Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize and thank Mr. Jesse Tolleson for his years of service to the United States Congress and congratulate him on his transition to commercial industry. A graduate of James Madison University, Jesse has served our country for over 22 years beginning as a Staff Assistant on the Armed Services Committee and became one of the few people in our committee's history to promote directly into a Professional Staff Member position.

Since 1999, Jesse has been responsible for evaluating and making recommendations for legislation, policy, and the authorization of appropriations across the entire spectrum of issues within the jurisdiction of the Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee. This is a significant responsibility as the complexity and volume of aviation, maritime and ground-based weapon systems, equipment, and programs in the subcommittee's jurisdiction includes hundreds of items valued in the tens of billions of dollars. Committee members have always recognized and depended upon Jesse's intelligence, command of programmatic and policy details, and uncompromising insistence on the objective facts from the defense agencies and industry.

Over these years, Jesse's recommendations have contributed to the readiness and modernization of our Armed Forces. It is no overstatement to say that Jesse's determination and commitment in the early years of the wars in the Middle East, especially his work in support of congressional acceleration of the development and procurement of improved body armor and Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles, saved the lives of many service members who served in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. The bipartisan and bicameral success that the Armed Services Committee has enjoyed for the last 22 years is due in no small part to Jesse Tolleson's professionalism, integrity, devotion to the committee's traditions, and collegiality.

Madam Speaker, on behalf of the House Armed Services Committee, we extend our deepest appreciation to Jesse for his dedicated and selfless service to the committee, the Congress, and the military and civilian personnel of the Armed Forces. We wish him and his family all the best as they start this next chapter.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to the order of the House of January 21, 2021, I call up the bill (H.R. 335) to provide for an exception to a limitation against appointment of persons as Secretary of Defense within seven years of relief from active duty as a regular commissioned officer of the Armed Forces, and ask

for its immediate consideration in the House.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 335.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, this is the bill that will grant a waiver, an exemption, to Lloyd Austin to be nominated and confirmed as the Secretary of Defense. This is required because there is a law on the books that says that you must be 7 years separated from military service in order to serve as Secretary of Defense.

Mr. Austin has been out for almost 5 years, but does not meet the 7- year requirement. So we need to pass this law to give him that exemption.

Now, this is not an easy question. Civilian control of the military is enormously important. That is why this law was put in place. But in looking at this, I feel there are three basic questions:

Number one, does the nominee in question understand and reassure us in the House--for the purposes of our vote on this portion of the waiver--that he understands and is committed to civilian control of the military?

Second, is there something about this particular nominee that makes it important to grant this exclusion, to grant this waiver?

And, third, is the individual qualified for the job? Because I do believe that that is important, and the details of their history is important in deciding that.

And I have, after a lot of thought and a lot of conversations with Mr. Austin and others, concluded that all three of those criteria are met in this instance.

Taking the last one first, Lloyd Austin is unquestionably highly qualified to be the Secretary of Defense. He had a distinguished career in the military, serving in multiple different command posts, including the commanding general in Iraq, the head of CENTCOM, and the Vice Chief of Staff of the Army. It is beyond question that Lloyd Austin is qualified for this job.

He just finished a 2-hour presentation before the Armed Services Committee, taking our questions, in which he made it absolutely clear that he has a keen understanding of the issues that are going to face the Secretary of Defense and the experience and the intelligence necessary to deal with them. He is highly qualified.

On the first question of civilian control of the military, he has assured us over and over again of how important that is, and, more importantly, his actions reflect that.

He has come before the House, which you do not typically have to do in order to be confirmed to a Secretary-level position, but he has called us and he has reached out to us in a way that, frankly, 4 years ago, the Trump administration did not permit then-Secretary-nominee Jim Mattis to do.

He has called countless members of the committee; he has met with us. He has showed us that he respects what is really one of the cornerstones of civilian control of the military, and that is the House and the Senate. We are the ones who have oversight over the Pentagon. He has shown that he respects that.

So I can tell you and all Members voting, without a shadow of a doubt, I have no concern whatsoever about Lloyd Austin upholding civilian control of the military.

And then there is the second issue: Why this person, in this instance? Mr. Austin will be the first African American nominated.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself an additional 1 minute.

Mr. Austin will be the first African American nominated to be Secretary of Defense, which is enormously important in and of itself.

The military has a problem with diversity. They have an insufficient number of people of color who have been advanced to high positions, to general and general flag officers. It is enormously important that they address that.

In addition, in this country, we have an enormous problem right now with White supremacy. We also have a problem within our military ranks.

Now, let me be perfectly clear: I have 100 percent confidence in our military. But this is an issue that they do need to address, the rise of White supremacy and White nationalism within their ranks. Having a highly qualified African American be Secretary of Defense will be an enormous step toward addressing that problem.

So I believe 100 percent Mr. Austin has met the criteria to be granted this exclusion.

Lastly, I want to say, this law still matters because without this law we wouldn't have this process. We would not have the opportunity to question Mr. Austin in advance of his confirmation in the Senate. So the law has upheld its meaning and its role, to maintain civilian control of the military, by forcing this conversation.

Mr. Speaker, I urge all Members to vote in favor of the waiver for Lloyd Austin, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds.

Mr. Speaker, we are going to have process arguments all year long in this House, but what was just said is really disingenuous. The only reason that we didn't go through regular order, the only reason we didn't have a public hearing, and the only reason we didn't have a vote in our committee is because the Republicans, as we stand here right now, have not appointed their members to the Armed Services Committee. So, therefore, we don't have a committee.

It is the day after Mr. Biden has become President. He needs his Secretary of Defense. I have begged the Republicans for the better part of a month to appoint their members so we could do our job.

So for them to choose not to appoint their members and then come to the floor crying about process, that is not really fair. We tried to do the process right. They stopped us from doing the process right. I want the record to reflect that.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Brown), a soon-to-be member of the Armed Services Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), the distinguished Speaker of the House.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Khanna).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the other gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Crow).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur).

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from Ohio.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Lynch).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Nevada (Mr. Horsford).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from the U.S. Virgin Islands (Ms. Plaskett).

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

Mr. Speaker, from this debate, it is clear that Mr. Austin is highly qualified to be Secretary of Defense. It is also clear that he has a full appreciation of the importance of civilian control of the military.

