand with them since the start of the war i have continued to speak with our allies in europe our allies in the baltics are seriously uh concerned very seriously concerned about how russia drone incursions over their territory. They fear that if Putin wins in Ukraine, they are next in line for an invasion from Russia. That cannot happen, because if that does happen, Article five of the NATO charter will be triggered. And what does that mean? It means a war between Russia and NATO NATO. That includes us. This is something we must avoid at all costs. Ukrainian defense contract group, a gathering of countries to support Ukraine, met just last week to continue to express their support for Ukraine. The Secretary of Defense did not attend the meeting with the other European allies and ministers. Instead, the Under-Secretary for Policy listened on the phone. That's how much weight the administration has given to this important meeting. Congress has continued to provide funding for Ukraine assistance in every appropriation spill since twenty fifteen. And we shouldn't stop now. We need to publicly show our support for Ukraine and show this administration that Congress has a voice and a vote in this issue too. I support the amendment and I ask you all to do the same.

Thank you, Betty.

Back to General Lady, General Lady from Connecticut, Mister Loris, recognized to address the amendment.

I think there are, I think, other Other um Um, I'll wait.

OK.

Okay, again I know we have Mister Hoyer and we have uh mister quigley

ok uh

and and

mr. poy did you want to address the

yes

gentleman uh from illinois mr. quigley is recognized to address the amendment

thank you

thank you mr. chairman uh i think it's important as i support this amendment to recognize the the difference between the ukrainian army in twenty fourteen and twenty twenty two and twenty fourteen when uh the russians invaded uh crimea the ukrainian army wasn't close what it what it was in twenty twenty two and that is in large part because of the ukraine security assistant initiative uh the funding the training uh made that army extraordinary and it gave them the opportunity to defend themselves but by excluding funding for ukraine here we are signaling to putin and the world that america's commitment to defending democracy is somehow negotiable That is not strength, that is failure. This investment of three hundred million not only bolsters our own defenses, it also protects democracy in Eastern Europe, which is again in our direct interest. We have seen firsthand the results of failure to act. We had, we should have taken the annexation of Crimea more seriously, taken Russia's actions as a grave warning, and invested more in Ukraine's defenses then. We must learn from these mistakes. and if we are to succeed in the future. General Milley, the former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said himself that failing to aid Ukraine could result in a dramatic increase in a budget defense budget on our own. Ukraine has been battling one of the world's largest armies for over three years. Time is running out. USAI program helps fund critical capabilities, including air defense, artillery, long-range fires, armored vehicles maintenance and sustainment needs and other prior requirements. More importantly, it is an authority that allows the US to procure capabilities from US industries or partners. It is funding for Ukraine to purchase weapons and equipment directly from US manufacturers, but simply is an investment in our own defense capabilities and a return to our own economy. Funding this program enables the US to address the most pressing immediate needs and the longer term capability needs of ukraine a lack of funding would severely undermine ukraine's security and our own national security it would serve as a negative signal to ukraine to allies and partners to russia and other aggressors around the world we would effectively demonstrate to authoritarian leaders that the us will allow them to act with impunity this cannot be the case as us has for the better part of a century we will continue to stand up to tyrants and defend freedom. i've been to ukraine five times since this conflict started sometimes with many of you we're left to wonder and i know there are those amongst both sides that want to strongly defend ukraine but this is the embodiment of the reagan doctrine that we will defend our allies against at the time soviet aggression at all cost when i see the votes on the full floor when it comes to supplementals and other support measures at the most it was about half of your caucus that supported those measures again we're talking about the reagan doctrine something so fundamental not just to ourselves but our democracy and our allies a reminder is fdr said in his last inaugural we have learned that what happens over there affects us over here and he quoted emerson when he said to have a friend you need to be one just ask yourself today let's put down a list of the united states friends who are they who trust us now who has faith that we will be there when we are needed reciprocal matters as well and today would be an important part of that element. Thank you and I yield back.

Thank you gentlemen, gentlemen from New York, Mister Morelli is recognized to address the amendment.

Uh thanks so much Mister Chairman, I uh rise in support of the amendment as well. Ukraine is at a turning point in its war against Russia. For more than four years the Ukrainian people have fought with extraordinary in defending their country and their democracy. Now is not the time away, time for us to walk away. And zeroing out the Ukraine security assistance initiative sends the wrong message, at the wrong time. Russia remains one of the most significant threats to our national security and to the security of our NATO allies. And Vladimir Putin has made it clear that his ambitions extend well beyond Ukraine. If Russia succeeds because we lose our resolve, It could embolden further aggression against nations along NATO's eastern flank, including the Baltic States. And the cost of this assistance is indeed small compared to the consequences. Ukraine is doing the fighting. Our funding through USAI helps them defend their country and helps prevent a wider conflict that would carry far greater costs for our allies, for our security, for the world. I think often about, uh, meeting with members of Rachman Kardon back home in Rochester. For years these people have organized fundraisers, collected supplies, assembled medical kits for people that they will never meet. They understand that this war is not an abstraction. They see the human consequences of this war every day. This committee should stand with them. We should continue providing Ukraine the tools it needs to defend itself and preserve the freedom that we all cherish. I urge my colleagues to support this amendment. Thank the uh gentlelady for offering it, and I yield back my time.

Thank you, gentlemen. The gentlelady from Washington, Miss Perez, is recognized for remarks on the amendment.

Thank you, Mister Chair.

I rise in strong support of this amendment, and I thank my colleague, Miss Captor, for offering it. Russia continues to ruthlessly attack Ukrainian civilians and destroy Ukrainian infrastructure. It is in our national interest to support our ally Ukraine in their long work of preserving democracy, and working towards a durable peace. And we must ensure Ukraine is in the best possible position to continue this vital work. The Ukraine security assistance initiative is a prudent investment in Ukraine's security and our own national security through strengthening our domestic manufacturing supply chains. The the this long-term success of Ukraine's pursuit of democracy is a righteous fight. What we do is in our own this is this is in our national interest, yes we talk about values but we also need to talk about the nuts and bolts of our national interest and it lies in ensuring not that we're just talking about values but that we have the domestic supply chains we have the machinists we have the equipment we have the supply chains to preserve our values it is in the muscle of of how we stand behind our values and it reflects our values as well um this is one of the best investments we could make. And again, it is our national interest to ensure that Ukraine has the resources to first defend their homeland and then rebuild their country for long-term peace. For these reasons, I strongly support the amendment and urge its adoption.

Channel eighty from Pennsylvania. Miss Deens, recognize to address the amendment.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I rise in strong support of Congresswoman Capter's amendment. And I really honor and admire your extraordinary support, so many of our colleagues here's extraordinary, undying support for Ukraine. Uh, where this pin it was given to be my from my, uh, Ukrainian-American coalition back home. Suburban Philadelphia has tremendous numbers of terrific Ukrainian-American constituents, uh, with a such a love of country, love of democracy, and a wish for justice and peace, uh, that they are inspiring. So, Thank you, Congresswoman Kaptur, for standing on Ukraine's side, uh, and with this amendment. I also associate myself with the remarks of, uh, uh, Mr., uh, Ms. Kaptur, uh, Mr. Hoyer, I'm sure, Mr. Quigley, Ms. DeLauro, and others, who have been such stalwart voices for Ukraine in its existential struggle to defend itself from Russian aggression. I'm so lucky to have had the opportunity to visit Ukraine. I'm a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee and four of us, two Republicans, two uh, took the long train ride in from Poland, the ten hour train ride in, right after we passed the supplemental funding a couple of years ago. I cannot tell you uh, the admiration, uh, the appreciation, the thanks that we got both on the American side with the supply logistics, but also of course on the Ukrainian side and directly from, uh, uh, President Volodymyr Zelensky. If we We know that supporting Ukraine is one of the most important and effective investments we can make in global stability. If we allow Russian aggression to continue unchecked, if we allow Russia to win, God forbid, who knows what they or other like-minded nations might attempt next? Ukrainians are paying an enormous price to defend their democracy, to defend their neighboring country's democracy. Frankly, it is a global fight. If this war is allowed to continue and expand, just imagine the cost to our allies, the cost to us. Here in the United States, God forbid, the conflict expands to the point where we are compelled to put troops on the ground. We should be so grateful to the people of Ukraine in doing everything in our power to ensure they are successful in defending their sovereignty. And of course, we must do everything in our power to hold Russia accountable for their crimes. In particular, we must hold Russia accountable, the world must hold Russia accountable for their unlawful abduction of tens of thousands of Ukrainian children. We know this is nothing short of a crime against humanity, and we must do everything to support their somehow safe return. I was heartened by the House passing the Ukraine Support Act with bipartisan support earlier this month sending a strong signal of Congress's continued support. But there's more we can do right here in this bill, in appropriations. We should do it. We should not rest until we do. I hope this committee will show similar support. Think about it, I'll end with this. It's four years and four months since Russia's, uh, illegal, uh, in- invasion and oppression, attempted oppression and, uh, and murder in Ukraine. And I s- think that we see in Ukraine a young democracy, something we search for in ourselves, the world's oldest democracy, a belief in democracy, a belief in freedom and liberty, and the ability, uh, to chart one's own destiny, fear, without fear of oppression and murder. We must do everything in our power to support Ukraine and to bring peace in that region of the world. I go back.

Thank you, General Leidy. The gentleman from Georgia, Mister Bishop, is recognizing good evening

chairman i rise in strong support of the gentlelady's amendment to provide additional funding for the ukraine security assistance initiative at a time when ukraine continues to resist russian aggression united states must remain clear ahead about what's at stake it's not only about ukraine's sovereignty it's also about the credibility of american leadership the strength of our alliances and the message we send to our adversaries who are watching whether the united states will stand with democratic partners under attack this amendment takes a responsible approach provides targeted funding through the defense security cooperation agency to support ukraine's military and national security forces including training equipment logistic support sustainment intelligence support and replacement of united states stocks just as importantly it includes congressional notification and quarterly reporting requirements so the congress can maintain oversight over how these funds are being used that is the right balance we can support ukraine while also insisting on transparency accountability and careful stewardship of taxpayer dollars The underlying bill makes major investments in deterrence, readiness, and the defense industrial base. But deterrence is not only measured by what we buy for ourselves, it's also measured by whether we help our partners resist aggression before it spreads and becomes more costly for the United States and our service members. This amendment, the gentlelady's amendment, strengthens this bill It supports our allies, it reinforces America's commitment to standing against Russian aggression. And so I urge my colleagues to support the amendment. It will enhance and strengthen this bill. With that, I yield back.

Thank the gentlemen, the uh gentleman from Maryland, Mister Hoyer is recognized for remarks on the amendment.

Thank you very much, Mister Chairman. I wanna thank the gentlelady from Ohio both for offering this amendment and for her extraordinary leadership. and faithfulness in this cause helping the people of ukraine defend their nation against putin's tyranny is a central battle in a global fight between democracy and despotism that's the issue here it is not simply four hundred million dollars it is whether or not america is gonna continue to stay strong in the fight against despotism America has a critical role to play in that fight. And this is something the House recognized recently on a bipartisan basis with passage of the Ukraine Support Act. This amendment does not add any funding to this bill. It simply carves out four hundred million from funds already appropriated herein and sets it aside specifically for Ukraine's security assistant initiative. This is money well spent. This is money that will send a message. This is a money that will, this is money that will reaffirm America's continuing willingness to defend democracy. Ukrainian military is making steady progress because of its growing technological edge, particularly in drone warfare. You all read about that. Our military is watching and learning so we can adopt those new technologies and tactics

Mm.

to strengthen our own capabilities. Spending four hundred million to help Ukraine defeat Russia's invasion is a much better bargain than spending eighty billion dollars on a war in Iran. I hope the Senate will move swiftly on the Ukraine Support Act, and that we can come together to send the President's legislation that includes funding for this program as well. Ladies and gentlemen, two thirds of this committee has voted twelve times to support Ukrainian funding. Sixteen of the the majority members have supported it one hundred percent of the time. On those twelve votes, we only had one time when the majority of Republicans did not vote to support Ukraine. and that was three votes change on the republican side it would have been a majority of the republicans it was an extraordinary bipartisan statement we were unanimous on our side extraordinary statement of support for democracy for freedom against the breaking of international law and because we are an exceptional nation we are the symbolic nation we are the nation who says if we support you you're going to do well and that is why our silence essentially for the last twenty four months actually april of uh twenty four uh is so deafening and so demoralizing for our ukrainian friends and sends such a bad message to putin of inaction four hundred million dollars in a one trillion dollar seventy two billion dollar bill but it will make a difference psychologically as well as militarily because that four hundred million dollars will provide weapons that the ukrainians badly need to meet the russian threats of their bombing of kiev on a regular basis one hundred percent of the time sixteen of you have voted for ukraine i hope you do so one more time because as a gentleman of texas said uh what america says matters what america votes for matters what this house does matters as a result i would hope that we could get a bipartisan vote on this piece of legislation four hundred million dollars during the course i have twenty three seconds during the course of the amendment that we had on the floor the uh ukraine support act member after member rose and said you only have three hundred million we authorize four hundred million you're cutting it a hundred million how ironic it would be for that debate to be that we cut a hundred million when we can't add the four hundred million which your side spoke about as us cutting and therefore a reason not to support the use of crane support act this four hundred million is exactly what has been authorized by the defense committee defense authorization committee um we should take their advice move on this send a message that america continues to be the defender of freedom and the opponent of despotism

point out right that's all gone too fast

thank you gentlemen the gentlelady from connecticut is recognized for remarks on

Thank you, Jenny. I rise in support of this amendment, uh, which provides Ukraine with the funding they need to continue defending their freedom. This funding has been part of this bill for nearly ten years,

Hmm.

