Honoring Our WWII Merchant Mariners Act of 2023

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 5 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I thank Chairman Rogers for his outstanding leadership of the committee this year and in past years. He has done a great job of setting an example for bipartisan leadership in working this process all the way through to produce the product that we have before us today.

I thank the members of the House committee, both Republicans and Democrats, and all the staff. We have a very focused spirit on that committee that says we are not going to focus on partisanship. We are going to focus on getting the job done and getting the bill done.

Second, I think this process has been really good. We went through the normal process of hearing the bill in committee, with all kinds of amendments and debates that lasted a while. We did the same thing in the Rules Committee. We went to conference and produced what is an outstanding product in many, many respects. The chairman highlighted some of them.

Of the priorities that we have, number one is trying to make sure that we can recruit the best and the brightest to serve in our military and, crucially, that we support them.

The chairman did a great job of describing what is the best part of this bill this year, and that is the result of our commission, our task force, I guess, that we formed on quality of life in the military, ably led by Don Bacon on the Republican side and Chrissy Houlahan on our side, to produce a whole lot of the programs that the chairman mentioned. They are in there. That is crucially important.

We also have a couple of major problems in meeting our national security needs on production of the munitions and crucial equipment that we need. This bill attempts to address that and to expand our capacity.

To meet that need and to meet other needs, we also need our partners and allies. There are a number of provisions in this bill that strengthen those alliances on things like AUKUS, the European Defense Initiative, and the Indo-Pacific defense initiative. We do a great job of that.

Lastly is the big issue on technology, making the Pentagon get better at quickly buying innovative new technologies, particularly software, that we need to succeed.

Overall, that package is terrific. There is one problem, which is that a political partisan wedge issue was insisted on being included in this bill at the insistence of Republican leadership, not of the Armed Services Committee. I think it is really problematic.

The language seems somewhat benign. It basically says that minors experiencing gender dysphoria will not be allowed to receive any care that could lead to sterilization. The problem is this is denying healthcare to minors who clearly need it.

The ``could'' language is very problematic because, as we all know, anyone who has watched the last 15 seconds of any pharmaceutical ad, if you take any medical treatment, a lot of bad things could happen. The medical profession is always very careful about explaining all those things to you.

This could restrict the ability of minors experiencing gender dysphoria access to puberty blockers, access to hormone treatment therapy, access to critical care that they need, and for no good reason.

Now, look, there is a reasonable question about what care minors should receive in this area. We had floated the idea that if you want to look at this, you want to ask the medical profession what they think, what the studies said about when this care is appropriate, but we didn't do that. We have an outright ban on care that undoubtedly is saving lives of minors experiencing gender dysphoria and the anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts that come with that.

Just today, I got a phone call from a constituent, a daughter now 19 whose parents were in the military service. She received this type of care when she was 10, 11, 12, 13 years old. She believes that it saved her life. We are now going to deny that care.

Let me tell you, the treatments for minors with anxiety and depression are very controversial, not just in the trans community. It is the trans community that we choose to focus on for partisan political reasons.

I have concerns, having gone through an anxiety problem myself, with the number of antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications that are prescribed to minors. I think, in some instances, it is overprescribed and too quickly, but the other thing I know is that there are some minors who benefit enormously from that treatment.

I would never in a million years present a piece of legislation outright banning that treatment from any minor, yet that is what we do here. We are doing it because of ignorant, bigoted reasons against the trans community.

The medical profession has no dispute that, in some instances, this treatment is crucial to the health and well-being of our children, and we are now denying that to the children of servicemembers.

I think that is problematic, and I hope we will rethink it and remove that from this bill because it taints an otherwise excellent piece of legislation.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Houlahan), the ranking member of the House Committee on Armed Services' Panel on Quality of Life.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Courtney), the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Norcross), the ranking member of the House Committee on Armed Services Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Pocan), the chairman of the House Equality Caucus.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Jacobs), who is the ranking member of the House Equality Caucus and a member of the House Armed Services Committee.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes the gentleman from California (Mr. Khanna), who is the ranking member of the HASC Subcommittee on Cyber, Information Technologies, and Innovation.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, I want to address a little bit the concerns about the size of the Pentagon budget and the efficiency and effectiveness.