And, finally, it is clear that he is unique to this moment. His experiences as an African-American man coming up through the military puts him in a unique position to address the problems of White supremacy and a lack of diversity across the military in addition to all of the other challenges that we have heard from speakers today.

There is no question that he is qualified for this job and that he should be given the waiver so that he can serve in this position.

Mr. Speaker, I want to close by speaking to the urgency of why we need to do this today and how we got to this point.

When I first heard that Secretary Austin was going to be the selection, I will confess that I was not thrilled about it, not because of Secretary Austin--I know him, I have worked with him, and I think he will do an outstanding job--but because I realized the responsibility that it put on this House.

By and large--not ``by and large''--entirely, nominees are the business of the Senate. They confirm; the President picks. But because he picked someone who would require a waiver, we had to engage.

And I understood the urgency of getting that done, even while the Committee on Armed Services was still in the midst of dealing with the President's veto of the defense bill and trying to get the override done. But I knew the urgency. We had to find a way to get it done.

And, Mr. Speaker, I want to make perfectly clear that Mr. Rogers has been an outstanding partner in working towards the urgency of moving this forward. The process arguments get lost in the weeds. There were a whole bunch of things we had to do to be organized as a committee, to be ready to meet the requirements that we had, and we tried our best to do it.

Now, it is my humble opinion that we met those requirements even if we didn't have a public hearing. As has been stated by many Members, right before this vote we had 2 hours with Mr. Austin over in committee, in which members, Republican and Democratic members alike, were able to ask him questions and get his answers.

And I will tell you, I feel even stronger about the need to confirm him after that conversation. Not only was he intelligent, not only was he on point, not only did he understand the issues, but he had something, frankly, not everybody in the Pentagon has: He seemed to genuinely respect us. He seemed to genuinely want to answer our questions, want to deal with us as a coequal branch of government. That is enormously important.

But the urgency is why we are here today and why we didn't wait the extra week or 10 days. Joe Biden is President. He doesn't have a Secretary of Defense. Every day that goes past that he doesn't have a Secretary of Defense is a huge problem for a variety of reasons.

Let's start with the fact that much has been made that this waiver is problematic because we did it 4 years ago and now we are doing it again; the exception has become the rule.

Well, if it makes anybody feel better, there have actually been four separate Secretaries, people in the Secretary of Defense position, in between Mattis and Austin. So it is really just, sort of, two out of six.

That many people have churned through the leadership role in the Pentagon. And while the people at the Pentagon have done an amazing job fighting through that, it is still problematic to have to have that much turnover. The disruption that President Trump brought to the Pentagon cannot be underestimated.

I will never forget being in the meeting in the White House when we were talking about the pullout from Syria when someone dared to bring up Secretary Mattis's opinion--recently departed Secretary Mattis from the Department of Defense--and President Trump just lit in to Secretary Mattis, called him weak, called him a terrible human being.

Meanwhile, sitting right next to him was the incoming Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, who had worked with Jim Mattis. And this is his new boss.

Mr. Speaker, the disruption at the Pentagon has been enormous. They need a fully confirmed Secretary of Defense immediately to begin to thoroughly clean up that mess and get the Pentagon back to being as effective as it needs to be.

Also, and I will not belabor this point at all, we have a complex threat environment, right? Let's just say that. We heard about it on the committee today, about China, Russia, Iran, the Middle East, North Korea, not to mention the domestic insurrection that we all witnessed here just a couple of weeks ago. There is an urgency to this.

If there wasn't an urgency to this, I would have waited a week and said, okay, let's take however much time. People can figure out their ratios, and pick their members, and whatever.

There is an urgency. So instead of having the public hearing, we had a very, very successful briefing.

The House this time has done its job in a way that it didn't 4 years ago when we simply took Mattis, didn't hear from him, and voted on it.

There is a minor point of whether or not we mark this up in committee. This is not a complicated bill. Either Austin gets the waiver and he serves, or he doesn't.

There is really nothing to mark up. It is a question for the House. That is why we came to the full House.

This House, with the cooperation, I may say, of Mr. Rogers and all the Members has done its due diligence, above and beyond. We have concluded, without question, that the waiver is appropriate. Lloyd Austin will be an outstanding Secretary of Defense. He deserves this waiver, and our country deserves a fully confirmed Secretary of Defense as soon as we can possibly get that done, which, for the purposes of the House, is now.

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

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

Madam Speaker, I rise to congratulate Phil Lindquist on his retirement from Director of Governmental Affairs at the International Union of Painters and Allied Traders (IUPAT), District Council 5.

Me and my staff had the pleasure of working with Phil for several years. Rarely have I met someone with the expertise, knowledge, and passion Phil possesses. He was an extremely effective advocate for workers' rights and genuinely cared about the work he was doing. He recognized the need to have a strong, organized union and was an important leader in IUPAT, District Council 5.

For nearly two decades Phil was an incredible Director of Governmental Affairs to the union. The impact union leaders have are often overlooked, but they are incredibly important. I know his work- ethic, drive, and dedication will be missed by all and he has left an impressive legacy that will be hard for his successor to fill.

Madam Speaker, I thank Phil Lindquist for spending his career advancing the rights of workers and congratulate him on a well-deserved retirement.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor and congratulate Ray

Hall on his well-earned retirement after 33 years of service to the Congress at the Congressional Budget Office. Ray began his Congressional career in CBO's Budget Analysis Division in 1987 where he worked as a principal analyst in the Defense, International Affairs and Veterans' Affairs, Cost Estimates Unit.

During his time at CBO, Ray was recognized as a knowledgeable and experienced analyst. As one of the longest tenured members of CBO's Budget Analysis Division, he has accrued extensive knowledge of the programs and accounts in his portfolio.

Ray earned the gratitude of his colleagues at CBO and of his counterparts on the staff of the Committee on Armed Services. He established a solid working relationship with the Armed Services Committees, and for more than three decades was a valued contributor to CBO's work on the proposals for the annual National Defense Authorization Act. His technical feedback on legislative proposals made important contribution to the Armed Services Committees' success in achieving the timely enactment of the National Defense Authorization Act each year.

With his departure, Congressional Budget Office lost a great asset. Over the past 33 years, the Congressional Budget Office--and by extension, the Congress itself--has been fortunate to enjoy the effort Ray brought to his work. I know my colleagues join me in extending our thanks and appreciation to Ray for his service to our nation and our very best wishes for a happy and productive retirement.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and insert extraneous material on H.R. 2500.

