U.S.-South Africa Bilateral Relations Review Act

Mr. Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from the Virgin Islands (Ms. Plaskett).

Mr. Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Amo).

Mr. Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Green).

Mr. Chair, I urge adoption of the amendments en bloc, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

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

Mr. Chair, I will take this opportunity on the last en bloc package to give my closing remarks on the bill.

We do have a few more amendments to go, but this will be the last opportunity to speak about the broad issues surrounding the bill.

The first thing I will do is thank Chairman Rogers, his staff, and the entire team on the Armed Services Committee for the work that they have done in pulling this bill together. As we often lay out from the beginning of the process in committee, there were well over a thousand amendments offered in committee, well over a thousand amendments offered to the Rules Committee that we all had to sort through to try to produce a piece of legislation.

Coming out of committee, we produced an outstanding piece of legislation. I think even on the floor and even where we are at right now, this is a very, very good bill. The chairman, Mr. Rogers, deserves an immense amount of credit for getting us to the point where we have a very good bill that deals with a lot of incredibly important issues.

Most notably, as we have mentioned, this is a piece of legislation that does the most to help support the men and women who serve in the military and their families out of any piece of legislation that I have ever worked on.

I thank Don Bacon and Chrissy Houlahan and all of the members of the Quality of Life Panel that really did a deep dive to figure out what our servicemembers and their families need. They did a large number of hearings. They brought in veterans. They brought in Active- Duty members. They brought in family members to say what their life is like and how we can make it work better.

They put together a series of proposals that are really quite remarkable. Some of it is pay, certainly, but it also has to do with support for spouses in finding employment. It has to do with childcare, healthcare, education, housing. A wide range of issues are very aggressively addressed in this bill, and I strongly support those provisions.

I also have worked closely with the chairman on what I think is a critical issue of modernizing our military, making sure that we can hit the production numbers that we need to hit, to have an adequate deterrent in light of the challenges we face in the world and then also making sure that we modernize.

So much technology is crucial to warfare when it comes to drones, counterdrones, missiles, missile defense, and having secure information systems. There are a lot of provisions in this bill that put us in a better place to get those technologies quickly and field them.

We have a long way to go. I understand that. We are not where we need to be, but we have made a lot of progress and, again, that is a testimony to everybody who worked on this bill.

I also thank my staff on the Democratic side. We have a real spirit of bipartisanship in this committee that I think serves us well. They have done an outstanding job of getting us to where we are.

The amendments that were adopted yesterday, unfortunately, mean that I am going to oppose this bill and the bulk of the Caucus is going to oppose this bill as well, and there are three main reasons for that.

Number one is the prohibition on the travel policy within the military. This is something that we didn't need to address. We did not address it in committee, but it is a crucial issue. It is a crucial issue because so many States across the country have passed restrictive laws when it comes to access to healthcare for women.

You may find yourself stationed in one of those States, and you may not have access to that healthcare. The travel policy was meant as a way to give people serving and, crucially, their family members, access to the healthcare that they need.

Passing a piece of an amendment to this bill that basically eliminates that access to healthcare is a readiness problem and is a problem for the military.

Women serving, and even if you have a spouse and you are serving, you will have concerns as to whether or not you are going to be able to access the healthcare that you need. The stories have been documented over and over again: A woman has a miscarriage and can't get the healthcare that she needs because of some law that was passed.

This is a debate and a struggle that will be fought out State by State across the country, sadly, for years to come, but our servicemembers shouldn't be caught in that debate and denied healthcare when they need it. That provision alone is extremely problematic.

Also, along the healthcare theme, we have two severe restrictions now in this bill on trans people and their families receiving the healthcare they need. I am not going to presume to say what the right healthcare is. I am not a doctor. I am not a trans person. It should be between them and their doctor.

We placed two restrictions in this bill that presumed that the United States Congress is a better medical professional than a doctor. It is a restriction on that access.

Again, it hurts the military because not only if you are a trans person serving, but if you are someone who is serving who has a trans child, you now have to wrestle with the fact that if you are in the military, your child is not going to be able to get the healthcare that he or she may need. That is a problem for our servicemembers. It has got no business being in this bill. We had these discussions in committee and decided that we weren't going to do it and didn't. The fact that it is added undermines the credibility of this bill.