First of all, it is important to point out that the defense budget as a percentage of GDP is the lowest that it has been since after World War II. As our budget has grown and ballooned collectively, that has primarily been because of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, and a variety of other programs, all of which I enthusiastically support, but as a percentage of GDP we are actually spending less on defense now than we have, as I said, at any point since World War II.

The notion that the defense budget is ballooning out of control doesn't take into account inflation and growth. We are at a more reasonable place than some portray, first of all.

Second of all, we keep hearing, oh, they failed another audit.

What is actually happening is we are getting better on that point. We were not going to fix the audit problems that the Pentagon had 6, 7 years ago in a year or 2 or even 5. Nevertheless, just to give you a couple of ideas, Mr. Speaker, multiple agencies within the Pentagon are now passing their audits whereas they didn't before, including the United States Marine Corps.

In another decent measure of this, the Department of the Navy broadly has not passed its audit, but 5 or 6 years ago they were only 5 percent clean, and now they are 80 percent clean.

I don't want to leave the public with the mistaken impression that we are ignoring this problem or not making any progress on it. We are. A big part of the reason we are making progress on it is because of the leadership on the House Armed Services Committee.

Under Mr. Rogers and previously under me and before that under Mac Thornberry, this has been a priority for us in the House and the Senate for some time. We are making progress. We are not ignoring the problem. It is not a pass-fail. It is a matter of improvement. We are optimistic that in another 2 or 3 years we will get to that happy day when the entire Pentagon budget can pass that audit, but we had a big hole to dig out of. We are making progress on digging out of said hole, and I want to make sure people are aware of that.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Hawaii (Ms. Tokuda), a member of the House Armed Services Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close at this time, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time to close.

Mr. Speaker, I don't really have anything more to add than what I said in the opening statement, so I won't belabor the point. It is, in so many ways, a very good bill that was worked through the process.

I regret that we have injected, again, that partisan wedge issue into it. It is a controversial topic, trying to figure out what medical treatment transgender youth or youth experiencing gender dysphoria should get, but I worry in some instances that there is a denial of the existence of the condition. It is an absolute fact that some minors experience gender dysphoria.

Mr. Speaker, I guess the one thing I didn't say in my opening statement that is worth adding is, on TRICARE, there are about 1.8 million dependents. The estimates that I have gotten--and they are a little fuzzy because they won't give specifics for, I think, some obvious reasons--are that roughly 4,000 children are being treated out of that 1.8 million, and not all 4,000 of those children being treated are receiving the treatments that are being prohibited in this bill.

Mr. Speaker, we are talking about a small number of young people, but we are restricting access to their healthcare based on our opinion, not based on the opinion of the U.S. medical community. That, I think, is a mistake.

Again, I close on a positive note. I thank Chairman Rogers, HASC, the Armed Services Committee, and all the staff. I didn't thank the Senate in my opening remarks either. I suppose we have to.

All kidding aside, the Senate was good to work with on this process, and I think, ultimately, HASC and SASC have met their requirements and did what we have done for 63 consecutive years in working together on a bipartisan, bicameral bill, with the overwhelming bulk of the focus on what is best for the servicemen and -women who defend our country that we are so proud of.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 1612, I call up the bill (H.R. 5009) to reauthorize wildlife habitat and conservation programs, and for other purposes, with the Senate amendment thereto, and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I have a motion at the desk.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the House amendment to the Senate Amendment to H.R. 5009 and that I may include tabular material on the same.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 5009. For the first time in decades, this year's defense bill carries a different name. It is the Servicemember Quality of Life Improvement and National Defense Authorization Act. We did that to underscore the tremendous gains this bill makes toward improving the quality of life of our servicemembers and their families.

No servicemember should have to live in squalid conditions. No military family should have to rely on food stamps to feed their children. No one serving in the military should have to wait to see a doctor. That is exactly what many of our servicemembers are experiencing, especially junior enlisted personnel.

This bill goes a long way to fixing that. It includes a 15 percent pay raise for the junior enlisted. It expands allowances for housing and food. The bill significantly increases funding to improve existing barracks and build new ones. It encourages the services to pursue public-private partnerships to provide better unaccompanied housing.