Madam Chair, I thank the gentleman for offering this amendment.

I do agree with the opponent on this issue, that we have tried to hold Saudi Arabia accountable. As the gentleman mentioned, we have countlessly showed them how to better target.

We have tried various things legislatively. We have introduced legislation. We have done a bunch of different things to try to say we don't like what Saudi Arabia is doing.

But we have never actually done any of it, because the Trump administration has decided--and, as the gentleman points out, it wasn't just the Trump administration--that we are basically all in on Saudi Arabia. We are simply going to support them no matter what.

The murder of Jamal Khashoggi was appalling, and the fact that Saudi Arabia felt that they could do it and get away with it is the most alarming thing. Well, it is not the most alarming thing. The thing that is more alarming is they were right.

They figured that this administration would do nothing, just like as they bombed the schoolbus, as they bombed the funeral, as they bombed all of those civilian targets. As many times as we told them that we didn't want them to do that, they knew there would be no consequences, that, at the end of the day, the U.S. was not going to hold them accountable for that.

And the consequences are grave. As the gentleman points out, it actually empowers Iran because it sends a message to the world that we are willing to bomb and kill civilians and participate, however good intentioned, in what has become the largest humanitarian crisis in the world.

And it drives people into terrorists' arms because, yes, Iran is a problem, but ISIS and al-Qaida, I would submit to you, are a larger problem.

And they use this. They use our blind support for Saudi Arabia and for this war in Yemen against us.

Madam Chair, this is a good amendment, and I urge its adoption.

Madam Chair, meanwhile, back to a world that actually exists.

Talking about Ms. Jayapal's amendment, I think it is incredibly important because there is a problem going forward from the military that we have seen on many issues. You take it piece by piece--you look at the nuclear enterprise; you look at the Air Force; you look at how many ships we want; you look at counterterrorism--and you add up all the money over the course of the next 20 to 25 years, and we don't get there.

And this is the worst thing that we can do to our troops is to set up a group of missions that we don't have the funds to prepare them for. That is the largest problem that I see. We here in Congress decide that they ought to be able to do more than they can do, and we don't have the money to provide for it.

That is why it is so important that we don't do what the minority leader just suggested we do, which is basically shut down as a body and say whatever the Pentagon wants, we just give it to them and hope that they figure it out.

We have a role to play in that process, to make sure that the money is spent well because--I know this is news to the other side--the Pentagon hasn't always been right. They haven't always spent their money well. And that is the understatement of the morning.

So we need to know: Where are they spending the money? How can we better understand that?

Where the nuclear enterprise is concerned, we are set to spend a lot of money. I know it is only 6 percent of the defense budget, but 6 percent of the defense budget is a lot of money. We need to better understand it.

I urge support for the amendment.

Madam Chair, pursuant to House Resolution 476, I offer amendments en bloc.

Madam Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Cunningham).

Madam Chair, it is just me. I am going to close, so I reserve the balance of my time.

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

First of all, I want to echo the comments of the ranking member and thank our staffs for the work on this.

I don't have the statistics in front of me, but there are literally thousands of proposals for this bill that are presented at the beginning of the committee process, working through to the full floor.

Both staffs, Republican and Democratic--I think we are the only committee in Congress, or in the House, at any rate, that actually shares staff. We share the budget. We don't just divide it up.

So, when I say thank you, I am thanking the Republican and Democratic members of staff. They do an enormous amount of incredible work to produce this product.

I believe, as I will mention later, that we upheld the bipartisan tradition of this bill, worked with Republicans and Democrats, and produced a very good product. But we must acknowledge the incredible hard work that is done by the people sitting behind me, a lot of people over in the building and a lot of people over there. I appreciate that.

I also appreciate the working relationship that I have with the ranking member. When I was the ranking member and he was the chair, we worked together on a lot of issues. We have continued to do so. I appreciate that leadership, and I appreciate his commitment to the defense bill.

I think this is a good bill. I just want to mention a few things in it that are positive.

First of all, at $733 billion--and, again, more on that later--this is the largest defense bill in the history of the country. But within this bill, we also focus on cutting waste and dramatically increasing accountability. I think the taxpayers, and, yes, the troops, want to make sure that the Pentagon doesn't just spend money, but that they spend it well.

We finally live up to the rhetoric and we give the widows the money that they have been asking for. Just about every single Republican Member of Congress is a cosponsor of this bill-- Joe Wilson is the prime sponsor--that fully funds widows' benefits. After cosponsoring it for 9 years, the Republicans were in charge and doing nothing about it, we actually put it in the bill and we are going to pass it. And yet, to hear them say that it is somehow a bad thing to basically do what they have been emptily promising for 8 years, I think, is a very big positive on the bill.

We have a tenant's bill of rights to protect families and the housing that we have heard so many complaints about. We step up to try to protect those families.

We have paid family and medical leave for all Federal employees, including all DOD employees.

We have provisions to protect our military and our communities from the dangerous chemicals in PFAS that we have learned so much about.

We make sure that troops get the pay raise that they deserve: a 3.1 percent pay raise.

And, yes, we also have provisions to try to make sure that the children who are being held by DOD within the migrant community are adequately protected.

I think that is all important. And yet, for all of that, the Republicans oppose the bill, and it raises the question: Why?

Earlier on, the chairman quoted me from a few years ago when we opposed the bill. As I said, opposing the bill doesn't mean you are against our troops, and I stand by that. Now, it is interesting to note that a large number of Members on that side at the time said that much and much more: that to oppose this bill means you are against national security and against those troops.

To his credit, the then-chairman, Mr. Thornberry, didn't say that. What he said was: Look, on the defense bill, you can always have a bunch of excuses for why you don't support it. But, at the end of the day, if you don't support it, you are not supporting funding our military and you are not supporting giving our troops what they need.

That is now what, en masse, the Republicans are going to do.

So the question is: Why? What is their list of excuses?

It starts with that top line. And this was their most brilliant political move.

It has been quoted that Chairman Dunford said that we needed to have inflation, plus 3 to 5 percent. That was in a newspaper article. I thought about that. That is not actually what they said. Secretary Mattis was very clear. Once we got the deal last year to get to $716 billion, he said we need inflation. That is what I remember. But how do we know that is true?

Chairman Dunford and Secretary Mattis, a year ago, proposed $733 billion. So if they believed we needed inflation, plus 3 to 5 percent, are they just bad at math? Did they not have a calculator available to figure out that $733 billion isn't that? No. It is what they said they needed.