Lastly, we have the whole epic fight over diversity, equity, and inclusion. My position is the Department of Defense ought to be able to deal with that issue as is necessary and as they see fit. I understand we are in a very, very difficult culture war right now, but the restrictions in this bill that say you can't do DEI ever for anything fundamentally misunderstands that culture war. I don't think anybody, even on that side of the aisle, would disagree that this fight is going on.

If you are running the Department of Defense or even a commander of a local base, you have to deal with that. I don't like the extremes on either the left or the right when it comes to this.

It is absolutely true that there are some people on the left that interpret diversity, equity, inclusion to mean that basically our country is nothing but a racist country, has never been anything but a racist country, we ought to teach people that, and that all White people are racist and we ought to teach people that as well. That is wrong. That is not what the Democratic Party supports. It is certainly not what the Department of Defense is doing right now.

On the other side, we have the approach that says racism isn't a thing, let's pretend that it wasn't ever that big a deal, we don't have to deal with

it, and let's just blind ourselves and not deal with it whatsoever, which is equally ridiculous. As I have shown over and over again, there is still a problem with racism.

When you are trying to lead a bunch of young men and women in the military, they come to you with those issues. How do you deal with them?

What the Department of Defense very sensibly has done is, they have some people who are focused on how you deal with that. How do you make sure that we are going to work together cohesively as a unit without bias and prejudice?

This bill says nope, you have got to ignore it. You have got to act like none of this has happened. If you are in the Department of Defense, there is no culture war. There is nothing to be worried about. We are not going to let you deal with it at all. That is a really, really stupid approach.

Those three things got into this bill because the Rules Committee ruled them in order, and then by a reasonably narrow vote they passed. That is unfortunate because I believe it will undermine the ability of the military to do its job.

For that reason, I do oppose the bill at this point, but as I have told everybody I know, in the end, we will work it out.

For now, I think it is important to make that statement. I think those areas are wrong.

Again, I applaud the chairman and all of the people who have worked on this bill. Ninety-eight percent of the bill is really good, outstanding work. I know in the end, we will get that 98 percent through, but for now, I think it is really important to point out the deep flaws contained in those three areas.

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

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chair, this amendment revises section 1725 of the base text to strengthen the current reporting language regarding South Africa by including my legislation, H.R. 7256, the U.S.-South Africa Bilateral Relations Review Act, that passed a House Foreign Affairs Committee markup with strong bipartisan support back in March.

This legislation would simply require the Biden administration to make a determination on whether South Africa's actions are undermining the United States' national security or foreign policy interests and conduct a full review of the bilateral relationship between the U.S. and South Africa.

The only way that this would be threatening is if the ANC is actually undermining the United States and our partnership with the South African people. It is important to show the South African people that the United States is aware of its plight, and it is important to show the American people that we will no longer be played for fools.

Mr. Chair, on March 20, 2024, the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee reminded us that a year and a half ago, the Biden administration put out a U.S. strategy toward sub-Saharan Africa. How is that going? In the last year and a half, in Sudan, there have been 10 million displaced, 15,000 fatalities, and 5 million on the brink of starvation.

The world's largest humanitarian crisis rages while external actors fuel the fight without repercussion.

In the last year and a half, across the Sahel, the epidemic of coups has resulted in severe democratic retreating with the forced withdrawal of U.S. military personnel from Niger being the latest example.

In the last year and a half, in Central Africa, the conflict in eastern DRC threatens to escalate and destabilize the entire region.

In the last year and a half, in Ethiopia, 15,000 to 30,000 have already died; 8 million have fled their homes; and 25 million people, including 14 million children, are in desperate need of food, water, and medicine.

Mr. Chair, in the past year and a half, the situation on the Continent of Africa has gotten even more bleak. Are we so naive to believe that the same U.S. strategy that got it so wrong throughout the rest of sub-Saharan Africa somehow got it right in South Africa?