The bill reduces dangerous healthcare wait times by waiving referral requirements for specialty care and expanding the number of DOD doctors and nurses with new special recruitment and pay incentives.

The bill improves access to childcare for military families by increasing investment in DOD childcare centers and fully funding childcare fee assistance programs.

The bill helps military spouses gain and retain employment by making it easier for them to transfer professional licenses between States.

We are making these historic improvements in the quality of life of our servicemembers because, now more than ever, we need to recruit and retain the best and the brightest. That is because the threats our Nation faces, especially those from China, are more complex now than they have been in over 40 years.

To deter these threats, the FY25 NDAA reforms acquisition authorities and fosters private-sector innovation to speed the fielding of game- changing new technologies that will give us the advantage in a conflict with China. It strengthens our security partnerships with Taiwan and our Pacific allies. It fully funds the modernization of our nuclear deterrent; protects U.S. military bases, the defense supply chain, and academic research from Chinese espionage; and builds the logistics networks in the Pacific the military needs to carry out operations against China. It includes new investments to retool and revitalize the industrial base to ensure it can deliver the systems we need to prevail in any conflict.

In the face of growing threats from China, it is also critical we restore the military's focus on lethality. The FY25 NDAA does so by ending divisive policies that have hurt recruiting, unit cohesion, and military readiness.

We all know that deterring these threats will be an expensive endeavor. That is why this bill includes over $30 billion in savings from cutting systems that can't survive a conflict with China and by reining in programs like the F-35 that are not delivering on existing requirements.

Mr. Speaker, this is a good bill and a fair compromise that will go a long way to ensure our Nation can successfully deter and defeat any adversary.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support the bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, below is a table representing $31.6 billion in savings over the Future Years Defense Program included in the Servicemember Quality of Life Improvement and National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2025.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Bacon), my friend and colleague who chaired the task force and worked hand in hand with Representative Houlahan from Pennsylvania in fashioning the 32 recommendations for the quality of life improvements that are embedded in this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Bergman), the chairman of the Subcommittee on Intelligence and Special Operations.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Kelly), the chairman of the Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Lamborn), the chairman of the Subcommittee on Strategic Forces.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Wittman), who is the chairman of the Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Gimenez).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Strong), who is my friend and colleague from the Alabama delegation and also a great member of the Armed Services Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to gentleman from Texas (Mr. Jackson), who is another outstanding Armed Services Committee member.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Wilson), who is one of the senior members of the Armed Services Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Michigan (Mrs. McClain).

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

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time is remaining.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Guam (Mr. Moylan).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Mike Garcia).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Virginia (Mrs. Kiggans), a fine member of the Armed Services Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nunn).

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nunn) for his words, and I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Murphy).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the ranking member because, as is obvious to anybody listening, he is very bright and very articulate, but he is also just a great friend and tremendous partner in working together in a bipartisan fashion year in and year out as we work on these important issues. I appreciate his help so much in fashioning this bill.

I will begrudgingly go ahead and acknowledge that our Senate counterparts have been pretty great to work with, too. Senator Reed and Senator Wicker are great gentlemen and have been real partners as we have gotten this bill to this point.

I thank the Armed Services Committee staff, as well as the leadership staff, the Rules Committee, the CBO, legislative counsel, the Parliamentarian's Office, and the Clerk's Office for all of their hard work in helping us get to where we are. I also thank Speaker Johnson for his leadership in moving this bill forward.

Mr. Speaker, the bill before us represents a bicameral compromise. Each corner has some wins and some losses, but the totality of the bill deserves support from all Members.

This bill would help revitalize our defense industrial base. It will build the ready, capable, and lethal fighting force we need to deter China and our other adversaries, and it will provide historic improvements in the quality of life of our servicemembers and their families.

Mr. Speaker, I urge all Members to support it, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2025 (NDAA).

It is with regret that I must oppose this legislation that sets policy for the Department of Defense. I do want to acknowledge the work that Ranking Member Smith and the Armed Services conferees did to remove many of the worst social policy riders contained in the version of this legislation that passed the House earlier this year, however, I have three problems that leave me unable to support the legislation today.