I think we now know why the Republicans at the last minute said: No, we have to have $750 billion: so they can come up here and claim that we cut stuff. That is just ridiculous.

There are two great examples.

The distinguished minority leader--it is possible that he is just this stupid, but I don't think it is true--said that we cut hypersonic weapons. How much did we cut them by? We increased them by $300 million over last year.

But, yes, we reduced them. It wasn't actually a hypersonic weapon, but we made a reduction in the $750 billion request. So you create the $750 billion request and then you say you are cutting. We are not cutting, we are increasing. Which is why I say, if we had come in at $750 billion, they would have said $800 billion and then stood up there and accused us of everything else that we cut.

And the personnel account is another great example: a $1.2 billion cut. Last year, in their budget, they cut the personnel account by $1.7 billion because the Pentagon frequently asks for personnel funds that are not justified. That is our job.

So only in the minds of a Republican can a $733 billion defense budget, that is an increase over last year, be a cut. There are not cuts to this budget in that way. We fully fund the military.

And then we hear their argument about one nuclear weapon that we are not going to field. You heard what they said: it is unilateral nuclear disarmament.

To cut one weapon when we have thousands of nuclear weapons?

There was no way the Republican Party was ever going to vote for a bill put together by Democrats. And these people behind me, they worked their butts off to make this bipartisan. What the minority leader said is the biggest insult I have ever heard to the members of the staff in 23 years on this committee. To dismiss them as partisan, not interested in national security is an incredible insult to the hard work that they do, and nobody in this House, Republican or Democrat, should let a statement like that stand.

We have put together a good bill. The reason Republicans oppose it is for purely partisan reasons. And, that is, they want to be able to give speeches, like the one of the minority leader who said Democrats don't care about national security. We care about national security. In fact, I will tell you, our bill isn't just good, it is better than the ones that the Republican Party have put together.

We believe the Pentagon should be accountable. They said $733 billion. As recently as December of this year, the ranking member put an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal saying we had to

have $733 billion. And now, all of a sudden, $733 billion isn't just not the right number, ``it is socialism,'' ``it is destroying the world as we know it,'' ``we can't support it.'' That is ridiculous. It is a partisan argument. It is what the minority does. But it has never been what we have done on this bill.

I believe in the bipartisanship of this committee. And as angry as I was, sitting there listening to the minority leader insult all of the people who have worked to make this bill bipartisan--and you can oppose it, that is fine--but to say that we don't care about national security, that we are a bunch of socialists who don't want to work with Republicans, is a bald-faced lie.

And the last statistic on that is the amendment thing--and I love this--we made more amendments in order on this defense bill this year than ever. The Republicans actually submitted a lot fewer amendments than we did. We submitted 480, they submitted 201. And then we actually agreed with the overwhelming majority of their amendments and put them in en bloc packages. They didn't agree with the overwhelming majority of our amendments, so we didn't put them in en bloc packages, which gives them the statistic that only one of their amendments was debated.

So by working with them and agreeing with them to include 50 percent of their amendments--the most amendments ever offered--that is partisan. And I can't help but feel like they were setting us up. They didn't want to work with us. No matter how hard we tried, no matter how many hours we spent working with them, they wanted to come to the floor today and say that Democrats don't care about national security.

That is shameful. I am going to get over it. We are going to work past it--I think national security is too important to get petty about these things--and we are going to keep working together.

The good news is that we have a very good bill. It is accountable. It doesn't just give the Pentagon money. Yes, we eliminate senseless discrimination by stopping the ban on transgender troops.

I will say the other side is wrong. They have voted against the defense bill before. They voted against it in 2010 because we repealed Don't Ask, Don't Tell. They were wrong then and they are wrong now. Discrimination in the military doesn't make us safer. Mindless bigotry doesn't make us safer.

I believe strongly in this bill. The good news is, we got this, we are going to pass it, even if the other side is going to decide to play partisan politics.

Madam Chair, I urge support for the bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Madam Speaker, I rise in opposition to the motion to recommit.

We have worked in a bipartisan fashion, and the worst part about it is they all know that because we spent 6 months--my staff and your staff--working together to produce this bill.

The only petty partisanship on this bill is coming purely from the Republican Party that will put their partisan desires against voting for it.

Why?

Because Democrats are in charge. As we have seen time and again on this floor, no matter how much we work with them and how much we cooperate with them, at the end of the day, partisanship trumps all. They will not vote for anything Democrats do, including, by the way, in this bill we have the largest pay raise for our troops in 10 years, and Republicans are going to vote against that pay raise.

We have in this bill money for widows. The Republicans have cosponsored this bill for 10 years, telling us how much they care about making sure that the widows of our troops get money, and now that we do it, after 10 years we put it in the bill, they are going to vote against it just so they can say that Democrats don't support national security.

There is $733 billion in this bill, the largest Defense bill in the history of the country, and it is not enough. The response is that it can always be more. No matter what it is, they are going to say do more. The Pentagon is apparently the only place in the country where Republicans feel that you can throw money at the problem relentlessly.

This body has raised pay for our troops every single year, and, again, I will simply close by saying that we have the largest pay raise in 10 years in this bill for our troops.

We have worked in a bipartisan manner. It is easy to say: well, I am going to vote ``no'' and therefore it is partisan.

There is no good reason for it. This should be a bipartisan bill. It supports our troops, and it supports our national security.

Madam Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the gentlewoman from New Jersey (Ms. Sherrill), who is a Navy veteran who has fought for our country as well and is a member of the Armed Services Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the Clerk be authorized to make technical corrections in the engrossment of H.R. 2500, including corrections in spelling, punctuation, section and title numbering, cross-referencing, conforming amendments to the table of contents and short titles, the insertion of appropriate headings; and to provide instructions that amendment No. 234 printed in part B of House Report 116-143 be inserted at the end of subtitle G of title 28, and that the instruction in amendment No. 64 printed in part B of House Report 116-143 be changed from ``page 387, after line 7'' to ``page 387, after line 15.''

Mr. Chair, I respect the gentleman's point about how we need to work towards an agreement to how Congress can have the most constructive role possible on arms sales.

The concern here is the tendency of the White House to declare an emergency when they simply want to do something that we haven't allowed them to do. It is troubling because it takes us out of the process, so we need to find a way to make sure that they can't do that.