included in the twenty twenty five continuing resolution. These funds are used to build Ukraine's capacity to defend itself from Russia. and has been central to supporting Ukraine in its fight against the Russian invasion. And it has been extremely effective. Let us not forget that many people, including Putin himself, and we all went to briefings at the outset of this war, and the the the view was that Russian forces would march straight to Kiev and overwhelm the country in a matter of days. Days. It has now been over four years and russia still has not been able to achieve its initial goals we continue to see how just how effectively ukraine's military and security service uh uh uh can use the resources that it has over the past few weeks ukraine has carried out multiple strikes against russian oil refineries munitions factories and other infrastructure critical to the russian war effort within russian territory and in some cases using domestically produced long-range missiles. These attacks represent Ukraine's capability, not just to hold the front lines, but to make the war effort increasingly costly for Russia to maintain. Ukraine's innovation, their daring, their determination is degrading Russia's war capabilities, changing the shape of warfare in real time. And Through this all we have seen the courage, the courage of the Ukrainian people every day. We have seen Russia kidnap their children. And yet they continue on fighting because they're fighting for their freedom. And they're fighting for democracy. And yes, they're fighting because they want to tilt to the Western world. They don't want to be under the thumb of Russia. They have proven over and over and over again that the Ukrainians deserve our support. You know the Trump administration talks about peace through strength? The Ukrainian people have proven their strength. We should be supporting the strength of Ukraine's soldiers and citizens so that they can stand up to authoritarian aggressors like Russia, who seek to undermine peace, security, democracy and freedom that serves US interests. That is what this amendment is all about. Ukraine needs continued security assistance funding for critical capabilities, air defense, artillery, long-range fires, armored vehicles, maintenance, sustainment needs, and more. Our national security requires this investment. So does Ukraine. And keep in mind, we we replenish our own stocks with what happens here. So it pays for our military might and our military strength. So far our investments have significantly degraded the capabilities of Russia, a major peer adversary. You know, the Ukrainian people are fighting for their lives. They're fighting for their identity. And they're fighting for their freedom every day. What is it about that that we don't understand? it would send a terrible message to the Ukrainian people to our allies around the world and to support as a democracy around the world if this amendment would fail if Russia's invasion is truly such a threat to democracy around the world and we believe that it is that threat and this administration claims to defend Western values then why why are we not providing Ukraine with what it needs to succeed. Are we still failing to meet the moment, as Neville Chamberlain did when he thought he could appease a dictator in nineteen thirty eight? If we fail to fund Ukraine, if we pull our troops from Europe, if we abandon our allies in NATO, Vladimir Putin will run rampant through Ukraine and the Balkans will be next. He will not stop. We cannot capitulate to Russia's aggression or we will be condemned by history as Neville Chamberlain was. In the face of our providing, most recently, and allowing Iran to have ballistic missiles, to threaten, we say yes. We're gonna give them some nuclear capability. We're gonna provide them with three hundred billion dollars. to repair their country's reparations. We're gonna unfreeze a hundred billion dollars in assets for Iran. When the hell has Iran been our ally? When, my friends? Ukraine is our ally. We need to stand with Ukraine. We have a moment to do that. This committee can make a difference in that. Please, please. on behalf of who we are as Americans on behalf of our allies and on behalf of the Ukrainian people who fight every single day for their hope their freedom and how do we turn our back I yield back my thank

Thank you gentlelady are there others wishing to address the amendment? Seeing none the gentlelady from Ohio is recognized for one minute to close.

Thank you, uh, Mister Chairman, and let me just say a deep, uh, thank you of appreciation to our colleagues for their serious attention, uh, to this consequential amendment. Ukraine is the scrimmage line for liberty on the continent of Europe today. With our closest time-tested allies in NATO, adjoining countries like Poland, Hungary, Moldova, listen to the list, Serbia, Romania, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Finland, Sweden, all these hang in the balance, they are small countries, Russia is so large, eleven time zones, a full military. Russia has stolen over twenty thousand Ukrainian children and hidden them inside Russia to reprogram these youngsters with brainwashing. These are war crimes. Historically, no place on Earth has borne more cold-blooded murder. by Russian dictators and innocent people, fourteen million or more starved to death in the last century, forced famine as a form of warfare on civilians, annihilating them in forests, drowning them in rivers, bullets to the back of the head, no trial, no justice, wiping out of religious believers until today, throwing them in the Dnieper River. assassinating people by the thousands in forests, in church basements, smothered and left to die. Russia's tyranny is infamous for annihilation. What we are doing here by supporting this amendment is drawing a line for justice in a very important location on this globe. I withdraw my amendment knowing that we will work forward in working with the Senate to do something that is worthy of our time and generation. I thank my colleagues for their support and attention, and I yield back.

Thank you, gentlelady, and the amendment is withdrawn. We will next move the gentleman from Illinois, Mister Quigley, is recognized for the purpose of an amendment.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a men at the desk. I ask the reading be dispensed with.

Without objection, the reading of the amendment is dispensed with, and the gentleman is recognized for remarks on his amendment.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm offering an amendment to preserve the US military presence in Europe and reaffirm our commitment to our NATO alliance. My amendment would ban funds from being used to significantly reduce US forces stationed in Europe, close or return key military facilities, withdraw major military equipment from the European theater, or separate the position of commanders of United States European command from the position of supreme allied commander Europe. The NATO alliance has kept Americans and the rest of the world safe since the second world war. Congress enacted this exact provision in last year's bipartisan National Defense Authorization Act. And we did so because we all agree that a strong US presence in Europe is strategically important to Americans at home. Without NATO, we are alone. we do not have a guarantee that our allies will help us when we need it. Those concerns have not gone away. In fact, they have become even greater as Secretary Hexer has curbed troop deployments in Europe. For seventy-five years, NATO has been the most successful military alliance in human history. It has prevented wars, strengthened American security, increased prosperity, and ensured that no hostile power could dominate the European continent. NATO helps the US project strength alongside dozens of capable allies and partners rather than confronting global threats alone. I agree that our allies should continue increasing their defense spending, many of them have already done so, and we should continue encouraging every NATO member to meet its commitments. But burden sharing and American leadership are not mutually exclusive. A stronger Europe complements American leadership, it does not replace it. secretary haxha haxa has suggested the us should further reduce its military presence because our allies are spending more on their own defense this is simply illogical giving a growing russian threat our military presence in europe is not a favor we provide to our allies it's an investment in our own security it is a guarantee for mutual safety our forces stationed in europe deter russian aggression They provide forward positioning for crises in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and they ensure that the US can respond rapidly to emerging threats without having to surge forces from across the Atlantic after a crisis has already begun. Hegseth has recently dismissed NATO as " small flags on fancy tables".

Yeah.

Well, those flags represent allies who came to our defense after the September eleventh attacks. They invoked Article five for the first and only time in history, and our allies answered the call. Thousands served alongside American troops in Afghanistan. Many never came home. Those flags represent real soldiers, real sacrifice, and real commitments. This is the foundation of the strongest military alliance in the world. It provides military bases, intel, logical s- logistical support, military capabilities, and diplomatic partnerships that multiply American power across the globe. At a time when we face challenges not only from Russia but also China, Iran, and other authoritarian actors, waking our alliances would make America less secure, not more. This amendment simply preserves the forces that Congress deemed essential enough to protect in last year's NDAA. The insurance that major changes to our military presence in Europe cannot occur without congressional approval and careful consideration of its consequences. Mister Chairman, NATO remains indispensable to American security. Our presence remains indispensable to NATO's credibility, and maintaining both is firmly in the national security interest of us of our the United States. Our ally's security is ours. I hope this commitment will continue to see that. Thank you, Mister Chairman, and I yield back.

Thank the gentleman for his amendment. Gentleman from California, Mister Kalvich, recognized to address the amendment.

Thank you, Chairman. I appreciate the Gentleman's amendment, this amendment restricts the department's ability to make forced posture changes in Europe. I'd like to highlight that uh my bill continues to support our forced posture in Europe, fully funds the US portion of the common funding requirement for the NATO International Military Headquarters as requested by the administration. Recent events have shown how important it is that the department remain flexible where it can quickly address requirements that emerge in any area of the world and for those reasons I oppose this amendment and yield back to the gentleman.

Thank you gentlemen, the gentlelady from Minnesota, Mr. Collins, recognized to address the amendment.

Thank you, and Mister Chair, I rise in support of this amendment, last week at the at the twenty twenty six NATO defense ministerial uh Secretary Hegseth announced that the Department of Defense would be conducting a six month review of US force posture and basing in Europe and I want to acknowledge what the chair said that he has in this bill for for europe and for nato but given the administration's recent actions i'm very concerned that this uh that the decisions that are being made by the department of defense may further damage our relationship with our nato allies putin must be thrilled at what he is seeing putin's greatest desire is for the united states to abandon europe slowly this year the administration has been giving him what he wishes for In May, the administration announced that we that we would withdraw five thousand troops from Germany and the Pentagon then canceled the rotation of US soldiers to Poland. Oh, wow. Now, the president later reversed that decision on social media, but this created tremendous amount of confusion in Europe and here in Congress too. President Trump then made a decision to take us to war in Iran. When that turned into a complete debacle, the president responded by blaming our European allies for not supporting his disastrous war and demanded that they use their naval forces to open up the straits of Hormuz. Can't make this stuff up. And that's why I believe Congress, even though there's language in this bill needs to do more, to be a steady voice to our allies,

For sure.

as we provide funds for Ukraine and the Baltics and encourage exercises with our NATO's allies, we are the consistent partner. we have to be the consistent partner. No longer do we. And that leaves it up to us to do what we can here in this committee.

Yeah.

So, if we're gonna defend democracy here at home, we also need to defend it around the world. I support the amendment and I ask you to do the same. Free good stuff.

Thank you, General Leidy. Are there others wishing to address the amendment?

Good block, sir.

Seeing none, the gentle gentleman is recognized uh for one minute to close.

I ask for your support.

thank you gentlemen uh the question is now on the amendment offered by the gentleman from illinois all those in favor say aye

aye

all opposed say no

no

opinion

no

opinion of the chair the no's have it roll call has been requested

oh after a few minutes

have a few more hands please if you're gonna support sufficient support has been demonstrated

oh

carly will call the roll

mister adderall mister aguilar mister aguilar aye mister alford

no

mister alford no mister amity mrs. bice

yeah

mrs. bice no mister bishop mister calvert mister calvert no mister carter

no no

mister carter no mister case

aye

mister case aye mister siskamani

no

mister siskamani no mister klein mister cloud mister cloud no mister cliburn

alright

mister cliburn aye mister clyde

negative

mister clyde no mister kohl

no

mister kohl no mister quayar miss dean

aye

miss dean aye mister laroe mister diaz-belart

no

mister diaz-belart no mister edwards

no

mister edwards no mister lz mister lz no miss escobar

aye

miss eskabar aye mr. espayat mister fleishman

no

mister fleishman no miss frankel miss frankel aye mister franklin mister franklin no mister guest mister guest no mister harter

aye

mister harter aye doctor harris mrs. hinson mister heuer mister ivy

aye

mister ivy aye mister joyce mister joyce no miss captor miss captor aye mister lolota

no

mister lolota no miss lee

aye

miss lee aye miss letlow

aye

mister levin

aye

mister levin aye miss molloi miss molloi no miss mccullum

aye

miss mccullum aye miss ming miss ming aye mister molinar

no

mister molinar no mister moore mister moore no mister morelli

aye

mister morelli aye mister mervain

aye

mister mervain aye mister newhouse

no no

mister newhouse no miss perez

aye aye

miss perez aye miss pingree

aye

miss pingree aye mister pokan

aye

mister pokan aye mister quigley mister quigley aye mister russenthaler

oh yeah

mister rogers

no

mister rogers no mister rutherford

no

mister rutherford no mr. shreve no mr. shreve no mr. simpson no mr. simpson no mr. strong no mr. strong no mrs. torres

aye

mrs. torres aye miss underwood

aye

miss underwood aye mr. valadao no mr. valadao no miss washington schultz aye miss washington schultz aye mrs. watson coleman no mr. womack no

no

mr. womack no mr. zinke no no mister zinke no

are members wishing to vote or change their vote gentlemen from maryland

no

doctor harris no

gentlemen from virginia

no

mister klein no

gentlemen from texas

german yes

mister quayier aye

a gentleman from georgia

aye

mister bishop aye

gentleman from maryland

aye

mister quayier aye

we're having a good time

gentleman from pennsylvania

no

mister russian thaler no

gentlelady from connecticut

mr. laro aye

are there others wishing to vote or change their votes seeing none the clerk will tally

hmm

this votes the ayes are twenty six the no's are thirty one the amendment is not adopted

mmm yes

Uh, the gentleman from North Carolina, Mister Edwards, is recognized for the purpose of an amendment.

Thank you, Mister Chair. I have an amendment at the desk and I ask that the reading be dispensed off.

Without objection, the reading for the amendment is dispensed with, and the gentleman is recognized for remarks on his amendment.

Thank you, uh, Chairman Calvert, and thank you to the members of the defense subcommittee for your leadership and the tremendous work that went into producing. Your commitment to strengthening our national defense and supporting the warfighter is quite evident throughout this bill, and I'm grateful for all of your thoughtful, disciplined approach. Mister Chairman, I rise to offer my amendment providing additional funding for lightweight strike munitions mobile live fire targeting systems, the joint biological detection system, hypersonic composite materials, and biomarker-based human performance optimization for special operations forces. Our war fighters are confronting threats that evolve faster than our acquisition cycles. These investments, developed and manufactured in North Carolina, directly strengthen our national defense and preserve the industrial base that we rely on in times of crisis. First, the amendment provides eighteen million dollars for lightweight, strike munitions capable of operating in GPS denied environments. Our adversaries already have similar technology, and failing to invest now risks seating an asymmetric advantage on the battlefield. Second, it includes six million dollars for a mobile live fire targeting system. Today, more than ninety percent of Air Force pilots enter combat. having never engaged a moving ground target with live munitions. That is unacceptable readiness. This investment gives aviators realistic maneuvering threats that reflect the fight that they will face. Third, the amendment urges inclusion of a fifty-four million dollars to accelerate building of joint biological detection systems. Biological threats are advancing rapidly. We've seen evidence and early detection is the difference between a contained incident and a crisis. Fourth, it provides eight million dollars to expand production of hypersonic composite materials that are essential to missile and rocket systems. These materials allow hypersonic weapons and advanced missiles to survive extreme thermal and mechanical loads. Finally, The amendment includes six point two million dollars to advance biomarker-based supplementation, supporting human performance research at Fort Bragg, aligning with the Pentagon's holistic health and fitness framework. One North Carolina manufacturing supporting these capabilities is currently gapped for fiscal year twenty twenty-seven, operating without the sustained environment needed to scale production. and to meet emerging demands. Without support, we risk losing a uniquely capable supplier at a very critical moment.

Probably does.

These are not abstract technologies.

I'm sure.

They're jobs in advanced manufacturing and capacities in North Carolina.

Right.