As the chairman of the Subcommittee on Africa, I am acutely aware of South Africa's important role on the African Continent, and I am proud that the United States has held cordial relationships with South Africa for nearly my entire life--over $8 billion in the very important PEPFAR assistance program since 2003, and growth in trade from $13.9 billion to $21 billion in 2021.

In fact, South Africa has been the United States' largest trading partner in Africa since 2014 and is home to over 600 American businesses. However, it is clear to me that the ANC of today is no longer the party of Mandela.

The ANC continuously moves away from its traditional stance of nonalignment in international affairs and has displayed consistent and overt anti-Israel sentiment in the wake of the devastating October 7 attacks against our number one ally in the Middle East.

These include then-South Africa Foreign Minister Pandor accepting a call from the Hamas leader on October 17 and visiting Tehran to meet with former President Raisi on October 22, South Africa filing a politically motivated and unfounded case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, and then-Foreign Minister Pandor stating back in March of this year that South Africa will arrest Israeli South Africans who are fighting in the Israeli Defense Forces upon their return and could even strip them of their citizenship.

In addition to this overt anti-Israel sentiment, the ANC has increased its alignment with the People's Republic of China and the Russian Federation, as well.

In February 2023, on the anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the ANC hosted joint military exercises with Russia and China off the coast of South Africa. Excuse me? I am a military veteran. These drills and exercises are practicing killing American sailors and soldiers. Additionally, the ANC hosted the BRICS Conference in Johannesburg in August 2023.

I am also concerned about recent allegations of illicit financing flowing to the ANC from Russia and other malign actors.

In December, the ANC allegedly accepted 10 million rand from a Kremlin-backed holding company called the Chancellor House Trust. Prior to this donation, the ANC was all but bankrupt, and law enforcement had begun to seize assets at the ANC campaign headquarters in Johannesburg. Similar allegations exist relating to Iran. I am concerned that Russia and Iran are seeking to buy official influence in South Africa.

It is the fundamental right of every sovereign nation to chart its own direction, hear me clearly, but actions have consequences and repercussions. American people have choices, too.

I believe in the potential of a U.S.-South Africa relationship, but it is only fair if South Africa desires to remain a close partner to the U.S. and meets us halfway.

The current uncertainty in South Africa following last month's elections makes the determinations required by this amendment all the more timely. In order to strategically engage with South Africa, it is necessary to ensure the United States Government has a contemporary review of the bilateral relationship.

That is what this amendment does. It requires a certification and review that will ensure that the entirety of the U.S. Government is aligned to the realities of the current U.S.-South Africa bilateral relationship.

Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, let me start out by saying happy birthday to the United States Army. I spent a fair amount of time in my life in uniform in the Army. It is a defining thing in anybody's life who has spent time in uniform, and it has been a wonderful institution for many, many Americans over a long period of time.

I also thank the chairman for the work on this bill. I know that while we are debating it here today and we are going to vote later today, that the work for next year's bill will start tomorrow. I thank him for his hard work.

This amendment is pretty straightforward. It just requires the Secretary of Defense to report on the use of taxpayer-funded union time by DOD employees. We are not saying it is bad. We are not saying it is good. We are not saying it is too much. It is too little. We just want to know what it is. We just want to know.

For those who may be unfamiliar, Congress granted certain employees the ability to perform certain tasks for labor unions while on duty. To be clear, that means that these employees are being paid by our constituents to work for union activities instead of doing the job that they were hired to perform.

I think maybe it would be fine if we said in the job description that your job is to do organized labor activities, but that is not what is in the job description. The job description is what is needed for the country for the Department of Defense; but instead of doing that work, you are doing other work. Unacceptably, the statistics on the use of official time are very few and far between.

Take a GAO report from January of 2017, so we are a few years beyond that now, which is telling in itself. According to the data from the Department of Veterans Affairs, 346 employees spent 100 percent of their time on official union activities instead of taking care of our Nation's veterans.

Now, the Trump administration took some steps to improve transparency, including actually reporting the use and the cost of official time by agencies.