It is not a huge mystery why these arms sales have been held up. We are concerned about Iran's malign influence. We are also concerned about the actions that Saudi Arabia has been taking in that region that could be stirring up conflict and making it easier for Iran to have that malign influence; quite specifically, killing civilians in Yemen in a way that generates sympathy, certainly, for the Houthis in Yemen but then sympathy for that side.

So, we are worried about the way Saudi Arabia is conducting this war, certainly, and we are also worried about other actions by Saudi Arabia. Certainly, the murder of the journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, has not been answered for to this point.

So, simply selling weapons to Saudi Arabia at this point is something that is going to take time and is going to raise questions.

For the President to simply bypass us, taking us out of the process in that situation, I think, undermines our role.

That is the purpose of this amendment, and I urge adoption.

Mr. Chairman, I rise to offer amendment No. 26 as the designee of Mr. Khanna.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment is a variation on a bill that this House passed and the Senate passed as well that the President vetoed that would cut off any U.S. support for the Saudi coalition that is fighting in Yemen.

And I will agree with some discussion that came earlier that this is a complicated situation because we are concerned about the malign influence of Iran in the region. But the problem is the way the war has been conducted in Yemen.

As I mentioned earlier on the previous amendment, the civilian casualties and the way the war has been conducted has undermined, I believe, our efforts to arrive at a peaceful solution and to begin to limit the Iranian influence in the region.

I met with Saudi Arabian officials as they explained to me what their targeting strategy was, and how they were trying to mitigate civilian casualties, but I was not impressed because whatever they showed me on these pieces of paper, it has been well-documented that they bombed a school bus, killing a large number of children. They actually bombed a funeral, a funeral that had a lot of the key leaders in Yemen at it that were going to be responsible for negotiating a peace agreement. And on countless other instances they have bombed civilian targets.

There is also a very aggressive blockade going on in Yemen that is having a devastating humanitarian impact.

Now, I understand that Iran is also doing things that we should oppose. They are killing civilians; they are stirring up difficulties. But we are not supporting Iran. We are not responsible for that piece of it.

But to the extent that we participate in helping Saudi Arabia, through intelligence sharing, through refueling, through a variety of different means, we are participating in the atrocities that are being committed on that side, and we should not be. It is not what is going to lead us to a peaceful solution.

I also want to emphasize that this amendment, as did the bill that we passed, very carefully carves out the activity that we are engaged in in Yemen to counter violent extremist groups like al-Qaida and ISIS that have arisen in the region.

We have a counterterrorism presence in Yemen. This amendment in no way restricts us from continuing that counterterrorism activity. This is focused on the civil war in Yemen.

And it is worth noting that, as we get to the point now where Iran is involved, that is not the way it started. Basically, the Houthis in Yemen were an oppressed minority and suffered decades of mistreatment at the hands of whoever happened to be in charge in Yemen, which led to the revolt.

Now, since that time, the Houthis have committed all manner of atrocities, as well as the war moved forward. But initially, this was a civil war that doesn't really have anything to do with the terrorism fight that we are doing. And I think it is incredibly important for the credibility of our foreign policy to clearly differentiate between our activities, our legitimate activities, in Yemen to stop those terrorists in Yemen who threaten us and threaten our allies in the region, and the activities of this broader civil war that, as I said, I believe, is merely creating more violence in the Middle East and empowering Iran by creating widespread sympathy across the board and in the United States for the Houthis and for the people in Yemen who are being the victims of these bombing attacks.

The U.S. should step back from this. And if Saudi Arabia is the great ally that everyone has said they are, we should be able to have a conversation with them about how they change their actions, so we can be in a better position to support them and lead toward greater peace in the region and contain Iran. That is what we need to do.

But the current policy isn't working, so this amendment makes it clear the United States is not supporting the Saudi-led coalition that is engaged in the civil war in Yemen, and I urge support.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I have no further speakers and I am prepared to close.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I am prepared to close. I reserve the balance of my time.

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

I think the intelligence sharing point the gentleman from Arkansas made is very important. Let me say, there are multiple countries involved in this coalition in Yemen.

In working with the UAE, for instance, they actually do take steps to minimize civilian casualties and are reasonably successful about it in the operations that they have conducted, both from the air and the ground.

Saudi Arabia has not. And believe me, I certainly understood the malign influence of Iran and their relationship with the Houthis. But Saudi Arabia, time and time again, regrettably, has not used this intelligence sharing in a way that minimizes civilian casualties.

I had cited the instances earlier of the school bus that was bombed; the funeral party that was bombed; the civilians who are continually hit. They are not using this intelligence sharing in a way to minimize civilian casualties. And I think we need to make a statement that they are going to have to change their ways before we continue to do this.

On the broader issue, and that is really what Yemen is about for U.S. policy purposes, is Iran's influence in the region and, also, the role that Saudi Arabia plays in the violence. And the problem I have with the administration's policy right now is it would do nothing to contain what Saudi Arabia is doing, which only exacerbates the violence and creates openings for Iran. So we need to balance that.

As far Iran is concerned, right now it is hard to say where the administration's policy is going. It is a maximum pressure campaign. We have seen Iran lash out since we abandoned the nuclear deal. They are now moving more in the direction of developing a nuclear weapon than they were before we abandoned the nuclear deal.

The administration is now saying that they want to force Iran to the table to stop them from getting a nuclear weapon.

We need a better policy in Iran. I urge support for the amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, three quick points.

First of all, Richard Nixon era or not, I think we all agree that the missile right now is working. I certainly hope it is since we are relying on it as a key part of our nuclear deterrent.

We have a lot of weapons systems. I mean, I am surprised that the B- 52 bomber is still functional, but it is.

To imply that somehow because it is old, by definition, it doesn't work, I hope that is not true. In fact, I know it is not true because the current missile works perfectly fine and is a more than adequate deterrent.

Second, the studies that have been done were trying to figure out if we could get away with keeping this missile for the entire projected 80-year lifespan of its replacement. The studies have come back and said, no, it probably will not last 80 years. We have not studied whether or not it could last another 25 or another 50.

That is the purpose of this amendment. That would save us money.

Look, we need a nuclear deterrent. I don't believe the gentleman from Oregon--certainly, I don't--supports getting rid of our nuclear weapons. The question is, how many do we need? What does the deterrent look like? What makes sense?