When requests like these are not included, we weaken both our defense posture and the workers who form the backbone of our national security enterprise. I understand that not everyone's request could be included, but I am hopeful that we can work with a committee on these requests during the conference process. And for that reason, and because the only way I could get an offset would be to suggest that we take somebody else's priorities, I withdraw this amendment. Thank you, and I yield back.

I thank the gentleman.

We'll do that.

uh

well i just wanna

gentleman of california is recognized to address the amendment

certainly i and i'm looking forward to working with the gentlemen as we move this process forward i know these are important programs and uh uh look forward to trying to work this all out thank you thank you for removing the amendment

thank you gentlemen uh gentlelady from florida miss frankl is recognized for the purpose of an amendment

thank you mister chair i have an amendment at the desk i ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be discussed

without objection the reading of the amendment is dispensed with and the gentlelady is recognized for her marks on her amendment

well i know you all be pleased to know that today marks the commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of women entering the united states service academies uh gerald gerald ford signed a law opening the academy's women in nineteen seventy five uh the first co-educational classes graduated in nineteen eighty fifty years ago american made a promise that talent matters that courage matters that service matters that every qualified american willing to wear the uniform deserves the opportunity to rise and my amendment is about protecting this promise first some recent history this is really shocking I know Mark is listening, if no one else. Cuz this is shocking. Secretary Hefstaff left Fox News and came into office declaring war on what he calls "wokeness". He attacked DEI, diversity, equity and inclusion, and questioned whether women should serve in combat. And then what happened? And listen to this. General Charles Q. Brown, Junior, Decorated Fighter Pilot, second Black Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staffs, removed. Admiral Lisa Franchetti, first woman to lead the United States Navy and the first woman on the Joint Chiefs of Staffs, removed. Admiral Lyndrell Fagan, first woman to lead a branch of America's armed forces as the Coast Court's highest ranking office, removed. Vice Admiral Shoshana Chatfield, Senior Navy Officer, America's Representative to NATO, removed. Vice Admiral Nancy LeCour, Three-star Admiral, Thirty-five year Veteran, Chief of the Navy Reserve, removed. Vice Admiral Yvette Davids, first woman selected to lead the United States Naval Academy, pushed aside. These are patriots, wearing the uniform, answering the call, defending our flag, earning their, all removed or pushed aside and no explanation and let's be clear women and service members of color have already answered with with the call with their actions they've served they've sacrificed they've led and their service has strengthened america and the fact is folks america's military america's military is strongest when we draw from the full strength of america itself the best minds the best leaders, the best talent from every community in every corner of this country, because diversity is a force multiplier. Which brings me to the subject to hand of this amendment, the recent promotion lists of the army and the navy. Now first I'll talk about the army. The army's promotion selection board reviewed records, they reviewed service,

Right.

they reviewed leadership. About three dozen offices selected for motion from uh colonel to one star general and then secretary hexes he stepped in and even though army leaders supported their promotions hexes removed only four officers guess who two black men and two women no explanation and then came the navy another promotion board another review Another group of qualified leaders. Thirty-one officers selected for promotion to admiral. The navy looked at their records and said, they earned it. But once again, Hicks just stepped in and he removed nine. He removed nine. Every woman on the list, removed. Two black officers, removed. Not one woman remained. And just like in the army list, no finding of misconduct no finding of failure no finding that they could not lead just removed no answers no explanation no accountability and that should trouble everyone of us because in the united states military uh the star should be earned through service not through assorted ideological politics so i ask Were the women and the men of color removed from promotion lists by Hexus, despite recommendations of those in command who knew them best, because they could not lead? Were they removed because they lacked courage? Were they removed because they lacked competence? Were they removed because they failed the standards of the United States military? Or were qualified leaders, women and people of color who have already earned their place, denied the opportunity to rise because of a narrow political agenda rooted in discrimination. So I end where I begin. Why would qualified American patriots remove from promotion list after they earned their place and until, until Secretary Hexness answers, Congress must demand accountability and we must hold back some of his travel money. Boy, we should do more than that. I'm being gentle and kind today. uh please everybody join me in passing this amendment

Thank the gentlelady for a minute or amendment. The uh gentleman from California is recognized to respond to the amendment.

Uh thank you chairman, thank you general lady for her amendment, this amendment unnecessarily limits the secretary of defense's ability to travel uh until he provides information on general officer promotion boards. It's well within the jurisdiction of the secretary of defense to review promotions. We want to have a secretary to be able to understand, address, and properly advise the president on all matters relating to national security. Travel is vital to that. For those reasons, I oppose this amendment and yield back my time.

Thank you, gentlemen. General Ladey from Minnesota. Mr. Collins, recognized to address the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in the strongest support possible from this podium to support the Frankel amendment. secretary haggis haggis says direct interference in military promotion boards should be a concern for each and every one of us this is unprecedented folks this is not normal this is not normal behavior at all this year alone secretary haggis had to block promotions for at least forty senior officers as frankel mentioned a a few but forty these officers who have received initial approval from their peers for promotion to general officers They have yet yet they have been struck off a by a list by Secretary Haegsteth with no explanation given. And I've I've seen them in committee when he's been asked, no explanation given. Approximately half of these officers were women or minorities. And this gives an alarming impression to these officers that they are being passed over because of their race or their sex. And that should concern each and every one of us. When the secretary does this, what is the impact on a junior officer of color. What is the impact on a junior officer who's a woman? Are they're seeing our military put up a

I mean, it's clear.

"We don't want you, Sean.

It's clear.

No help wanted from you."

It's clear. It's clear. It's clear. It's clear. It's clearly clear. It's clear. It's clear. It's clear. It's clear. It's clear. It's clear. It's

Will they choose to leave the service prematurely?

clear. It's clear. It's clear. It's clear. It's clear. It's clear. It's clear. It's clear. It's clear. It's clear. It's clear. It's clear. It's clear. It's clear.

And I don't think any of us want that.

It's clear. It's clear. It's clear. It's clear. It's clear. It's clear. It's clear.

When I hear Secretary Hax uh uh has been asked

It's clear. It's clear. It's clear. It's clear. It's clear. It's clear. , it's clear. It's clear.

as I said earlier in public congressional hearings why he took these actions,

It's clear. It's clear.

he has refused. Flat out, I don't have to give you an answer, I don't have to tell you why forty people were taken off of a list. I don't have to tell you anything. I made this decision. This is go smack in the face of what the military stands up for when it promotes officers. And we can't sit idly by and watch our officer corps being depleted, being insulted, and being attacked. These officers are all patriots. They volunteered, they put up their hand, they took an oath of office, they have been serving their nation. They deserve, we just don't deserve, they deserve to know what specific reason why their record did not conform for a promotion that the board had given them. And if the secretary is not gonna support someone for promotion, or maybe even fire them, he should provide a rationale to Congress when asked. The gentlewoman's amendment would accomplish this. We have to get the secretary's attention somehow. So I support my colleague's amendment to restrict some travel funds, and I ask all of you to seriously think what this amendment sends a signal when we say the secretary has a green light not to explain his decisions for d- for not promoting men who are of color and women in general. They deserve an answer. They served our country. We deserve an answer when we ask a question for oversight. With that, I yield back.

Back to Jill Ley, the gentleman from Georgia. Mister Bishop is recognized to address the amendment.

Thank you, Mister.

Mr. Chairman, uh I rise in full support of Representative Frankel's amendment. Um The military promotion process is one of the most important systems that we have for maintaining professionalism, merit, continuity, and trust in our armed forces. Officers who are selected for promotion to the general officer ranks have gone through a rigorous process as a consequence of when an officer who has already been selected is removed from that process Congress has a legitimate oversight interest in understanding why

yes right

this amendment does not prevent

just

the secretary from making lawful personnel decisions it doesn't dictate who must be promoted it simply says that if an officer has been selected for promotion and is later removed the secretary should provide a justification to the congressional defense committees before a portion of the secretary's travel funds is made available this is a modest and a reasonable oversight requirement. Our service members deserve to know that promotions are based on merit, on performance, on experience, and the needs of the force, not politics, not personal preference or unexplained decision making. Congress also has a responsibility to ensure that senior military leadership decisions are transparent enough to preserve confidence in the institution. A strong national defense depends not only on weapon systems and funding levels, it also depends on trust. Trust in the chain of command. Trust in professional military judgment. And trust that decisions affecting the careers of our senior leaders are made for sound decision, for sound reasons. This amendment strengthens transparency, it protects the integrity of the promotion process, and it strengthens this bill and our military forces. I urge my colleagues to support it. It's a good amendment. It is needed at this time, particularly, and I urge its adoption. You're back.

Thank you, gentlemen. The gentlelady from Florida, Miss Wasserman Schultz, is recognized to address the amendment.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wanna thank my friend from Florida, Congresswoman Frankel, for offering this important amendment to stand up for our service members. Mr. Chairman, it is incredibly unfortunate that this amendment is even necessary, but the reality is is that we've seen Secretary Hegseth repeatedly single out service members for punishment, who are women or people of color. Under the Trump administration, these officers are routinely dismissed from their roles, denied promotions, kept out of key jobs, and sidelined. For decades, advancement to the rank of general or admiral was earned, not handed out as a political favor. And a promotion selection board reviews every candidate against written standards and certifies that each one is qualified. That merit-based, non-partisan process is precisely what rewards quality and competence and keeps politics and bias from tarnishing our officer corps. So when officers who earned their place on that list are repeatedly stripped of it, Congress deserves an explanation. And to date, we have not been given one. Why don't you care? This amendment is quite simple. Provide that justification for these highly questionable attacks on this merit-based promotion system, or accept a limit on your travel budget until you do. We're the Appropriations Committee. That is the accountability measure that we are able to use. We exercise it. We withhold funds. and have done so consistently you know we're not wiping out an entire budget this is not the end of the world this is a you know mild rebuke and accountability measure to ensure that we get the information and not that we need to make a determination about the appropriateness of the secretary of defense's decision making when it comes to interfering with promotions. That is not too much to ask. It's the basic accountability and transparency we owe the men and women who devote their lives and careers to defending this nation. And I'll be honest, the the pattern here is hard to ignore. Our Senate colleagues have noted that around sixty percent of the senior officers this secretary has removed or sidelined are women or black, even though they make up fewer than one in five of our generals and admirals. This year's Navy one-star list came back without a single woman on it. when a merit-based system suddenly produces a result like that the american people are owed an explanation consider the four army colonels struck from the list of nominees for one star general earlier this year it was two black women two black men and two women trump's own army secretary said they had a long history of exemplary service and had done nothing wrong yet they were removed anyway and to this day no reason has been given As a co-equal branch of government with the power of the purse and the necessity to understand the decisions that are being made that affect our national security, I urge my colleagues to support this common sense amendment, and I yield back.

Thank you, General Lady. The General Lady from Connecticut. Mister Lohr is recognized to address the amendment.

I rise in strong support of this amendment, uh, to the chairman. I I just want to, uh to read headlines the last one is june nineteenth twenty twenty six june first twenty twenty six march of twenty twenty six march the headline reads hexet strikes two black and two female officers from a promotion list the second one is hexet strikes female and black navy officers from promotion list third of june um uh nineteenth uh just last week secret vetting and block promotions inside hexet War on Diversity. The Navy's top leadership believed that Rear Admiral Stephen Barnett was by far the best choice to lead the command at overseas the Navy's bases at home and abroad. More experienced than other candidates, successfully managed uh the aftermath of one of the Navy's biggest messes, a fuel spill that contaminated an aquifer on the base in Hawaii, sickening thousands. Final decision fell to uh D- Defense Secretary Hegseth. To many, uh, the in the Navy, Admiral Barnett's promotion seemed like a foregone conclusion. Uh, however, he had one big strike against him, like other uh, black military leaders, he'd been encouraged by his superiors to help the Navy recruit and retain minority officers, who remained significantly underrepresented in the force. His years-old remarks on the important diversity had been flagged in a secret vetting process designed to weed out senior leaders who Mister Hexseth and his team pegged as a problem. he finds them as as a as a problem. This is a a a this is like a star chamber meeting and and making these the the the the the decisions here. You've got um his he he at last year, Hexhuff and his top aides ordered the Army, Navy, Air Force and the Marine Corps to do on-line searches of the officers selected by the board to look for photos, videos, news articles that might draw Hexeth's ire, current and former defense officials said. The officials, they undertook the reviews uh so that they could show what was going on. It wasn't um uh i- and inside the Pentagon such material was referred to as DROG, short for derogatory material, looking for something to which would create the ire of Secretary Hexeth. And no, no, you know, uh a couple of amendments ago, I talked about a rule which the uh uh management and budget uh uh OMB is looking at that says no longer are we gonna deal with merit, no longer are we gonna do a peer review efforts,

Mm-hmm.

we're just gonna use a political process to deal with grants across the whole federal uh government, every single agency. This is no merit, no basis, just someone's political ideology, what they care for, and they these are individuals who have dedicated their lives to the military and to their careers in the military and how critically important it is for them. And it's not clear whether Hexen had the authority to pull names off the list. Congress, Congress, friends, by the way, we are the Congress here, Congress had entrusted management of one star two-star promotion boards to the service secretaries, not the secretary of defense. A young woman among those targeted was Vice Admiral Sarah Joiner, a three-star fighter pilot who military officials wanted to move to a higher profile job in the Pentagon. Hexeth says no, and she worked for Kane, head of the Joint Chiefs. She ran a team that conducted classified war games and assessments of new weapons systems. Kane urged Hexef to nominate her for the position. The interventions failed. What is going on, my friends? And as I said, the ranking member mentioned this and it is the the crux of the amendment my colleague from. Not only do we have to get his attention, we have to grab him by the scruff of the neck and say, what in the hell are you doing? The making a determination that people who are qualified, probably more qualified than you are, to take on these positions. And you are saying no, based on nothing but your own view? My God, what kind of a merit system is that? We pride the military on what they do in allowing people to move forward, uh, and to raise their career and to get those bars and those stripes on their uniform. That's what it's about. And now we just, we We're so devoted to the military, so devoted that we would just see them degraded, demeaned and disrespected because one man doesn't like what their political beliefs are, or he doesn't believe in diversity. What are we doing? Vote for the gentlelady's amendment. Tell this man that he has to come before the Congress. He has a price to pay for this, for destroying, destroying the infrastructure and the strength of our military. and the people who lead us, I yield back and please support the general lady's amendment.