First, I want to address concerns I have long had with how the authorizers on the Armed Services Committee use the NDAA to constrain the Appropriations Committee in our work to responsibly fund the Department of Defense. In the House, I serve as the Ranking Member of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, which has the responsibility to allocate annual funding for the Department of Defense. As appropriators, we have a statutory defense budget cap under the Fiscal Responsibility Act that we must meet. Absent an action by Congress, we cannot appropriate beyond what the law allows. Unfortunately, while this NDAA conforms to the level of Fiscal Responsibility Act, it sets defense spending expectations that in the short-term will complicate appropriators while we work to complete the Fiscal Year 2025 Defense Appropriations Act. In the long-term it does nothing to control the unsustainable trajectory of defense spending that must at some point be confronted.

Let me provide an example of this clash of unsustainable spending priorities within our national security budget. That is the challenge of balancing support for our military personnel and their families with resourcing the rest of the defense budget. To be very clear, I have always supported pay raises for our troops. I worked with the Department of Defense to appropriately fund them when I was Chair of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee in the 117th Congress. I also improved funding for the Basic Allowance for Housing, Basic Allowance for Subsistence, childcare services, and safer barracks. But this NDAA includes a 4.5 percent pay raise for all service members, and an additional pay raise beyond that for junior enlisted service members that totals 14.5 percent. Appropriations will need to find the resources this fiscal year and in future fiscal years, to cover this cost. I also have concerns with how this could impact the balance of the entire military pay scale.

But we know that the quality-of-life concerns for military families go well beyond pay. Critically important things like affordable housing, quality healthcare, and childcare access must be addressed. And we know that the dramatically rising costs of resourcing our military personnel must be balanced against our other national security priorities. Among those include supporting the development of innovative defense technologies, fixing a fundamentally broken shipbuilding industry, modernizing major weapons programs, and ensuring our troops have the best training and equipment possible so that they can complete their missions and come home safely. We also live in a world of significant geopolitical conflict. That requires additional resources to fund U.S. operations overseas that were not planned for during the development of the Pentagon's annual budget.

This NDAA includes language requiring the Department and the Services to implement plans to get programs like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the Sentinel Program, or our fundamentally broken shipbuilding process under control. Based on my own experience with these programs, I question whether these efforts in the NDAA will be successful. But I do know that Congress cannot afford to wait any longer to fix a broken Pentagon acquisition process that produces delays and cost overruns in these and other programs.

Unfortunately, the costs of accepting this process are now running headfirst into the rising costs of increased military personnel pay and supporting quality-of-life improvement programs for military families. None of this is sustainable in the long-term, and it will fall to the appropriators to balance the dollars. At some point, Congress must stand up and make quicker and tougher decisions when it comes to festering procurement problems in the Department of Defense. We must fix our broken defense acquisition process and stop boxing the Appropriations Committee into corners.

Second, I am disappointed that this legislation includes a provision allowing the Air Force to transfer certain Air National Guard personnel with space missions to the Space Force absent consultation with the Governors. The precedent this will set in upending the Governor's authority over their National Guards is deeply concerning to me, and I made that clear in hearings the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee had with the Reserve Component and the Department of the

Air Force. That is also why nearly every Governor in the United States opposes this proposal. As a former member of the Minnesota House of Representatives, I worked at the state level with the Minnesota National Guard to provide them with the necessary state resources to do their jobs. So, it is unfortunate to see that the Air Force failed to follow a collaborative process with the Governors in advancing their legislative proposal in Congress. If they had, I think we could have found an outcome that satisfied all parties. I believe by accepting the more expansive Senate version of this language, that the Armed Services Committee has made a serious error they will regret.

Finally, I am deeply opposed to Speaker Johnson's eleventh-hour insertion of a controversial provision that was not included in the House version of the bill which would prohibit TRICARE from providing gender affirming health care to children in military families. This language is discriminatory. It is a signal to military families with transgender children that their service is not valued. Make no mistake, it will force service members to choose between continuing their own military service or providing their families with the health care they need and deserve. The language is also overly broad, and it is not clear what the text of the bill defines as ``medical interventions for the treatment of gender dysphoria that could result in sterilization.'' No one knows exactly what this means. But it will prevent the teenager of a service member, who is facing great health care challenges, from getting the physical and mental health support that they need. The decisions on how the TRICARE regulations will be written will be made by bureaucrats in Washington, not families and their doctors. Republicans in Congress should get their heads out of the personal lives of our military families and worry more about providing our service members with the support they need to perform their missions effectively and come home safely.