It is clear that this missile works now. If we did this study, it is quite reasonable to presume that it would work another 10, 20, 30 years from now. Then that money could be used for other defense priorities.

This is to answer that question, which is very important.

I will skip the third point.

Mr. Chair, all I was going to say is that the voice vote in our committee was not overwhelming. I am the one who called the voice vote, and it was my sense that the amendment was agreed to in the committee, but it was not overwhelming. There was a large number of members of the Armed Services Committee who supported the proposal that Mr. Blumenauer is now making.

Mr. Chairman, this is a little bit smaller than what the gentleman from Ohio implied. We are stopping the funding of this program. Actually, what we are stopping is the additional $185 million request that NNSA and the President requested in this budget on top of this. The missile would continue to be funded.

This is a concern we had in committee. We talked about it and we let it go.

But they have not really told us what they are going to do with this additional $185 million. And we have concerns, in addition to the concerns that Mr. Blumenauer raised about the efficacy of the program, about whether or not they are going to be able to execute this $185 million and what their exact timeline is for the program. In fact, the Air Force recently said that they were delaying by a year or two certain steps in the development of this missile while saying they were also going to be able to still meet the ultimate deadline for deployment.

But the specific $185 million that is expensed is an amount that was asked for in addition to what had originally been planned for FY20. We do not have an adequate explanation, in my view, and in Mr. Blumenauer's view, from DOD as to why they want that additional $185 million, and that is the purpose of this. It is not studying the entire missile. It is saying, why are you accelerating the program and asking for this additional money? So I support this amendment.

Mr. Chair, pursuant to House Resolution 476, I offer amendments en bloc.

Mr. Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Sherman).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Washington (Ms. Jayapal), my fellow Washingtonian.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Torres).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Shalala).

Mr. Chair, I don't have any more speakers, so I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I have no further speakers, so I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Chairman, this is an amendment that Mr. Amash, Ms. Lee, I, and others have worked on in previous years. It is a very simple principle.

Certainly, with the 9/11 attacks, with the terrorism threat that we face, it is very real, and we need to make sure that our country is in a position to defend ourselves against that.

But we also need to make sure that we protect the thing that gives us our greatest strength, and that is the rule of law in our Constitution. This amendment simply says you cannot use law of war detention against people in the United States of America.

Our Article III courts have worked amazingly well throughout the history of this country. Through many conflicts and many threats, they worked very well to bring people to justice, lock them up, and protect us.

In fact, there are hundreds of terrorists right now in U.S. prisons who were prosecuted under Article III of the Constitution.

Article III and the history of the Supreme Court and other courts that have laid out the laws that give us the basic protections are essential to our liberty in this country.

We can protect ourselves and maintain our basic liberties. That is what this amendment does.

Mr. Chair, I appreciate Mr. Amash bringing it, and I urge support.

Mr. Chair, pursuant to House Resolution 476, I offer amendments en bloc.

Mr. Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Michigan (Mrs. Dingell).

Mr. Chair, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee).

Mr. Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Panetta).

Mr. Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Levin).

Mr. Chairman, I urge adoption of en bloc No. 6, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, pursuant to House Resolution 476, I offer amendments en bloc.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from New Hampshire (Ms. Kuster).

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman from New Hampshire for her leadership on this issue, and I agree that it is a very important issue.

Absolutely, we will work with the Senate to do our best to address it once we get to conference, and, again, I thank the gentlewoman for her work on this.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from New Mexico (Ms. Haaland), a member of the committee.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Gottheimer).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Langevin).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Oklahoma (Ms. Kendra S. Horn).

Mr. Chair, I have no further speakers. I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Chair, I appreciate the gentleman's comments, and I think he is absolutely right in the first half, and absolutely wrong in the second half.

I would disagree with my colleague's comments that Democrats have not had an opportunity to contribute to the process. We have in the past. We worked in a bipartisan way.

It is, however, not true that this year everything is different. Something was different, but not what I believe the ranking member said. That is that we did include a large number of Republican provisions, certainly in committee by the amendment process, and on the floor.

The one sort of stark number here is, on the floor, we have not had a large number of Republican amendments. There are a couple of reasons for that. Number one, we have, I think, 15 or 16 en bloc packages, and there are a large number of Republican amendments contained in that en bloc package.

But as far as standalone amendments, there are a couple of problems. One, traditionally, and this has happened to us as well, we had a lot of our more controversial amendments, unless the majority party--at the time, the Republicans--thought it was to their advantage to have us vote on something that made us look bad, then they would let it in. Otherwise, they wouldn't.

We kind of did the same thing. If there were amendments that we didn't want, we didn't keep them. We did allow for Republican priorities.

The reason, however, that there are fewer Republican amendments than in

the past is because, for a long time, it has been the minority party's plan this year to not support this bill. This is not a new thing. This has been a debate.

As I mentioned yesterday, the reason for that was purely partisan. And it is traditional. I have been working as a legislator long enough to know that when Members are in the minority, they want the majority party to fail. So whatever bill they are bringing up, the minority tries to defeat it to gain leverage.

The Armed Services Committee has traditionally been different from that. We don't do that on this bill. We work together in a collaborative process to create the bill.

But this year, the minority party decided to treat the defense bill like every other bill: We are in the minority. We want the bill to fail.

The evidence of that is that I have worked with a lot of Members to try to get amendments straightened out in Rules. On one in particular, we worked with Representative Stefanik.

Mr. Chair, she didn't like the way we did it, so she wanted to fix it. It had to do with the Under Secretary for Intelligence and the title. It is kind of irrelevant what it was, but we worked with her, and we got it solved.

We had it ready to go, and she pulled it today. She said she didn't want to do it.

As I understand it, the reason was that she didn't want to feel obligated to vote for the bill because we had cooperated and worked with her. Well, how obnoxious of us to do that.

The games that are being played here are not primarily being played by us.

Let me say to this body that I am 100 percent committed to maintaining the bipartisanship of this committee, and what happened this year won't change that at all.

I will say, in the past, the Republicans have not been as kind. We had a Member who voted against the bill in committee a few years back. He found out the next year that he got nothing in the bill because voting against the bill was not allowed. We had a lot of Members vote against it this year. I am not going to do that. We are going to keep working together.

I want everyone listening to know that we on the Democratic side are not the ones being partisan in this bill.

Madam Chair, pursuant to House Resolution 476, I offer amendments en bloc No. 16.

Madam Chair, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Ruiz).