Thank you, general lady, the gentleman from Wisconsin, Mister Pocan, is recognized to address the amendment.

Th- thank you, Mister Chairman. Um, I have to admit I'm disappointed this wasn't just put in the manager's amendment. Um, twenty five percent of the travel budget of the secretary of defense. As the the author of this amendment said, that that's probably weak. but we are trying to make it just to get a reason but bluntly it it is a sign of a weak character if you're afraid of people who don't look exactly like yourself and unfortunately uh this just reeks

i know it's something

of some of the worst parts of our history as a country coming back again that based on racism sexism homophobia other issues uh people wanna be able to discriminate and we should all be repulsed by that the pride the one of the prides of the american government is that we had a military that was representative of this country and now uh we've got uh someone who bluntly was a fox news host we're not checking his merit he was a fox news host a pretty boy who put on makeup and had his hair done and sprayed making decisions and now he is the secretary of defense or war and somehow uh we're ok with him saying that based on merit people who deserve to be in the places they are based on their work and their history and their commitment to this country and yet that's not enough this this guy pete hagg said he wrote a book you know he's talked about wokeness ok sometimes you could say stuff and maybe you're little loose but you put something in your book and you pretty well damn mean it ok this is what he put in his book in twenty twenty four uh the war on warriors it's black over white female over male gay over straight this guy has an opinion and we're letting this opinion that i thought we kind of put back on our history cause it was such an awful disgusting position uh back into play again and we're not respecting a merit system in one of the most important institutions we have in this country so this fox news host slash secretary of defense is making decisions based on his political beliefs and all we're saying is give us a reason why these individuals aren't qualified based on their merit and if you don't you can't travel twenty five percent as much it's not like a big bar it was worth more than thirty seconds of a rebuttal it should have been in the manager's amendment and instead we have to debate this and honestly bring back all the ugliness that this country's gone through to get where we are today so you know i wish it would have been the manager's amendment it should have been it wasn't we have an opportunity to add it to the bill right now but the gentlewoman from florida is exactly right um the we at least deserve to have the information and when people don't wanna give you the information just like we don't get in so many other areas we get upset we stand up as congress cause we should as a co-local branch of government but at least we deserve to know why individuals that have served this country well and through the merit system we have been lined up to have promotions didn't get those from a guy who spent most of his time in a chair getting hairspray right that's what he's done more in his life than been a secretary of defense we deserve a better response. I hope we'll support this amendment. And if we don't, unfortunately it says a whole lot about where we are and how we actually consider the events of this nation. And I I hope that's not something that gets, um, embedded in how we cooperate. So, um, I urge a yes vote and I yield back, Mister Chairman.

Thank the gentleman for his comments. A gentleman from Maryland is recognized to address the amendment.

thank you very much let's get pete haggis set's history right before he was on fox news he was in the military i'll just read it you all can google it that's what i did to find out served as an infantry platoon leader in baghdad anybody in this room serve as a platoon infantry leader in baghdad i don't know i guess i guess he kind of figured out what you're close right yeah you're right you're close you're right civil military operations officer in samara a hundred and first airborne served as senior counterinsurgency instructor in uh cabal and he also was in guantanamo bay earned two bronze star medals you don't get those for showing up to work i know i was in the military you don't get a bronze star medal for showing up to work in the morning You get it for knowing what war is really like and what it takes to conduct a war. Earned a conf- uh, the combat infantryman badge. You're right, he wasn't a general. He wasn't a flag officer. He wasn't a senior officer. He was an enlisted guy who got the job done and who knows what war was like firsthand. And let me tell you something, just like the pilot who flies your airplane, You want the most qualified person in the role of conducting war, period, full stop. The last administration did not just promote on merit. Google uh Google Lloyd Austin's quotes. He came in and said he's gonna institute DEI in the military. Now, we can have a debate about whether that improves or doesn't improve the military. He had a right to his opinion, and under his watch, people were promoted under DEI. And I know everybody in the military knows it. They knew it. It was there when I was in the military. This administration has a different view. This administration thinks you should purely be promoted on merit, and not just at the highest levels, but in reviewing the record of all promotions up to flag rank, you could perceive that someone else might be able to fulfill that role better. And I want a secretary of war who actually makes that decision reviews the entire record of those individuals, without regard because again, the last administration used it with regard to DEI. We should be making that decision without regard to DEI. The most qualif- just like the person who flies your airplane you want the person who conducts that war, qualified person to make sure our men and women are protected in the military and we can have a philosophical argument about whether dei should enter into it

well you get one

but this administration feels it shouldn't it should be purely based on merit that's what this secretary did please don't denigrate this this secretary's military record it's beneath anyone on this committee to do that he is a hero two bronze you don't get him for showing up to work i yield back

thank the gentleman for his comments the gentleman from south carolina is recognized to address the amendment

thank you very much mr. chair and mr. chairman i rise in strong support of this amendment and in strong opposition as secretary hicks says my epic views and harmful actions. I often refer to the aspirations declared by the preamble to the Constitution that I quote, "to form a more perfect union." And just a few words later, provide for the common defense. I firmly believe that these aspirations together with others laid out in the preamble are mutually reinforcing. Our nation is more secure when everybody's talents are utilized and recognized. The current Secretary of Defense has a different view. He has made it clear that he believes that our nation's security and pursuit of a more perfect union require us to reject the skills and performances of those whose gender and ethnicity, God's work, do not meet with his approval. It is reported that just this year, Secretary Hicks says it's denied The promotion more than forty offices recommended by, and I'm quoting the article, promotion selection boards made up of senior military officers.

They're here.

The self-appointed secretary of war is at war with his own military, employing unfairness and demoralizing high achievers. Nothing is more important to our common defense than highly trained and arm out hard gr- highly morale in our military." In the case of one black admiral who the gentlelady referred to let me just quote the three things this secretary held against him when he said to a group of black recruits, just one generation before me, it was nearly unthinkable for a black person to become a naval aviator fake tuskegee airman the second quote what he helped me was people who didn't look like me that's what he said to young black recruits to encourage them to come into the military and the secretary said that should be held against him I want you to think about John Glenn and his refusal to take off until those three black women passed on the math, the figures that were given him, thanked him for it, but he said, " I wanna see those three women." And this body honored Mrs. Johnson a few years ago uh and the move of hidden figures the that was held against him as the country becomes more diverse it makes sense for our military to become more diverse that's what they said and this secretary held that against him and denied just think about coal and power

hmm

i want us to just think Mr. Chairman, I wholeheartedly agree with these sentiments and will welcome here in different perspectives, I just heard one, that Secretary Hicks says or any of my colleagues may have on this subject. That's why he should be brought here to explain why he is doing this. My uncle Joseph Henry Washington was on the US LA Arizona on that fateful day December seventh nineteen forty one but he would never talk about his experiences they were so bad he would never talk about them all in defense of this country and there were people with military records who denied him everything he deserved And he was on that ship in the Navy. Let's not hide from what's going on here. We know exactly what is happening here. He has said it in his book. I read that book. Not all of it. If I had read all the garbage he had in that book, I'm not sure I could stand here today and use. polite language. That's garbage. And this man has brought that garbage into our military. And he is denying the future of people just because of their skin color and their gender, and we know that.

Mm-hmm.

And we ought to be congressional enough to have him to come up here and explain why he is doing this the record is clear and i think we all know it and with that i yield back

thank you gentlemen a gentleman uh from illinois mister quigley is recognized for remarks on the amendment

uh white guy talking about racism but let's give it a shot maybe i can at least speak from the voice of my friend uh brad lang uh went to school with um reason this matters is he just retired as a career pilot for delta airlines he was also a champion pilot come to acrobatics um but the real story is his father was tuskegee when he got out of the military his father who should you know who's the pilot the issue was raised uh the guy we honor a year or so ago said when i see a black pilot i wonder if he is qualified my friend's dad was denied the ability to be a commercial pilot even though he was tuskegee so he worked in new jersey in the postal service and everyday he saw other people taking off and the jets flying over his head so his son my friend made it his life's goal to do what he was not allowed to do and on the anniversary of tuskegee ceremony right here they allowed brad to fly the same kind of plane tuskegee flew over the nation's capital can we imagine what that meant to him So let's not wash over the history there and the sins of the past and recognize this isn't just about equalizing numbers. It's giving extraordinary opportunities to extraordinary people and not forgetting the pain and loss that was there that we're coming back to today. so i'd hate to think they were creating situations and the pain that my friend brand and his father went through all over again simply because it makes us feel better to bs that answer and not imagine that skill sets are spread out equally by the almighty thank you and i yield back

thank you gentlemen the gentleman from hawaii mr. case is recognized to address

thank you mister chair i endorse so many of the comments of my colleagues um of all of the wrong directions that this secretary is taking our armed services in and there are many i think that i feel personally that the demoralization and the decimation of our officer corps and our enlisted ranks as a result of his actions are among the worst. And I don't only talk about today, I talk about the broad implications, the long-term effects of what he is doing in this department because this twisted inquisition and purge for any hint of the horror of thinking about diversity, equity, and inclusion and talking about your own personal experiences as you went through your career and giving inspiration to other americans to join the military and to try to achieve their best is exactly what mister cliburn just called it that's exactly what it is you know to my colleague from maryland yes i also reviewed mister haggis's record and i read this quote from his book when i think about my career in uniform and almost every instance where there has been poor leadership or people in positions they're not qualified for it was based on either the reality or the perception of a diversity hire think about that comment for a second just just consider that comment what does that actually mean does that that must mean that every single time he encountered poor leadership, um, it was based on the reality or perception of a diversity hire. Well, a diversity hire does not refer to the hire of a white male. Let's face it, diversity hire refers to leaders in our armed services that are not white males. And the reality or the perception, does that mean that he's making his judgment just at looking at somebody and perceiving that they are not white males they are not qualified to lead in every instance that's an unbelievable statement when you really dig down into it i guess the next step here is to start distinguishing between white males based on their ethnic group based on their height i i don't know i mean there's lots of things i can see about people and that's just um indicates so much what is going through this person's mind And let's, let's talk about merit, because my colleague from Maryland rightly pointed out that this should be about merit. That's what we're talking about here today, merit promotion boards. These people have been through a process, a rigorous process. It is so rigorous that people can't say that they're on the merit promotion board. They're being judged by their peers, by their superiors, presumably of all races and genders, by the way. And they were put on those promotion boards because they qualified. They passed the merit test. They're regarded by their peers in the military as having merit to advance, and yet they're yanked off. This is not something that is standard. This is new for a secretary to interfere with a merit promotion board. This secretary went into a merit promotion board that was set up to avoid political influence to start with, and said, I'm gonna make a different judgment based on merit because somehow I had a bad experience with the perception of a diversity hire, somewhere in my illustrious military career. And that doesn't pass any test. This is this is personal, by the way. Two of the people on those lists, General C. Q. Brown, and admiral barnett are people that i have personal experience with in hawaii i served with shiku brown when he was pack f the head of our air forces there was every bit of merit in that person he didn't deserve that once not once not at all in general i mean admiral barnett same thing came into a very difficult situation in hawaii and saved the navy's bacon and it wasn't just about red hill this was a person that deserved to advance on the basis of merit and his peers said he should advance on the basis of merit but he talked about his own experiences and talked about and tried to inspire the next generations into service what's the consequence should i not even consider the military whatsoever anymore if i'm a white male hey in hawaii seventy five percent of us are not white Should I tell all of my people in Hawaii, this is not a career for you anymore. I've just spent the last eight years trying to get people from Hawaii into the military to consider it a career. But what message are we sending to those people by sanctioning what the secretary is doing here today? And yet the secretary, when we ask him these questions, he gives Congress the middle finger. And that's what this is all about. This is the middle finger to Congress, the chair here, i'm sorry chair i disagree with you you say that this amendment would impede his discretion and i think that that's our job to get in his face when we have a problem and when we think that he is doing the wrong thing i don't care whether it's travel or anything else that's not the point here we all know that the point is he is doing the wrong thing we know it he is telling us i don't care what you think and we don't have the guts to call him on it the consequences of this action and allowing it to happen are gonna resonate far and wide beyond the people that are unfairly targeted and affected by this a yield back

chair would remind people try to stay within the time limits please gentlelady from pennsylvania is oh sorry gentlelady from new jersey is recognized to address the amendment

thank you mr. chairman um and thank you to my uh colleague for sponsoring this particular uh amendment which is mostly about showing that discrimination is alive and unfortunately well in this administration i may have this may be a bit redundant because i have not been here my colleague from hawaii said that this was personal and for him it was because he knew individuals who were negatively impacted it's personal for me because as a woman and a black woman i'm a double reason that this secretary has a problem with allowing someone like me to serve in a position i'm eminently qualified for and the marriage board has even said so you know that's disgusting coming from an individual who so woefully um inadequate in his position as secretary and for us as a congress not to stand up and tell him we're not gonna tolerate this anymore because we've got friends and we've got relatives and we have colleagues that we know are black and are women who are eminently qualified to serve in the capacity that they have been elected to, or those who have been recommended for appointment. This is in violation of the law against discrimination. Under any other circumstances, there would be case upon case upon case that this administration would lose, because it was violating the law against discrimination. It is disgusting that the most incompetent, corrupt, inept, and careless administration is allowed to get away with these things. And it is triply disgusting that the man who has to have a studio to make up his face in the, in his department, a man who wishes to be known as the secretary of war as opposed to the secretary of defense. And the man who has demonstrated day in and day out that he is incompetent and incapable of doing his job in a manner that is respectful of this country and who we are. I support this amendment. Congresswoman Frenkel, I thank you for raising it. I recognize you used his travel. and his frivolity as a way to get our attention and i appreciate that because every chance we get we need to highlight the frivolity the corruption the incompetence and the disgusting display of i hate america that they demonstrate i yield back

thank you general lady the general lady from pennsylvania is deemed recognized to address the amendment

I thank you, Mister Chairman, and I associate myself with the words, uh, from my colleagues on this side of the room, uh, the extraordinary reminder of our past, of our history, of our present, of our excellence within our military that is being denied. I rise in support of Congresswoman Frankel's amendment, which calls attention to Secretary Hegg's s- firing of highly regarded senior military leadership often without any apparent reason. Or should I say any apparent legitimate reason? As has been said, the New York Times from last week, and I quote, "Mr. Haegset has blocked the promotions of at least forty senior officers of general and admiral ranks about half of these of those are women or people of color." Secretary Haegset must be held to account. He is the secretary of defense. If his decisions to fire or block promotions were based on merit, he should come right here and give us justification for them. His silence is appalling. Something might have gotten past you, and that's why I brought this image. Uh, in the chaos of this administration, in the racism and bigotry of this administration, in the sexism of this administration, it might have gotten past you, uh,

Mm.

that we had to cancel something that has gone on, a ceremony that has gone on for twenty-seven years. This year's cancellation of the bipartisan women's caucus annual wreath laying cer- ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery. We've done it for twenty-seven years. This is a couple of years back when I had the pleasure, the honor, the awe of being in the presence of the living women members of the military, all branches, and of course to lay a wreath in honor of those women who served and have passed. It's a solemn event. It's a time when Republican women and Democratic women come together to honor the immense service of women in the United States Armed Forces, until this year. So what happened this year? Several military branches declined to participate in what should have been the twenty-eighth annual wreath-laying ceremony. That led to the event being canceled. And when asked why those branches of the military didn't want to be a part of it, they cited Trump executive order and Department of Defense guidelines that ban celebration of "identity months" or " diversity events". America is home to more than two million living women veterans. For two hundred and fifty years, women have fought and sacrificed for our nation. Instead of honoring their service, the Trump administration, Secretary Hegseth, They're trying to erase women's contribution to our nation and our history. They wanna diminish and deny their sacrifice. They wanna hold back high-ranking, hard-working, patriotic women and men, men on the basis of sex or color. We all know it in this room. It's un-American. It's sexism. It's racism. It's bigoted. It's shameful. Because I urge my colleagues, uh, to join me in supporting this amendment. Because Mister Hegseth cannot erase their DEI. He cannot erase their dedication, their excellence and their integrity. I yield back.