Mr. Speaker, again I am disappointed that I cannot support the legislation today. I urge my colleagues to vote no on this bill so we can get a more bipartisan compromise NDAA.

Mr. Speaker, as ranking member of Seapower, I thank all of its members for their input crafting this year's National Defense Authorization Act. I also salute my friend and outstanding chairman of the subcommittee, Trent Kelly, for his work crafting our bipartisan mark. I have a larger written statement which details our work, which I will submit for the Record, and I will use my time today on the issue which consumed the bulk of our time, namely the Virginia-class attack submarine program.

Mr. Speaker, the U.S. attack submarine fleet stands as our unmatched strategic advantage against any adversary across the globe. There is overwhelming consensus in Congress, Navy, and industry that we need to expand output for our own fleet and to satisfy our Nation's commitments to the AUKUS security agreement. Despite the slowdown caused by COVID, there are promising signs of the industry's recovery.

In 2024, the Navy commissioned the USS New Jersey, the 23rd Virginia sub, and will receive delivery of the USS Iowa next week. Next year, the Navy will take delivery of the USS Massachusetts and USS Idaho, the 25th and 26th boats in the class.

This bill recognizes this progress and rejects the Navy's woefully inadequate budget request, which would undermine procurement stability that is essential to growing the program's supply chain.

Simply put, to meet our strategic goals, we have no other choice than to move forward with a strong demand signal. Final language in this bill uses incremental authority to fund a second Virginia submarine and provides additional authorities that will allow shipyards to boost wages, a critical step to increase recruitment and retention among the metal trades workforce.

This is not pie in the sky. Indeed, just last month, OMB and the Navy belatedly acknowledged our committee's stance and sent over a supplemental request to Congress of nearly $6 billion for the Virginia- class submarine program. It is our hope that, with this bill and the supplemental request, the Navy and industry can achieve an even higher production cadence and execute the long overdue next block contract for the program.

This bill truly carries out our constitutional duty in Article 1, Section 8, ``to provide and maintain a Navy.''

I thank our subcommittee staff, Phil MacNaughton, Ian Bennitt, Kelly Goggin, Kyle Noyes, and Ethan Pelissier, for their work in crafting this product.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of the Servicemember Quality of Life Improvement and National Defense Authorization Act.

The 2025 NDAA prioritizes the servicemembers and military families who protect and defend the United States by making their quality of life the cornerstone of this legislation.

I had the honor of serving as the chairman of the committee's bipartisan military Quality of Life Panel side by side with my friend, Ranking Member Houlahan, and other distinguished members of this committee.

I thank Chairman Rogers and Ranking Member Smith for their support of our efforts and for their deep commitment to improving the quality of life for the men, women, and families who serve.

As a result of the tireless efforts of our members, the professional staff, and the personal staff, the legislation

before us delivers the most comprehensive military quality of life reforms in the history of this country. It includes a 14.5 percent pay raise for our junior enlisted members, a 4.5 percent pay raise for the rest of the force, improvements for the Basic Needs Allowance and cost of living allowances, improvements to unaccompanied and military family housing, and far-reaching reforms to expand access to medical care and childcare and to improve support to military spouses.

In addition, this year, I was able to serve as the chairman of the Cyber, Information Technologies, and Innovation Subcommittee. The 2025 NDAA advances the DOD's offensive and defensive posture in cyberspace and ensures our warfighters are equipped with the most modern and lethal technologies in the world.

I am grateful that several of my provisions were included in the final legislation, including the elevation of the Joint Force Headquarters-Department of Defense Information Networks to a sub- unified command within the U.S. Cyber Command and the establishment of the Department of Defense Hackathon program.

In addition, this bill includes needed hiring authorities for DOD's innovation enterprise, including DARPA, DIU, SCO, and SDA, which will ensure that the Department of Defense has access to the best and brightest technical talent.

Mr. Speaker, the 2025 NDAA is a strong defense bill that prioritizes our national security, all of those men and women who serve, and their families, and I encourage my colleagues to support this bill.