Madam Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Virginia (Ms. Wexton).

Madam Chair, we have no further speakers. I urge adoption of the en bloc package, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment.

Madam Chair, I yield myself 2 minutes.

First of all, if you were to say ``unilateral nuclear disarmament'' to most people, I think, if you look at the plain language of the words, what that would say is we are going to universally nuclear disarm all nuclear weapons. That is what unilateral nuclear disarmament would mean. So that is not what we are doing here.

Again, we literally have thousands of nuclear weapons. What we are doing here is trying to decide whether or not we want to deploy one in a different form, which is a smaller yield.

So we are not--let me assure my colleagues again--getting rid of all of our nuclear weapons and unilaterally disarming from nuclear weapons. We are not doing that.

This is one weapon with a small yield.

The other thing that is worth noting; there is actually no evidence that the Russians have decided that they are going to use a low-yield nuclear weapon first without any new clear provocation.

I have had this debate with a number of different people. There have been various conversations about this; just like we have had various conversations about a wide range of scenarios. But it is not at all clear that Russia has decided to launch a nuclear weapon.

I believe that the purpose of a nuclear arsenal is deterrence; and we ought to find a clear message. In fact, I find this debate, which we have been having for a while, very dangerous because what we are saying to the Russians is there is a scenario under which they can use a nuclear weapon and we won't respond, and I don't think that should ever be true.

We should say a nuclear weapon is a red line. You step across it, we will respond.

It is also very untrue--this debate has said, Well, gosh, if they do a low yield, we have no option but to hit them with something 10 times as large.

We have a wide range of yields on our nuclear weapons, a wide range of options in terms of where and when we could respond.

But what introducing a low-yield nuclear weapon does is we take the Russian mutterings about doing an escalate to de-escalate and say, yeah, we are with you. This could happen.

Former Secretary of State George Shultz, a Republican, is the one who has been most critical of deployment of this weapon, because, as he correctly states, when we start talking about low-yield nuclear weapons, you start making nuclear war acceptable.

That is why deployment of this weapon is such a mistake. It takes us down the road of saying, we can have a manageable nuclear war. No. Make it clear to the Russians, if they start a nuclear war, we can't promise that our response is going to be proportional, but we can promise that we will respond.

This is a mistake. But we are not unilaterally nuclear disarming.

Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Moulton), a member of the committee.

Madam Chair, if I may inquire, who has the right to close on this one?

Madam Chair, I just have my close, so I reserve the balance of my time.

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

There is nothing random about this decision; and I do find the gentleman's argument interesting. I suppose Congress should just sort of shut down and say, Pentagon, whatever you want, you have got. We are not going to say anything about it.

I really disagree with that aspect of the gentleman's argument; that because the Pentagon has decided to deploy this weapon, Congress should have no say in it.

We are not doing this randomly. We are not doing this arbitrarily. This is actually a debate that has gone on for a number of years as to whether or not to deploy this weapon. I will grant you there are arguments on both sides of it, but the notion that we are like, on a whim, making this decision is ridiculous.

As I said, there are many former national security experts, including former Secretary of State George Shultz, who thinks that this weapon will destabilize and make us less safe.

And let's remember, we have had a nuclear deterrent for almost 75 years now. And for all of those 75 years, we have not put a low-yield nuclear weapon on one of our submarines. We haven't done it. We have had a very strong deterrent.

What I would say to Mr. Putin is, No, we are not going to deploy every single weapon system that we have ever thought of because that wouldn't be very smart. But we have thousands of nuclear weapons. And as Mr. Moulton said quite clearly, we need to make it clear, we will have an overwhelming response to any use of nuclear weapons. That is what will deter them. That is what will stop a nuclear war from starting.

When we start to have that situation where it goes back and forth, and we say, Well, we can have a manageable nuclear war, that is the danger that leads people to oppose this weapon. I urge opposition to the amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I want to make it absolutely clear, in all the scenarios that the gentleman on the other side just pointed out, the President has the absolute right of self-defense.

As Mr. Khanna made clear in his opening remarks, the right of self- defense--if we were attacked in the way

that Congressman McCaul described, the President has the absolute right to defend the United States.

What this amendment says, basically it is counter to the gentleman's argument. The gentleman's argument basically is that Congress should get out of the way. Under no circumstances should Congress have any say in the use of the United States military.

I think that is wrong. I think we have a role to play. The President should not be allowed to start a war anytime, anywhere, but he can absolutely defend the United States in accordance with the War Powers Resolution.

All this says, that if it isn't a matter of self-defense, if the President has decided, as we decided in Iraq, that we are going to launch a war for preemptive reasons or because of many of the things the gentleman pointed out that Iran does, if we are going to start a war because of that, then we in the United States Congress should uphold our constitutional duty and have the right to vote on it. I think that is appropriate.

Unless Members are in favor of Congress getting totally out of having any say in this, Members need to support this amendment.

Madam Chair, the purpose of the 2002 AUMF could not have been more clear. I was here at the time. It was one of the more consequential debates we have ever had. And the purpose was clearly stated to go after Saddam Hussein because he had weapons of mass destruction and to wage war against the nation of Iraq.

If we cannot repeal that 17 years later, then Congress has truly and totally abrogated its constitutional responsibility to regulate any use of military force. There is no justification 17 years later to keep this on the books so that Presidents can use the authority as a blank check. Congress should stand up.

Madam Chair, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 10 o'clock and 12 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Friday, July 12, 2019, at 9 a.m.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and insert extraneous material on H.R. 2500.

Mr. Chair, I yield myself 5 minutes.

Mr. Chair, this, as always, is an incredibly important piece of legislation. This is a piece of legislation by which we provide for the national security of this country, and every little bit, as importantly, we provide for the men and women who put their lives on the line to provide for the national security of this country.

For 58 years, we have passed the National Defense Authorization Act. It is the one piece of legislation that has not failed to pass in that timeframe, and there is a very good reason for that: It is enormously important, and it is our opportunity to show those men and women who serve in the military that we support them, we support what they do, and we are going to make sure that they have all that they need to carry out the missions that we ask them to do.

One of the reasons that we have always been able to be successful on this is because of the very strong bipartisan tradition of our committee. We have worked with various chairmen and ranking members across the aisle for all of those years and really made sure that we worked together, regardless of who was in the majority, to produce a product that we can be proud of--and we have.