I thank gentlelady, the gentleman from Maryland, Mister Ives, recognized for to address the amendment.

Thank you, Mister Chairman, I rise in support of the amendment. Also, I think there's gonna be, um, a Republican amendment down the road that's gonna address DEI issues too. So, I'm gonna object to that amendment now as part of the, uh, en blanc, uh, uh, um, en blanco amendment there. But

Mm-hmm.

You know, what Hegseth is doing is beyond disturbing, I think. And I, I just wanna make one point with respect to what my colleague from Maryland, Doctor Harris, was saying, um, about these being DEI appointments i just wanted to talk about the actual chain of how some of this played out so general c j brown was um raised uh up offered for a promotion went up to hegseth he wanted to deny it and he did he chose general kane instead and general kane was number three on the promotions list but he picked him instead of um general brown now later on admiral barnett who we just talked about a few minutes ago was also on the Um, General Kane wanted him to be elevated. But Hegseth dis- denied him the promotion as well. So presumably the guy Hegseth picked, because he was anti-DEI, wasn't recommending that Barnett be promoted for DEI purposes. Presumably he was doing it based on merit. So just based on the fact that people in the administration that Trump and Hegseth like offered him up seems to undermine the argument that Barnett must have been a DEI promotion as well. I think it's probably more like what my colleague from South Carolina mentioned, and that's the the comments that he made at a speech encouraging us uh actually minorities to join the the military. I didn't hear anything particularly offensive or or disturbing in what he said. But I guess anything that you say, if if you were to use anything related to race or any kind of comment along those lines, That's disqualifying in this administration. And I think that's kind of pathetic because it ignores the reality of what's going on. But it's also consistent with what they've tried to do. With respect to the whitewash of military history. Trying to remove Jackie Robinson's military service, for example, from uh the websites and the like. Trying to remove information about the Tuskegee airmen. Um, it's sad and ridiculous and pathetic. Uh, and uh, and really un-American. We've got a a history in this country of people who've made contributions across the board, uh, on the military front as well, dating all the way back to the American Revolution, all the way up to now. My father-in-law, uh, served in World War Two and Korea, ground combat. Uh, my colleagues from Maryland suggested that all of those promotions that were received were DEI related. He served before there was DEI or affirmative action, or actually even integrated military service. And he came away with a silver star, two bronze stars, and yeah, he had two purple hearts too, although he also said, who wants a purple heart? I don't like how I had, what I had to do to get that. But the end of the day, I think it's important for us to understand that maybe Hegseth had a good military career, I'm not criticizing it at all, but many of the people that he denied a promotion to be really, really blunt, had far more distinguished combat careers than he did. And from the standpoint of elevating them to leadership positions in the Pentagon, especially when he had no leadership experience of that magnitude of his own, elevating people who already had it only would have made sense. So I I I'm deeply disturbed by what I've heard so far today. And I I I gotta leave with leave with this. Um, the whole DEI debate with respect to the Trump administration It it's kinda hard to square it with when you look at the people that the president has try, let's start with Matt Gaetz,

Matt Gaetz.

who was supposed to be the Attorney General of the United States. Then you got Pam Bondi, who became the United States Attorney General. And all the destruction of the rule of law under her leadership. Last thing I remember her saying was that Jamie Raskin was a washed up lawyer, but I I think she's the one heading to to bar counsel right now. You got Nome put in charge of homeland security with zero experience in having run it, and I think we saw how badly she did it. Polity now, they're trying to put in in charge of the intelligence and national security. And that's replacing Gabbard, who also had no experience on that front. Kennedy, the anti-vaccine HHS secretary,

Yeah.

who brought back the measles outbreaks to the United States. Patel at the FBI. This is his cabinet. And he's gonna stand up and lecture us about DEI? Give me a break.

Yeah.

We should at least be able to have the Secretary of Defense come to Congress and explain to us why he's denying promotions to people who have distinguished military careers who were recommended by the panels that Congress set up. And he doesn't have any uh any objections he can voice in defense of his decision. Let's have him come up and explain why he's making these decisions. Maybe while he's here we can also ask him about maybe one of the worst decisions the secretary of defense has ever made, to the extent he recommended that we go into this war. He's gotta be on the short list for that. And with that, I yield back.

Gentlemen, the gentlemen from California, Mister Levins, recognized to address the amendment.

Thank you, Mister Chairman. Uh, I wasn't planning to speak, but I feel compelled to note that this amendment really isn't about Pete Hegseth or any one secretary. It's about two things I think everybody here is sworn to protect. The first is that we want a military led by our best officers. And the second is that we want a constitution that doesn't bend to whoever happens to hold power. So starting with merit, we don't hand out the rank of general by whim. I know many of us, you know, we we know our generals. They are the best of the best. We have a promotion selection board. You have career officers, men and women who have served for decades. They sit down, they judge each candidate on record, on service, whether they've proven they can lead. By the the time an officer is selected as a general, the professionals have already said, " This is somebody we trust to lead American service members." That process exists to keep politics out. of the chain of command. And the moment that it becomes a political prize to become a flag officer, I think we lose the very thing that makes our military the finest in the world. So, ask this. If you have an officer that the board chose on merit, and then they're suddenly removed, and no reason is given, what took the place of merit? Something else took the place of merit. And whatever that something is, it's not the judgment of those seasoned officers who are measuring against our military mission. This amendment, I, I think, just says that when merit gets overruled, somebody has to explain why. And that somebody is the secretary. Now to the Constitution. Article one, the power of the purse, the duty of oversight, we we say it again and again, but it belongs to this body on purpose by design because the founders didn't trust any single official to act without answering to us and to the people we represent. So this amendment is that idea in its plainest form. The executive is making serious decisions, the people's representatives are asking why, and then the funding requires an answer. That's the separation of powers working exactly as it was intended to. And this new standard that Hegseth is setting is about far more than him, it's about far more than who sits in the office today. If you would want a future secretary to justify firing the generals that our board selected, then you'd want that same standard today, wouldn't you? And all this amendment asks for is a justification. If Hegsat's reasons are sound, his explanation should take the afternoon. The only official that has anything to fear from this amendment is one who can't defend a decision. And a choice about who leads our service members should never be won. that they cannot defend. So I encourage us think about this, protect merit, protect the chain of command, and protect the constitutional order that will outlast outlast all of us, at least I hope it outlasts all of us. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, gentlemen. Uh, are there others wishing to address the amendment? Gentlelady from Texas is recognized.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I uh like my colleague mister levin i was not planning on speaking on this amendment i was going to stay focused in this committee hearing today on my amendments um but i'm so proud of my colleagues on this side of the island all of the great amendments that they brought forward amendments meant to strengthen our national security amendments in support of our national defense um and i i'm very proud to support miss frankel's uh amendment as well and eh eh eh here's in part what inspired me to stand up and speak on this issue and this amendment representative leven and representative aguilar just as miss frankel was giving her opening remarks on this amendment the three of us stepped out to talk to a group of high school students who are part of uh chci an organization that uplifts hispanic young people in our country and it was a really lovely conversation um when it was my opportunity to speak to these talented brilliant wonderful young latinos what i said to them was never forget your brilliance and your talent how valued it is how important it is to our country how much your leadership matters don't ever let anyone make you doubt that brilliance that talent that leadership and i say that to a lot of young people the the young people who come and intern in my office the young people i meet in this journey in congress i've said it to my two children um over the years over and over again i represent a community that is eighty five percent latino i'm right on the us mexico border a lot of latino veterans a lot of latino active duty service members a lot of incredible women that i've met along the way devoted to our national defense, eager to be a part of this great mission that our United States military pursues. And I know all of you on the other side of the aisle, you are good people, and I know you value these incredible service members and leaders in our military. I know you do. This is an important moment for us as members of Congress to hold accountable a cabinet member that is telling military leaders who do not look like him that they don't have value in the hierarchy of the United States military. I think every person in this room knows that that is wrong. That is wrong, what he's doing. And we were elected to stand up for what is right. Holding him accountable on this is the right thing to do. So I asked my colleagues to join us, to send a message. We deserve an explanation. And those military leaders deserve our advocacy. Thank you, Mister Chairman, I yield back.

Thank you, gentlelady. Are there others wishing to address the amendment? Seeing none, the gentlelady is recognized for one minute close.

Thank you, Mister Chair. You know, I have just to say it it it it breaks my heart to have to bring this amendment. I it breaks my heart, as the mother of a son who served in two wars i i know the sacrifice and the patriotism of the people who put on the uniform and today we need to send a message to them you will be judged by your ability you're gonna be judged by your service you're gonna be judged by your character not by the color of your skin not by your gender not by politics yes the secretary of defense has the authority to review promotion lists But that authority comes with the responsibility. It's not a license to deny qualified service members the opportunity to rise for reasons that can only be described as prejudice or bigotry. If a decorated service is removable cuz they cannot meet the standards, tell us. If they cannot lead, tell us. If they have failed in their duty, tell us. But if qualified women and people of color who have earned their place are being denied opportunities because who they are that is wrong that is not strength that is not merit, and that is not the American way. And this amendment simply requires secretary Heggress to explain his decisions, because America deserves a military where excellence, not ideology, determines who rises. i urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle support this amendment i yield back

thank general lady the question is now on the amendment offered by the general lady from florida all those in favor say aye aye

aye

all those opposed say no

no

the opinion of the chair the no's have it roll call has been requested sufficient support has been demonstrated clerk will call the roll

mister adderall mr. adderhall no mr. aguilar

aye

mr. aguilar aye mr. alford mr. alford no mr. amadei mr. amadei no mrs. bice mr. bishop

aye

mr. bishop aye mr. calvert

no

mr. calvert no mr. carter mr. carter no mr. case

aye

mr. case aye mr. siskamani mr. klein mr. cloud mister cliburn

alright

mister cliburn aye mister clyde

yeah yeah

mister clyde no mister cole

no

mister cole no mister quayar

aye

mister quayar aye miss dean

what

mister loro

dean aye

mister loro aye mister diaz-belart

no

mister diaz-belart no mister edwards

no

mister edwards no mister lz mister lz no miss escobar

aye

miss escobar aye mister espiat mister fleishman mr. fleischman no miss frankel

aye

miss frankel aye mr. franklin

no

mr. franklin no mr. guest

yeah i was just

mr. guest no mr. harter

misses aye

mr. harter aye doctor harris

no

mrs.

mrs. hinson mr. hoyer

aye

mr. hoyer aye mr. ivy

aye

mr. ivy aye mr. joyce mr. joyce no miss captor

aye

miss captor aye mr. lolota mr. lolota no miss lee

aye

so it's

miss lee aye miss letlow mister levin

we can find that one as well

mister levin

makes sense

mister levin aye miss malloy

no

miss malloy no miss mccullum

yeah probably not um i for all four is

miss mccullum aye miss ming

i

miss ming aye mr. molinar mr. molinar no mr. moore mister morelli

aye

yes mister morelli aye mister mervain

aye

mister mervain aye mister newhouse

mr.

mister newhouse no miss perez

aye

miss perez aye miss pingree

aye

miss pingree aye mister pokan

aye

mister pokan aye mister quigley mister russenthaler

no

mister russenthaler no mister rogers

no

mister rogers no mister rutherford

no

mister rutherford no mister shreve mr. shreve no mr. simpson

no

mr. simpson no mr. strong

no

mr. strong no mrs. torres

aye

mrs. torres aye miss underwood

aye

miss underwood aye mr. valadao mr. valadao no miss washington-schultz

aye

miss washington-schultz aye mrs. watson- Coleman

aye

mrs. watson- Coleman aye mr. womack

no

mr. womack no mr. zinke

no

mr. zinke no

no no are there are members wishing to vote or change their vote gentlemen from arizona

mister syscomati no

general lady from pennsylvania

mmm

miss dane aye

mmm

gentleman from west virginia

mister moore no

mr. sys general lady from oklahoma yeah

mrs. bice no

are there others wishing to vote or change their vote Seeing none, the clerk will tally. Gentleman for Jenya.

Mm, none.

Mister Klein, no.

No.

Gentleman for Maryland.

do you think we're really going to add people to our food

gentleman from texas

doctor harris no yeah yeah no food mister cloud no yes no food

food must be good Let's vote. The ayes are twenty-six, the noes are thirty-three. The amendment is not adopted. I now recognize Chairman Calvert to offer a Republican on block amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk asking you now is consent that the we waive the reading.

Without objection, the reading of the amendment is dispensed with, and the gentleman's recognized to explain his amendment.

Uh, the Republican end block amendment incorporates a number of Republican priorities in the bill and report, includes provisions that have been included in the Republican bills in prior years. I urge the adoption of this amendment and yield back.