A VA press release dated November 8, 2018, cites a particularly egregious example. A VA registered nurse, who was elected as a local union official, spent 100 percent of her time doing organized labor activities. That might be fine if the job description was organized labor activities, but the job description is registered nurse. How much time taking care of veterans as a nurse was this person spending? Well, zero, that is how much time.

To use examples from the Department of Defense, the most recent available data or estimates of the data from the Trump administration's final report was that 3,235 DOD employees used official time in FY19 for a total of 526,990 hours at a cost of millions upon tens of millions of dollars, not to mention the equipment.

We are here debating the National Defense Authorization Act.

There are very serious threats around the world. While we stand here, while we sit here, while we watch, the Russians are moving a fleet into Cuba about 100 miles off the coast of the United States of America. Now, I don't know about you, but for me, I want every DOD employee focused on keeping America safe.

All we are asking for, all this amendment asks for is a report so that we don't go blindly searching around to try and figure out how best to do that. If we have the information, we can make decisions. We don't have the information. This amendment says give us the information, track the information so we can make decisions.

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

Mr. Chairman, there are many things that I agree with the gentleman, my friend on the other side of the aisle. These are important tasks that need to be done. Disputes need to be resolved. We all care about the people who are working for the Federal Government, but to think that after 40 years we have gotten it perfect, and we can't take a look and we can't ask for a report I think is a little bit shortsighted. This isn't an attack on anyone because those things do need to be done.

However, I would say this: Yesterday I received an email from the AFL-CIO from someone working on official time. This is yesterday. Today is Friday. Yesterday was Thursday. The time stamp on it is 1:38, so 1338 if you are in the Army, is what time it came. That is in the middle of the business day. That is in the middle of working hours. That is not handling disputes. That is lobbying Members of Congress to vote one way or the other. We want them to be able to handle disputes and do the work to make sure employees are protected and the good work of DOD is done, but I, for one, would like a report on how this is the work that taxpayers should be paying for and how that is happening and how much it is happening. That is all we are asking for, Mr. Chairman, is a report.

Mr. Chairman, I include in the Record the email from the AFL-CIO.

Mr. Chairman, I urge support and yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I rise in opposition to the James amendment.

Mr. Chair, I opposed this bill when it was considered in the Foreign Affairs Committee, and I oppose this amendment today.

South Africa is a key partner of the United States and has been critical to driving innovation and investment on the Continent of Africa.

It is also true that South Africa has taken a number of policy stances I do not agree with and don't believe are helpful to advancing further peace and prosperity, including an all-too-forgiving stance on Russia.

If our goal as the United States is to achieve an open and cooperative partnership with South Africa that advances both our countries' interests, this amendment will not accomplish that.

Almost 2 years ago, the Biden administration put out a U.S. strategy toward sub-Saharan Africa, noting it is impossible to meet today's defining challenges without African contributions in leadership. Underpinning that strategy is the concept that the United States can offer positive choices to Africans, for instance, as they determine their own future.

In other words, we have the opportunity and responsibility to present options to our African partners that they can judge to be worthwhile and in their best interest. We don't get to impose our ideas, and we should be making a compelling case for why it makes sense to partner with the United States and work together to achieve shared interests.

Any past disagreements with South Africa are reasons for us to double down through diplomacy to find productive pathways for U.S.-South Africa cooperation.

This amendment unnecessarily duplicates a review process already laid out in law under the African Growth and Opportunity Act, or AGOA. As an AGOA country, South Africa already receives a yearly review that takes into consideration any activities that undermine U.S. national security or foreign policy interests. This review is a requirement for any country to be deemed eligible to participate in AGOA.

The administration already has the power and responsibility to review whether South Africa has participated in any such activities as part of the country's AGOA eligibility review. It seems like a core purpose of this legislation is to undermine the AGOA eligibility of Africa's largest economy. Instead of doing this, my Republican colleagues should be trying to reauthorize AGOA.

Moreover, this amendment was made in order despite the original bill having no defense nexus, which was allegedly the criteria decided by the majority. Both myself and the ranking member submitted Africa amendments that could have attracted bipartisan support, yet those amendments were not made in order.

Finally, this amendment suffers from a bad case of timing. South Africans recently made their voices heard through a democratic election, and South Africa is in the process of forming a new government as we speak.