Next, the gentleman uh, the gentlelady from Minnesota, Miss McCullum is recognized to address the amendment.

Mister Chairman, as I said in my opening statement, I believe your decision to eliminate all but one of the partisan writers in this bill was the right decision your decision made me optimistic that when you reported the bill out of subcommittee the road to enacting this bill would even be smoother than it has been in previous years so let's be clear about what partisan writers do to appropriation bills they bog the entire process down they make deliberations more difficult as we move towards conference with the senate and make no make no mistake if the gentleman's amendment were to pass that's exactly what this amendment would do to the bill and i think he's pretty aware of that but i understand the role that you play in leadership as the chair of this subcommittee so folks i'm gonna tell you a couple of reasons why i'm opposing uh this amendment part of this amendment would prohibit the department from uh conducting research using human fetal tissue if that tissue is obtained from an abortion well here's a quick fact for you the department of defense does not do that type of research so i'm not sure why this needs to be in the bill or what's trying to be accomplished with this amendment because it's gonna come out because it doesn't happen in the department of defense so um you know we're prohibiting the apartment from doing things they already don't do and especially under this administration i think we all know wouldn't happen and then mister chair i also uh pose a part of the amendment that would justify the use of funds for changing the department of defense's name back to the department of war now when congress and the truman administration reorganized our national security agencies in nineteen forty seven they made a decision to create the department of defense and bring all the military services underneath it the reason why they chose the department of defense instead of the department of war they chose they talked this is right after world war two and and korea's conflict was raging then is because they did not want to be overly aggressive towards the soviet union during the cold war

mmm

now war is something we should all want to avoid and that's why i believe in a strong defense they didn't worry about the war defense through strength through power right good stuff but i think the americans who settled on the department of defense in nineteen forty seven they knew what they were talking about they knew we should want to deter war not advertise we want war so along with this uh comes with a name change well there was never any outreach to the appropriations committee as to the funding for the cost of these changes CBO did a study of the cost of this name change in January and it advised that the cost of changing the name across the department would range up to a hundred and twenty five million dollars now we could be asking ourselves what programs or activities did the secretary short circuit in order to cover the cost of this now name change which we uh know that the president through executive order and what what uh secretary hagg set this done by wanting to be called the secretary of war in the department of war they're doing it they can do that but to officially change it's gonna cost a lot more money than what cbo has already been talking about And the other thing that I object to this en bloc is

We do need to have something here.

we should be focusing on what brings us together to make our warfighter the most successful in the world, what brings them home safely after a conflict, not dividing us. So here's some of the old lists of division writers that have now been put into the bill, but they've never once been acted into law. K? I don't do something like that. There's language in the bill that attacks the uh LGBTQ uh uh community. That's always been in the bill. We've argued about that uh in committee. It always comes out. That divides that divides us. It hurts our military. Language that requires that marriage be defined as only for a man and a woman? Well, the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage nationwide in twenty fifteen that's in the bill do you think that's gonna stay in the language that bans funding for dei and critical race theory programs that don't even exist in this bill so we're taking up the committee's time working on this but there is something i do wanna discuss before i close today is the fourth anniversary of the dobbs decision which took away the nationwide protection for women's reproductive health. Women used to, you know, as US citizens we could live anywhere in this country, anywhere in in the territory, and our reproductive rights were guaranteed. Now women are living with a patchwork of state laws, many which limits the health care that all women deserve access to. So I'm not surprised to see language that limits a service woman's ability to travel easily to a state for reproductive health procedures. Now let's be clear. The government's not gonna pay for that procedure if it includes abortion. The Hyde Amendment's alive and well. So, if all all the things in this amendment are enacted, in my opinion, we would be wasting precious time with negotiating over positions that will not be acted into law. And I've watched the chairman do it and he defends the House position, Mister Chair, you do defend the House position. This is one of the positions in the House that I don't depend on when we're in Congress, in conference. So this amendment is more of the same thing we've been doing year after year in this bill, some of the things the department doesn't even do, some of the things are legal, and I strongly urge this amendment to be rejected.

Thank you, gentlelady. Uh, the gentleman from Missouri is recognized to address the amendment.

Well, thank you, Chairman Calvert, Chairman Cole, Ranking Member McCollum, and Ranking Member DeLauro. I also want to thank the staff for the tremendous work that they went uh into crafting this bill and for your willingness, Chairman, and uh our clerk and the staff,

Well, I lost a piece of paper.

willingness to address issues that arise as this legislative process move forward. When I first was elected to this office, my predecessor, whom many of you know, Vicki Hartzer,

Oh, very interesting.

had a great passion for Missouri, a great passion for our DOD bases. She said one thing to me, " Mark, take care of our district." And that's why I rise today to take care of our district and our great Department of War facility in the southeastern part of my district, Fort Leonard Wood. Just a few days ago, I was alerted by community leaders and stakeholders in Missouri to reports from well-sourced information at high levels that elements within the army were developing a proposal to relocate basic combat training missions currently conducted at Fort Leonard Wood in my district and Fort Sill in Chairman Cole's district. This proposal was reportedly structured around a series of troop movements of up to seven hundred and fifty soldiers at a time. The concern is not a single move, but rather the cumulative effect. By breaking a major realignment into smaller pieces, the transformation in training command could effectively dismantle basic combat training missions at Fort Leonard Wood and Fort Still without ever presenting Congress with the full scope, the cost, or readiness implications of the plan, basically doing an in-round around us in this committee and Congress as a whole. According to these reports, this effort could ultimately result in the cons- consolidation of basic combat training missions away from installations that have trained generations of American soldiers and have received substantial taxpayer investments over many decades. I want to be clear. Congress has established a process for major installation realignments. We should not allow decisions of this magnitude to be made through a series of administrative actions that effectively bypass congressional oversight and public transparency. Fort Leonard Wood and Fort Sill are not simply interchangeable locations on a map. They are the centers of excellence the centers of excellence with specialized facilities, experienced personnel, and critical training missions that support army readiness every day. Moving these missions would come at enormous cost to taxpayers. It would require new infrastructure, personnel relocations, and significant military construction, all while existing taxpayer funded facilities remain available and operational.

This is functional.

And it would also reduce training capacity at a time when we should be strengthening, not shrinking our ability to train the next generation of soldiers and respond to future natural national security challenges and that's why I raised this issue with the committee and worked with the chairman and committee staff to make sure that language preventing the relocation of basic combat training missions was included in this bill I appreciate the committee's willingness to act quickly and send a clear message that congress expects any proposal of this magnitude to receive proper scrutiny, proper authorization, and a full accounting of the costs and impacts before moving forward. This provision protects taxpayer dollars, protects military readiness, and protects the installations that have faithfully carried out these missions for decades. I thank the chairman for including this language in the en bloc amendment, which simply reads, "none of the funds made available by this act or any other act may be used to carry out the relocation, consolidation, or realignment of any army basic combat training unit. It's simple. I encourage a yes vote on this en bloc amendment, and I yield back.

I thank the gentlemen. Uh, are there others wishing to address the amendment? Seeing none, the gentlemen is recognized for one oh, I'm sorry.

oh i'm sorry gentlemen from maryland

almost

mr. chairman when i first heard the assertion that we were gonna change the department of defense's name to department of war

what's the cost

i thought to my i didn't think of the cost um but it has a substantial cost

billion dollars

i thought of something much deeper than that it is the actions of a bully it is the actions of a country that really doesn't have confidence

mmm

it's the action of a nation that says we wanna go to war

mmm i think so too i think so too

and that's what sekte Hexis of course

i think so too

thinks of his department it is a war department after world war two we changed the name cause we didn't wanna be a nation to go to war we would go to war we have gone to war but that was not our intent our intent was to have an establishment that could prevent war and prevent war by being strong so that those would see us as not a target they ought to go after

that's the indian spot

and so we named it the department of defense and it's been that uh for over seventy years the other thought i had was this was akin to say well we might use military force to take greenland or we might use it to have canada become the fifty first state or we would rename the gulf of mexico that's been the gulf of mexico forever the gulf of america are we so small that we need to make these silly assertions are we a bully nation who is not self-confident enough to say we are for defense we are for protecting democracy as we talked about with respect to ukraine or have we simply now decided we are big and strong and we're gonna expend a trillion dollars and we're gonna go to war we're in a war of choice a disastrous war of choice that has gotten us absolutely nothing because i guess we're a nation of war I grieve for my nation.

My dear, no, I disagree with you. You shouldn't have listened to our

That we would perceive ourselves so weak that we have to enunciate that we are a nation for war. And perhaps all of you wanna be a nation for war and perhaps you'll all vote that way and i'm sorry for us as america the strongest nation on earth that need not proclaim its strength everyday by these small acts of bluster. Go know.

Thank you gentlemen, the gentlemen from Georgia, Mister Clyde is recognized to address the amendment.

All of you.

Thank you, Mister Chairman, and I thank the Chairman for including my amendment to codify the renaming of the Department of Defense as the Department of War and the Secretary of Defense as the Secretary of War throughout applicable provisions of federal law. As a twenty-eight year Navy combat veteran, restoring the warrior ethos here in the United States and ensuring the world understands that is very important to me. For a little history, the War Department was among the first executive departments established in seventeen eighty nine and signed into law by none other than the founding father of our country President George Washington. For more than half a century under that name the department helped oversee the military forces that defended in advance the interests of the United States through conflicts raging from the War of Eighteen twelve to both world wars. The title Department of War reflected the founder's understanding that preserving peace requires maintaining the capability readiness and resolve to prevail in war when necessary. Last year, President Trump issued an executive order to restore the US Department of War, which recognized that the former title, Department of Defense, may not fully convey the strength, deterrent capability, and war-fighting mission entrusted to America's military. Therefore, the executive order authorized the use of the title, Department of War, within the executive branch and directed recommendations for permanently restoring the department's historic name through legislation. This amendment advances that objective by making the statutory changes necessary to formally redesignate the Department of Defense as the Department of War throughout titles ten, thirty-two, and thirty-seven of US Code, along with numerous conforming amendments. It also redesignates the Secretary of Defense as the Secretary of War, and updates references to departmental offices and activities to reflect the new title. You know, The best defense is a good offense, and names communicate priorities. For decades, America's military has remained the most lethal and capable fighting force in the world, but our principal national security institution bore a title that emphasizes only one aspect of its mission. The historic title, Department of War, more directly reflects the warrior ethos and the department's responsibility to prepare for, deter, and when required, successfully wage war in the defense of the United States and its interests. I urge my colleagues to support this end block and a yield back.

Thank the gentleman for his remark. Gentleman from California, Mister Levin, is recognized to address the amendment.

Thank you, Chairman. Um, I wanna expand for just a minute on the history, uh, that my colleague mentioned. I don't think the gentleman got anything wrong necessarily. But I wanna add some important context. It's completely correct that for a century and a half, this nation had a department of war. That is true. George Washington did in fact create it in seventeen eighty nine. And it ran the army through the civil war and ended the twentieth century along a separate department of the navy. Then came World War Two. My grandfather served in World War Two. So I think he's, that's, that's great. I think my grandpa's looking over my shoulder now. and i think he wants me to express this to you cause i know how he felt he's passed away but i know how he felt uh we fought that war with the services divided he was in the army air corps we paid for it in confusion and duplication and at pearl harbor in blood so the generation that won that war came home and fixed it and then in nineteen forty seven we unified the army and the navy and the new air force. Then in nineteen forty nine, we settled on the name that captured what we'd built, the department of defense. Not a retreat from strength, the consolidation of strength. Now a few more things worth mentioning. The men who chose defense and the women who chose defense at that time, they were not soft. This was the Cold War. They were staring straight at Stalin. They were staring straight at the Soviet bomb. They had just defeated Germany and Japan. They picked the name on purpose because it described the whole force, land and sea and air under one roof, not just one branch fighting alone. Dwight Eisenhower had every chance to change it back. He was a five-star general. He was the man who commanded D-Day. He saw more war than anybody in this room ever will. He reorganized the department from the ground up in nineteen fifty-eight. But he kept the name defense. Because as he said at the time, the future would be fought by all services at w- as one single concentrated effort. That's what defense meant to him. Ronald Reagan had every chance to. He signed the largest overhaul of the department since its founding. And he built on the department of defense, reaching back actually to quote Eisenhower as his guide. And the price of undoing all of that I think is very real. Formally renaming this department requires us, requires Congress. The estimates are that it's an expensive process, but beyond new signs and seals and letterheads and badges across hundreds of thousands of facilities across the world, think about what that could buy. It could buy the ships and the missiles and the housing for service members. I think that's a better use of that money than stationary. So the choice is pretty simple. We can spend this time actually building the force or we can spend it relabeling things. Think Eisenhower and Reagan would be appalled. I yield back.

Hi, it's the gentleman, gentleman from Texas, Mister Cloud is recognized to address the amendment. OK. Very good. Are there any other members wishing to address the amendment? seeing none the gentleman uh mr. galbert is recognized for one minute to close

i urge the adoption of the amendment and yield back

eloquent and to the point thank you you wanna give me that questions now on the amendment all those in favor say aye

aye

aye

all those opposed say no

no

no

opinion of the chair the ayes have it roll call is requested sufficient support has been demonstrated court will call the roll

mister adderhall

aye

mister adderhall aye mister aguilar mister alford mister alford aye mister amadei

aye

mister amadei aye mrs. bice mrs. bice aye mister bishop

no

mister bishop no mister calvert mister calvert aye mister carter

aye

mister carter aye mister case mister case no mister siskamani mister siskamani aye mister klein

aye

mister klein aye mister cloud

aye

mister cloud aye mister kleibern

roe

mister kleibern no mister kleid

aye

mister kleid aye mister kohl

aye

mister kohl aye mister quay R

yes

yeah i'm a little bit too old for that pass i need a minute i'm just gonna miss dean miss dean no mister laroe

no

mister laroe no mister diaz-ballart

aye

mister diaz-ballart aye mister edwards

aye

mister edwards aye mister lz miss eskibar aye miss esk miss eskibar no mr. espiat no

pardon me

mister fleishman

i've been in the

mister fleishman aye miss frankel

i've done in the budget

miss frankel frankel no

have we got a van please

miss frankel no mr. franklin mister franklin aye mister guest mister guest aye mister harter dr. mister harter no doctor harris doctor harris aye mrs. hinson no mister heuer

no

mister heuer no mr. ivy no mr. ivy no mr. joyce miss joyce is this

yes

mr. joyce aye miss captor no

no

miss captor no mr. lolota no mr. lolota aye miss lee miss lew miss lee no miss letlow oh yeah i know mr. levin mr. levin no miss milloy no miss milloy aye miss mccullum

no thank you

no miss mccullum no miss ming yeah that's that's

no

miss ming no mr. molinar yes right mr. molinar aye mr. moore mister morelli

sheepish no

mister morelli no mister mervain

no

mister mervain no mister newhouse mister newhouse aye miss perez miss perez no miss pingree miss pingree no mister pokan

pingree no

mister pokan no mister quigley

a second sir

mister rassenthaler

a second mr rassenthaler

mister rogers mister rogers aye mister rutherford

aye aye aye aye

mister rutherford aye mister shreve

aye

mr. shreve aye mr. simpson

pass aye

mr. simpson aye mr. strong

aye

mr. strong aye mrs. torres

no

mrs. torres no miss underwood

uh no

miss underwood no mr. valadao

uh

mr. valadao aye miss washington schultz

uh what

miss washington schultz no mrs. watson coleman

miss walter no

mrs. watson coleman no mr. womack mr. womack aye mr. zinke

no no ok

mr. zinke no

no one you're yeah

yeah

mister zinke aye

yes i guess they do

alright um are there any members wishing to cast their vote of change or vote

ok

yeah gentlemen from california

i'll take zinke's vote

mister zinke no or mister aguilar no i'm i'm

gentleman from west virginia

mister moore aye

and gentleman from texas

mister lzi

gentleman from california

he's right there

ok i'm sorry when you're standing up it's hard to tell gentleman from florida

florida

ok is the gentleman from nevada actually on there this time can we have some more people to vote for please he kind of slipped in and out

hmm

are there any other members wishing to vote or cast or change their vote seeing none the uh clerk will tally while the clerks are tallying obviously we have votes underway we're not gonna cry and do anything more been here a long time obviously so uh as soon as uh um and you know we announce a title you can leave anytime you want we're going to recess immediately and then please come back immediately after the votes and we'll resume i think we're not too far away from dinner so chinese food will be available in the not distant future

ok it's ironic chinese food

so if you

all meat from you

uh

you're the one who picked the cuisine

yeah

have we got red meat for lunch or

have a little chips in it or something yeah

oh oh this is fire chips

yeah this vote the ayes are thirty two the no's are twenty five and the amendment is adopted votes have been called the committee will now stand in recess please return promptly after vote so we can continue consideration of the bill

you're welcome i'm gonna get rid of that one then i'm gonna get rid of the the ok i think we will get to know each other more definitely we will know each other's names more and more and more yeah you know like when you're talking about like when you're talking about like a yeah definitely like a little bit more like a little bit more like a little bit more like a little bit too definitely like a little bit too much like a little bit too much like a little bit too much like a bit too much like a definitely definitely definitely definitely definitely definitely definitely definitely yeah you know probably cause the the the yeah oh yeah yeah oh yeah yeah no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no i don't think i can do that yeah no no no no no no no no no no no no no no yeah no no no no no no no no no no no no no no that's a good idea yeah yeah oh wow wow wow yeah yeah um, yeah, um, i don't know where to start with. um, like i have a i have a friend who is a they're working on uh, it's like a little mountainous area with like a lot of nature and people. i always think of it as like a little mountainous area with like a lot of people. oh i love the color of the blue. oh i love the color of the blue i love the color of the blue i love the color of the blue. yeah i love the color of the blue i love the color of the blue yeah but then i was like yeah i'm not bad i'm so good i'm not bad i don't know where to start so then i was like yeah i'm not bad i'm not bad i'm not bad you really like it yeah yeah before we we grew up on our own i know you guys are very i know you guys are very long-term uh like you know working and like you know just like uh the the the the long-term you know you you know you you know you're gonna go you know uh maybe you know maybe maybe maybe you know maybe maybe you know you you you you you you know maybe you know maybe maybe maybe maybe you know maybe maybe you know maybe maybe you know oh no oh maybe you're really into it yeah but i mean i don't know i mean i don't know i mean i don't know yeah if you if you think it's right but i'm not sure cause i'm not sure but i'm not sure yeah yeah cause i'm not sure cause i'm not sure no they're more important than the real life i mean like i think i think yeah people like people like i think they they really want to buy it i think they want to buy it first but i think the real life is like a different kind of like a different i mean you can get a lot of different colors but like i don't know hmm i'm gonna try this one right now cause i've never tried any of these before oh yeah i like the blue one i don't know what i would go for but i like the blue one yeah it's like the old blue like the one that like the blue one has like a little color

yeah

i think the uh the the way i work is uh yeah oh yeah yeah yeah wow oh yeah oh yeah yeah oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah i mean i don't know if it's the same but i i don't know if it's the same thing or not hmm i remember when we were uh when we were in high school we would go to a bar and we would have a bar i remember and we would have a bar how do you get to know them better i mean i remember i remember we would have a bar and we would have a bar and we would have a beer and we would have a beer and we would have a drink and we would have a drink and we would have a coffee and we would have

Committee is reconvened. Gentleman from Missouri, Mister Alford, is recognized for the purpose of an amendment.

Thank you, Mister Chair. I have an amendment at the desk and ask for dispensing of the reading of that amendment.

Without objection, the reading of the amendment is dispensed with, and the gentleman is recognized for remarks on his amendment.

Thank you, sir. Thank you, uh, Chairman Calvert, Chairman Cole, Ranking Member McCullum, and Ranking Member DeLauro. This bill covers many very important aspects of bringing back our industrial base to America. However, I do want to bring one important shortfall which concerns me. Lake City Army Ammunition Plant in Independence, Missouri, just outside of Kansas City is a key aspect of our defense industrial base. And the fluctuation of funding to our Army Ammunition Depot forces mass layoffs of highly specialized workforce that cannot be turned back, simply overnight. As it stands now, the funding levels would likely cause loss of some five hundred jobs between Missouri and Mississippi. This is the exact opposite result in which we are fixing across many different sectors in this very bill. And I understand the Army is the main requester for which caliber rounds are to be funded, but the the current request does not meet the high paced training and operation requirements of what the most lethal and most effective fighting force in the world requires. I do wanna thank the committee um again, and I know there were some very difficult decisions that had to be made. Uh, we simply did not have the money for some of these programs and projects. I am going to withdraw this amendment, and I would appreciate working with um Chairman Calvert and others. If we can continue this work, sir, on this very important issue to lessen the burden on our domestic workforce and I yield back

thank you gentlemen the uh gentlemen of california mr. calvert is recognized to address the amendment

thank you i happy to work with a gentleman from missouri to uh make sure that the men and women in united states military have the ammunition they need and uh look forward to uh working as we go through this process

thank you thank you my friend from minnesota wished to address that or

ok very good

did not think so um there's no further debate the gentleman is actually recognized for one minute to close if you want the time

uh again

again thank you chairman for working with us on this uh lake city army ammunition plant is a very uh intricate part of our department of war and making sure their munitions are uh restocked Uh, they are making the new NATO round out there. We have the building built. They're waiting on the equipment. Uh, wonderful people out there. I have close friends who work out there and constituents. But it's not just about them. It is about the readiness for our military and restocking our munitions, which are so important, uh, to all of us here in this committee. Thank you, and I yield back.

Thank you, gentlemen. Gentlelady from New Jersey, Miss Watson Coleman is recognized for the purpose of an amendment.

thank you mr. chairman i do have an amendment at the desk and i seek unanimous consent to dispense with this reading

without objection the reading of the amendment is dispensed with and the gentlelady is recognized for remarks on her amendment

thank you mr. chairman my amendment would strike funding for the golden dome for america fund for which this bill provides three hundred and ninety eight million dollars. As our adversaries grow stronger and threats to our allies proliferate, it's important to have a missile defense system that is truly effective. Unfortunately, this is the wrong way to implement one. The Golden Dome for America fund is physically, fiscally irresponsible and lacking in important details. To make matters worse, the president has a failed track record for planning and execution of national The CBO estimates that the entire project will cost at least one point two trillion dollars over the next twenty years. Who can trust this administration to be careful stewards of our public dollars? Donald Trump started a war that we didn't ask for and did so many without the s- any sound strategy. So far it has cost us twenty nine billion dollars and that's not even accounting for the imposed on our economy. Now this, his administration is asking for a billion more. He has also blown an enormous amount of money on his vanity projects, like the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool, which was supposed to cost one point eight million dollars, ballooned to fourteen million dollars, and now millions more will be needed to fix mistakes made under his incompetent leadership. The or his car ride. The proposed White House ballroom started as two hundred million dollar project. But recently it was reported that his contractors estimate the total construction costs at six hundred million dollars, with half intended to come from taxpayers. Do you see the theme here? Trump is an incompetent leader who has a track record of poor planning and a reputation for being an untrustworthy and prolificant. a spender of the public purse. The CBO said that the true cost of the so-called golden dome can't be calculated due to how expensive it would be to operate and maintain. How can we trust him with an important project that has an arbitrary cost like this and why should we? And here's the kicker. We have no assurance that the dome would even be fully effective against all missiles. The potential for our adversaries to overwhelm the system is too high and its costs are too great without more information. With the strength of our military, why would we choose to sink so much money into a defense system that is incapable of fulfilling its promise it's not unreasonable to wonder if this is just the largest of his growing collection of vanity projects intended to stroke his insatiable ego. And for the president who has rewarded his friends and donors while enriching himself, there are certainly opportunities for fraud and abuse here. We should not be giving a massive handout to defense contractors for a project that we know so little about. The American people want to be able to pay their bills. They want to be able to afford their groceries, housing, child care, and health care. They deserve better than this from their government. There must be accountability and careful oversight. of any defense system. We have neither the details nor the true cause. I do not believe we should appropriate these funds under these conditions. I encourage my colleagues who support this amendment, and thank you, Mister Chairman, I yield back.

Thank the gentlelady. The uh gentleman from California, Mister Calvert, is recognized to address the amendment.

Thank you, Chairman. Thank you, gentlelady, for your amendment. The amendment cuts the funding for the Golden Dome provided in this bill. The bill provides three hundred ninety-eight million for the Golden Dome for uh America uh fund to support the development of a defense shield for our homeland. I oppose this amendment and yield uh and uh I would hope the rest of the conference would agree uh yield back.

Thank you gentlemen, the gentlelady from Minnesota, Mr. McCollum is recognized to address the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of this amendment. This amendment does highlight one huge problem with the President's budget request for twenty twenty seven. The total department says it needs seventeen point five billion dollars for the Golden Dome this year. However, the president's budget only asked our committee for three hundred and ninety-four eight million dollars, or two percent of its need. The rest of the seventeen point one billion for Golden Dome is requested through the reconciliation process, which we pointed out night that the chair and I both agree is not an efficient or effective way to budget for the needs of the Department of Defense. now i wanna be clear i do support working towards a missile defense system um uh we we need it um as we uh continue to see our adversaries become more and more engaged with hypersonics and some of the other weapons that they're coming up with but you can still have serious questions about whether the department can prudently spend three hundred and ninety eight million dollars without the rest of the funding

uh-huh

how can they what can they actually buy for two percent

right

of the budget if they don't receive the other ninety eight percent. And that for me is the underlying question on why I support this amendment at this time. We deserve to have those answers before supporting the funding in this bill. The overall cost for Golden Dome is estimated at um one hundred and eighty five billion dollars. That's just for the research to deliver the architect. So we're still in the research and architect phase. It doesn't even include the cost to use or to operate the system even in one place. We don't have that information. So when you add to the mix what the Congressional Budget Office puts the estimate at one point two trillion dollars for twenty years, the administration is far too um cavalier in how they're going about with reconciliation and combining the base bill and taxpayers' funds for this. So I would like to see some more accountability in how this is moving forward. Because we need to get it done. We need a missile defense for what we know is coming our way, what our adversaries are planning, and what the, what we think they have in their arsenal right now. So we need a missile defense system. But we need more information on how Golden Dome's gonna work, more accountability, and and a and a timeline that Congress can see how it's being laid out. For that reason I support the amendment and i yield back

thank you gentlelady are there other members wishing to address the amendment um gentleman from hawaii mr. case is recognized

hello sir chair i rise in support of of this amendment and i want to um amplify what my ranking member has said because i think it's a very important uh point that she is making and it is fundamental uh to how this committee and this subcommittee goes about uh funding an incredible need in our defense uh department going forward um we absolutely need a missile defense system any of us that study the advances of our adversaries or potential adversaries any of us that study the rapidity of change with weapons systems uh today and extrapolating out into the future understands that we have to continue to develop uh a missile defense system that even if it doesn't deliver one hundred percent defense which no missile system does we've seen that even in israel with iron dome that we still have to move in this direction and to fail to move in this direction is irresponsible and so this is uh very very much an endorsement of continuing uh down this road and i say that not just for our country not just for our allies but i say it for my state because i'm in the third island chain here um missile defense is a very personal uh thing uh to me uh in hawaii being within range of all of the missiles um but the problem that we're having here goes back to what i said at the very beginning i outlined six reasons uh why i could not support this bill uh overall and one of those six reasons had to do with how we are going about hodgepodge budgeting without a big picture context without a budget without a cohesive approach and we are doing this piecemeal through discretionary funding through reconciliation mandatory funding and then now of course we're being presented with a supplemental finally uh that we don't even know what is in it uh other than what somebody is reporting online for us as we're sitting here an over one trillion dollar budget. And so the problem here is that we are taking a critical need that is gonna cost a lot of money. Let's not be under any illusions. The missile defense system is gonna be one of the most expensive and complicated, uh, and yes, subject to fraud and abuse, um, efforts that we have ever undertaken in this federal government. And yet we have to do it all. But we should be doing it in an organized, orderly, coordinated way. Now we started out with Golden Dome, and I'm sorry this has become a political issue, because it shouldn't be a political issue. This is, should, this should be something that we can all sit down and work on and agree on, without getting through the divisive politics and whether we like the term Golden Dome or not, what a stupid debate that is. We need something, right? Let's, let's, let's call it, I don't know, let's call it something other than Golden Dome for a second. But let's, we started out in FY twenty-six. And what did we do in FY twenty-six? We had zero for this project in discretionary funding. We stuck twenty-one billion dollars into reconciliation to get this going. We waited, as al- already noted, nine months to get any detail on what that reconciliation was gonna go to, and we did not get adequate answers on where they were going with this project. Twenty-one billion dollars already sunk or sinking into Golden Dome. Oh, I said it there. Um, now let's get to this year. This year, seventeen point five billion in the president's budget, seventeen point five billion more, of which four hundred million in discretionary funding. Leaving seventeen point one billion out there hanging for some reconciliation bill that we don't know where it's coming from, or whether it's gonna get here. Now, why would I want to spend four hundred million dollars today in discretionary funding without knowing what the big picture is it may well be worth it and it may well be necessary and I'm sure it is necessary for us to spend at some point or another four hundred million dollars uh for this project but why should we do this in this bill when we don't have the big picture when we don't have the detail when that detail has not been provided to us whatsoever and so the bottom line here is in my mind show me the big picture show me the cost show me the allocation overtime and show me the details and i will work with you to figure out when and how to fund it but not on a piecemeal basis not without the big picture so i support this amendment for those reasons and i yield back