We need to give the parties in South Africa time to establish a government and pursue the course laid out for them by South African voters. To conduct a review at this point in the process would be premature and potentially damaging to our interest of being a partner of choice for South Africa.

This is a strange, counterproductive, and condescending amendment, and this is exactly what African countries accuse us of doing. They say: Why do you wag your finger at us and tell us what we can't do, but then you don't do that to any other country?

They are right. They are not colonies. They are countries, independent, and this tired approach is what they are asking us to stop doing.

We would not do this to any country in Europe or Asia, so why are we doing this to an African country, especially South Africa, a democratic country that just held free and fair elections and is one of the most strategic partners that we have on the continent?

We need to show up, and we need to show up in a different kind of way. This amendment is not how we should show up for Africa.

Mr. Chair, in closing I want to say what I already said. This is condescending, it is counterproductive, and it is not the way that we should be engaging with our our democratic African partners on the continent.

The best way to counteract Russia and China is to show up with a different approach that is dignified, that is respectful, and that recognizes that these countries are independent so that they see that we are serious and that we are using all of the tools in our toolbox: diplomatic, defense, and development; not finger wagging.

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

Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 3 minutes.

This is a bipartisan amendment that I offer together with the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Norman). We may appear as the odd couple politically, but we share a common interest in trying to ensure that taxpayers get their money's worth, and that is true on military contracts as with every other aspect of government. When it comes to those contracts, we are concerned that that is not happening on too many of them.

We don't ask you to just take our word for it, but we have turned to a fellow named Shay Assad, sometimes referred to as the most disliked person in the Pentagon. He had four decades of experience in negotiating government contracts, served as the top director for procurement for both George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

He was central to an illuminating ``60 Minutes'' report last year about price gouging, which he described as unconscionable and widespread. He has returned to the Pentagon now as the director of procurement at the Air Force.

I know that Chairman Rogers and Mr. Smith have been concerned about this problem. Their committee has given it some attention, but I think we can supplement their efforts. Military contractors deserve to get a fair profit, but American taxpayers deserve to be treated fairly also.

We have seen a consolidation in the defense industry where 50 firms have been reduced to about 5 primary contractors. This is a very modest amendment. It requires essentially a one-time type of audit by a review panel that will conduct oversight on the reasonableness of prices on sole-sourced munitions and weapons systems, a 1-year investigation to determine whether the Department has achieved fair

prices in surveyed contracts and make recommendations made to the Armed Services Committee and the Pentagon to be sure that taxpayers are getting the best bang for their buck.

Just as one example that was cited, we have had inflation. All of us are concerned about it, but the cost of a Stinger missile of the type we have been shipping to Ukraine rose from $25,000 in 1991 to $400,000 to replace it. That is a little more than the increase in inflation and the improvements that may have occurred to the missile.

The Patriot, the PAC-3 missile, is very important in defense. Hundreds of millions of dollars were saved after a review, and it was found that the contractor was earning a 40 percent profit.

Our amendment would not change the procurement process or add new requirements of contractors. It would simply look at what has occurred in the past and determine if there is a way to improve it. It has the support of bipartisan groups across the ideological spectrum, including the R Street Institute, the Project on Government Oversight, the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste, Public Citizen, and American Economic Liberties Project.

There have been hundreds of amendments offered to the bill that we are considering. This is the only bipartisan amendment made in order for addressing reasonable prices.

Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues to support this modest step forward. It is a very modest step, but I think it can be helpful to the committee and to all of us in ensuring that we get our money's worth.

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

Mr. Chair, I thank the gentleman, and I know he shares my concern about this. I am eager to work with him on it. I appreciate his comments and will be delighted to work with him.

Sometimes this offer to work ends and begins at once. So long as this is not going to turn into mush in the conference committee or be totally dropped, I am ready to work with the gentleman and cooperate. I appreciate it.

We so often hear about waste, fraud, and abuse as being able to finance essentially the whole government. I know there are many contractors that are doing their job. They are vital to our security. I hope we can work together and find a way to get at the core of this problem and save taxpayers money at the same time we keep our military second to none.

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