thank you gentlemen are there other members wishing to address the amendment seeing none the gentlelady is recognized for one minute to close

thank you mr. chairman um it is obvious that we have an administration doesn't think things through we're currently involved in a war we can't figure out why we got there in the first place can't figure out what it means to end it can't figure out when it's going to end or what that means so last thing we need to do is to give them additional money to do anything for which we don't have information as to the how what when where and why i am a strong component uh uh advocate for a nuclear defense fund i am a strong uh proponent of making sure that my country is safe and that we monitor ourselves uh accordingly and so i just don't think that this bill provides what we need in order to move forward i ask my colleagues to support this amendment and i yield back

thank you general lady the question is now on the amendment offered by the general lady from new jersey all those in favor say aye

aye aye

all opposed say no

no

no no

the paying the chair the no's haven't and the amendment is not adopted general lady from california miss torres is recognized for the purpose of an uh an amendment

i i rise to offer an amendment and ask that the reading be dispensed with

without objection the reading of the amendment is dispensed with and the general lady is recognized for remarks on her amendment

thank you chairman my amendment is very simple it prohibits funds from being spent for an illegal war with iran without congressional authorization and let me be clear about what this amendment does not do. It does not jeopardize troop pay. It does not slash health care. It does not compromise our defense or readiness, intelligence sharing, or critical counterterrorism operations. What this amendment does is restore constitutional order. Under Article one, section eight, the power to declare war belongs to Congress. not the executive branch. No president, regardless of party, has the right to drag our nation into another costly open-ended conflict without the clear consent of the American people through their elected representatives. We have been down this road before. The American people are tired of watching trillions of dollars vanish into endless foreign wars. Iraq and Vietnam just to name a few billions billions spent while our communities suffer

wonderful

budget cuts to health care child care food and housing to name a few and right now working families are bearing the brutal economic brunt of this conflict this war has already cost american households over one hundred billion inflation hit a three year high of four point two percent in may gas prices over four dollars a gallon in every single state a fifty percent spike since this war began airfares up twenty seven percent working families are being forced to choose between putting food on the table going to the doctor or driving to work and what are we getting in return a terrible temporary mlu chairman i would also like to include as part of my statement an article uh from cbs news dated june twenty fourth that talks about the incompetence of the secretary of war and um the number of injuries that we have had while um this war well we have been at war with iran with iran

i haven't read for the record

oh well without objection

thank you chairman um chief warrant officer rodney uh berman i'm reading from this report his body was riddled with shrapnel in the early hours of the war on march first when an iranian drone slammed into his workstation in kuwait his wife however was told that his injuries we're not serious and that they were classified in addition to that master sergeant nicole amour one of the six soldiers killed would have survived her wounds had there been a doctor a fix station or more than one ambulance at the post the soldiers according to witnesses instead triaged themselves with makeshift bandages braces and tourniquets They they took vehicle, civilian vehicles to drive the wounded to two local Kuwaiti hospitals. Imagine the incompetence that our military our service members injured while the we declared war and not no one there to help them. Since signing the MOU, Iran has seized control of the Strait of Hormuz, gained sanctions relief, pocketed unfrozen assets and immediately turned around and banned international nuclear inspectors importantly this amendment will prohibit us tax dollars from going to the government of iran for reconstruction of their regime congress needs to reassert its authority and stop letting the president's failed foreign policies drive up costs for our constituents Colleagues, if you want US taxpayer dollars to go toward prolonging this war and reconstructing the Iranian regime vote against this amendment. But if you want to support our constitution, our service members protect the hardworking tax paying constituents that we serve then I urge you to join me and support my amendment and I yield back.

Thank you, General Lady, for amendment, gentlemen from California, Mister Calvert. is recognized to address the amendment.

I thank the chairman, thank you General Leidy for the amendment, uh. This amendment prohibits funding for United States military forces and hostilities against Iran unless Congress passes a declaration of war. That and for other reasons I oppose this amendment and urge uh that we uh not allow it to pass. With that I yield back.

Thank you gentlemen, uh General Leidy from Minnesota, Miss McCollum is recognized to address the amendment.

I rise in support of this amendment. But I wanna be clear. I'll support our servicemen and women who are serving in the Middle East. I had the privilege and the honor of attending a very sad event, and that was Nicole's funeral. We've lost too many souls over there, and many have been injured. But we also need to be clear about the cause of this war. There was no immediate security threat to the United States from Iran that uh required military action Iran was not attempting a nuclear breakout. This is a war of choice, started by President Trump. He did not make even the case to the American people before starting it. He launched this war without congressional authorization. And given the damage across the region, the economic havoc is unleashed by the war, clearly the president failed to understand all the risks that were going to be involved. The president's war has direct cost to the American people, too. increasing prices for necessities like groceries, it's affected housing prices, healthcare, utilities, gasoline and so much more. And that's because the state of Hormuz was effectively closed for the last four months. This is a key waterway, it's an international waterway, and it's critical to the global energy supply. And to be clear, it was completely open prior to the war and is still not completely open yet from reports. um as negotiations continue to hopefully get to a peace negotiated settlement. Despite this fragile peace agreement which is only focused on a ceasefire the Strait as I said is not reliably open. The President's new agreement with Iran is just a tenuous sixty day extension of an extending ceasefire. The framework announced by the President does nothing to resolve the most critical issues of this conflict, such as the status of the Iranian nuclear program, ballistic missile programs, frozen Iranians' financial assets, or imposed US sanctions. Nor does it ensure that Israel will honor its ceasefire with Lebanon, which is part of keeping the whole peace peace uh ceasefire agreement moving forward. Without resolutions to these issues, long-term peace and stability in the region will remain out of reach. This war is a disaster, full stop. And that's why a few weeks ago the House adopted a war powers resolution directing the President to end the war. And the Senate did the same thing just yesterday. Congress has told the President, in a bipartisan fashion, enough is enough. We have no obligation to provide funding to cover operational costs of a war we never were consulted on. It would also send a signal to future military campaigns, require congressional authorization before they can proceed. So let's support this a- amendment. Let's get the uh co-equal branch of government actually happening between us and the administration by reminding the administration that support for future military campaigns requires our consent. And the president needs to give us a full disclosure on the negotiations and the s- and when he plans on being able to say this is finally over, and how much it's gonna cost until then, a yield back.

thank gentlelady for comments are there others wishing to address the amendment uh gentlelady from connecticut i'm sure delores is recognized

thank you mr. chairman uh i rise in support of this amendment which prohibit additional use of military force in iran after reviewing the terms of president trump's memorandum of understanding i have one question why did we go to war The administration claims they have effectively destroyed Iran's military, its navy, air force and key infrastructure are obliterated apparently, just like the nuclear program was obliterated by operation midnight hammer last year. Um, um, but in spite of all this supposed tactical success, none of the president's aims have been been achieved. I might just ver- very quickly uh take from a statement uh which is an unclassified document uh uh statement of the commander of us central command sent calm uh before the uh uh uh defense appropriations committee this is operation epic fewer thirty eight days major combat operations uh delivered long term roll back of iran's ability to project power in the region beyond uh more than ten thousand two hundred sorties over thirty five thirteen thousand five hundred strikes we targeted the full breadth of the the regime's ability to project power We damaged or destroyed over eighty-five percent of Iran's ballistic missiles, drone and naval defense industrial base. Fourteen hundred fifty strikes on weapons manufacturing facilities set the regime's ability to build and stockpile ballistic missiles and long-range drones back by years. The factories and technical workforce that produce Iran's ballistic missiles, long-range attack drones and naval platforms have been degraded to the point that Iran cannot place its long-lost cap- capabilities in the near term. We destroyed or buried much of Iran's ballistic missiles.

Yeah.

Talk about air domain, uh, Iran's air and uh defense, um, air and air defense forces, functionally and operationally irrelevant. Uh, at sea we destroyed a hundred sixty-one vessels, total access, uh, across sixteen classes of warships, et cetera. Um, it it it it it goes on. So in short, in thirty-eight days we'd rolled back forty years of Iranian military investment. Um, uh, I I we seem to have we are talking about everything that was accomplished, everything that was done, that we, you know, it's uh we we did it. We we did it all. Uh, but in spite of the tactical success, none of the president's aims have been achieved. The authoritarian Iranian regime is still in power. They retain their stores of enriched uranium and a significant arsenal of ballistic missiles along with their regional proxy militias. The initial MOU committed Iran to nothing but reopening the Strait of Hormuz, which was opened before the war began. Meanwhile, the Iranian government received the ability to resume selling its oil. Before the war, the Strait was opened, ships went through freely, now there's a possibility that Iran will be able to charge tolls for passage through the Strait. Um, if the president is able to convince our Gulf allies, Iran could receive access to reconstruction fund worth nearly three hundred billion dollars. We will unfreeze the frozen assets to the tune of about a hundred billion dollars. Um, and finally it will allow the lifting of nearly all U. S. economic sanctions. And President Trump even made, said in an offhanded remark that Iran may be able to keep its ballistic missile program, which I just read from this report would seem to have been, um, pretty much demolished. It, uh, and, uh, it may, may not be there to keep it and that ensures that it's able to continue threatening our Middle East allies. Let me emphasize that President Trump said it would be OK if Iran kept its missiles, the missiles that it used to attack American bases and to attack Israel. So why did we go to war? A war that killed thirteen Americans and an untold amount of Iran Iranian civilians, and that cost the American people tens of billions of dollars in higher fuel, grocery prices, during a cost of living crisis. If we were simply going to walk away and let Iran keep conducting business as usual. The American military has incredible power and wielding that power is an awesome responsibility. President Trump has failed to wield that power with any responsibility, all of the tactical success in the world. to not make up for his fundamental strategic errors. It is one part of a larger pattern. The president tore up the joint comprehensive plan of action, the JPCOA, which subjected Iran to the strictest nuclear inspection regime in history, and successfully kept it from a rain enriching uranium for years, because he thought he could do better. He failed. And the American people, our Middle East allies, and our nation's credibility will pay the price. The Senate has now passed the same bipartisan war powers resolution that the House passed a few weeks ago. The President's strategic failure cannot be ignored, and even Republicans are now agreeing. This all must end. I urge my colleagues to support this amendment and I yield back.

Thank you.

General Lady, are there others wishing to address the amendment? Seeing none, the General Lady is recognized for one minute to close.

uh thank you chairman the constitution is not optional it is clear only congress has the authority to declare war yet here we are again watching the executive branch bypass the people's house at a time when families across america and in my home district are struggling to afford basic housing healthcare and groceries and with electricity bills projected to climb another ten percent this summer We cannot keep writing blank checks. This administration is pouring hard-earned taxpayer dollars into an escalating conflict abroad with no clear strategy, no plan for victory, and zero accountability. Our troops deserve better. Working class Americans deserve better. This war must end on terms that make Americans safer. stabilize the Middle East and prevent Iran from threatening our allies, our troops, and the global economy. Yeah, I agree with that. When drafting this amendment, I look back at how Congress finally brought the Vietnam War to a close in the nineteen seventies. It did not happen because a presidential decree. It happened because this very committee used its power of the purse to write a funding ban into a spending bill. Congress use its constitutional authority to end an endless war then. We have the exact same opportunity and the exact same responsibility to do that today. I urge my colleagues to vote yes on this amendment and I yield back.

Thank you, General Lady. The question is now on the amendment offered by the General Lady from California. All those in favor say aye.

aye

aye

all opposed say no

no no

can you chair the no's have it

roll call

roll call has been requested sufficient support has been demonstrated the clerk will call the roll

mister adderhall

no

mister adderhall no mister aguilar

aye

mister aguilar aye mister alfred

aye

mister alfred no mister amadei mister amadei no mrs. bice mrs. bice no mister bishop

aye

mister bishop aye mister calvert mister calvert no mister carter mister carter no mister case

aye

mister case aye mister siskamani

no

mister siskamani no mister klein

no

mister klein no mister cloud mister kleiburn

alright

mister kleiburn aye mister kleid

yeah you're good mr. K

mister kleid no mister kohl

no

mister kohl no mister kvejar miss dean miss dean aye mister laroe

aye

mister laroe aye mister diaz-ballart mister diaz bellart no mister edwards

no

mister edwards no mister elsie mister elsie no miss escobar

aye

miss escobar aye mister espiat

no mr. espieg-

mister fleischman

no

mister fleischman no miss frankel miss frankel

mr. erie i

miss frankel aye mr. franklin

no

mr. franklin no mr. guest

no

mr. guest no mister harder

aye

mister harder aye doctor harris doctor harris no mrs. hinson

no

mrs. hinson no mr. hoyer

aye

mr. hoyer aye mr. ivy

aye

mr. ivy aye mr. joyce miss captor

aye

miss captor aye mr. lolota miss lee

aye

miss lee aye miss letlow mr. eleven

aye

mr. eleven aye miss malloy miss malloy no miss mccullum

aye

miss mccollum aye miss ming

aye

miss ming aye mr. molinar

no

mr. molinar no mr. moore

no

mr. moore no mr. morelli

aye

mr. morelli aye mr. mervan

aye

mr. mervan aye mr. newhouse mr. newhouse no miss perez

aye

miss perez aye miss pingree

aye

miss pingree aye mr. pokan

ok

mr. pokan aye mr. quigley

aye

mr. quigley aye mr. reichenthaler mr. reichenthaler no mr. rogers

no

mr. rogers no mr. rutherford

no

mr. rutherford no mr. schrieve