On that measure, as we have moved in the majority this year, my staff and I have worked very hard with the ranking member and with all the members of the committee and their staffs to maintain that bipartisan tradition.

When we had the bill in committee, we had a large number of proposals, which I will read to you.

There were 736 proposals from Republicans, 889 from Democrats. We put into our bill 53 percent of the Republican requests and 52 percent of the Democratic requests

In amendments, there were more Democratic amendments in committee, 266 to 248 for the Republicans, but, still, we accepted 57 percent of the Republican amendments.

On the floor, there were a lot more amendments from Democrats, 480 to 201, but, again, we accepted 50 percent of the Republican amendments.

My staff and I and other members, personally, on a large number of issues, most notably on nuclear issues--Mr. Turner, who is the ranking member on the Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, was concerned that we weren't working together properly on a number of nuclear issues. There were 10 or 12 or more. I reached out to him. We worked together, and we resolved half of them, because that is what we do. This is a very strong bill that everybody on this floor should feel proud to vote for.

Now, there are a couple of issues, but the biggest thing is remember what is in this bill. Once again, we give a very high pay raise to the men and women who serve, 3.1 percent pay raise.

We have also, through the amendment process, included a priority that has over 300 cosponsors in the House, and that is Joe Wilson's bill to finally eliminate the offset that cuts the amount of money that goes to widows of men and women who have passed away in the military. This is the bill to eliminate that offset. There is a lot in this bill that we can be proud of.

Now, the issues that we have had disagreement on, I understand, but we always have disagreements. It is a large bill. I don't like everything in this bill. I don't think anybody does, but we cannot forget the central mission of this bill: to support the men and women who serve the military and to make sure that we have a strong national security.

The number one issue is how much money we spend.

Let me just say--and I think there is bipartisan agreement on this-- we need a budget caps deal. A continuing resolution is unacceptable.

It is unacceptable for the entire discretionary budget, and it is certainly unacceptable for the Department of Defense, which can't simply keep doing what it has been doing. There are always programs they need to get rid of and new programs they need to create. We need to get a deal on that. But the number that we marked to, $733 billion, was the number that the Pentagon planned for for over a year.

After we got the last budget deal to get $716 billion, the Pentagon planned on what their next year's budget would be, and the President and the Pentagon put together a $733 billion budget for over a year. But then, at the end of last year, the President felt that number was too high.

By the way, I think I might agree with him. I think there are greater efficiencies to get out of the Pentagon.

So he said it ought to be cut by 5 percent; it ought to be $700 billion. A number of people protested that, went to the Pentagon and said: You can't cut it to 700.

So the President said it can't be 733; it has got to be 700. And then he agreed to 750. That doesn't make a lot of sense. The 733 number is the number that we planned to.

Now, I will agree that there is a robust debate that can be had about that: Should it be 750 or 733? I very strongly support the 733 number. I don't think giving the Pentagon an additional $17 billion at the last minute is fiscally responsible.

I agree with the ranking member, who has said, in the years when we were cutting the defense budget by 20 percent, that wasn't responsible either. I think 733 is responsible, but I can hear arguments for the other side.

What doesn't make sense is to say that, if you don't get 750, somehow 733 is so bad that we have to vote against it. That simply doesn't make sense. 733 is the largest amount of money we have ever spent on the Pentagon. It more than funds our national security needs.

I believe this is a very strong bill. We will debate many other issues. When we get done, I hope we can uphold that bipartisan tradition and show that we support national security and we support the men and women who are putting their lives on the line for our country.

I reserve the balance of my time.

House of Representatives,

Committee on House Administration,

Washington, DC, June 13, 2019.

Hon. Adam Smith,

Chairman, Committee on Armed Services,

House of Representatives, Washington, DC.

Dear Chairman Smith: I am writing to you concerning H.R.

2500, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year

2020. There are certain provisions in the legislation which

fall within the Rule X jurisdiction of the Committee on House

Administration.

In the interest of permitting your committee to proceed

expeditiously to floor consideration, the Committee is

willing to waive its right to sequential referral. This is

done with the understanding that the Committee on House

Administration's jurisdictional interests over this and

similar legislation are in no way diminished or altered. In

addition, the Committee reserves its right to seek conferees

on any provisions within its jurisdiction which are

considered in a House-Senate conference and requests your

support if such a request is made.

I would appreciate your response confirming this

understanding with respect to H.R. 2500 and ask that a copy

of our exchange of letters on this matter be included in your

committee report on the bill and in the Congressional Record

during consideration of the bill on the House floor.

Sincerely,

Zoe Lofgren,

Chairperson.

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

Mr. Chair, I will just say quickly that I completely agree with the ranking member. The question is, does this bill adequately support our national security?

I don't think that is even debatable. There is no question that at $733 billion, with all the bipartisan provisions that we put in there, this bill more than adequately supports our troops and supports our national security.

That is why I think it is so wrong that even in committee, the Republicans have decided to oppose it. It does more than adequately support.

Now, there are things we disagree with, certainly, but I totally agree with that formulation. If you believe this bill at least adequately, I think more than adequately, supports it, you ought to vote for it.

The only comment I will make on the floor amendments is we submitted 480 on the Democratic side, the Republicans submitted 201. So, yes, there are going to be more Democratic amendments, because we, I guess, are a little bit more prolific in that regard, but there is not a partisan effort in that.

Mr. Chair, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Norcross), the chairman of the Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Langevin), who is the chair of the Intelligence and Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee.

Mr. Chair, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Langevin).

Mr. Chair, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Cooper), chairman of the Subcommittee on Strategic Forces.

Mr. Chair, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Courtney), the chairman of the Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces.

Mr. Chair, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Garamendi), the chairman of the Readiness Subcommittee.

(Mr. GARAMENDI asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

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

I would simply note that, in last year's NDAA, when the Republicans were in charge, they cut $751 million from the personnel account, and then the President, 6 months after that, took another $1 billion out of the personnel account to fund his wall.

So, in last year's NDAA, which all of them enthusiastically supported, the personnel account was cut by $1.7 billion. We do not simply rubber-stamp the President's request and never have. What we are doing this year is perfectly in keeping with past history.

I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Speier), the chair of the Military Personnel Subcommittee.

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

It is a unique way of looking at the world to describe a nation that has literally thousands of nuclear weapons as unilaterally disarming. I assure the public, we are not doing that.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Brown), a member of the committee.

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Michigan (Ms. Slotkin), a member of the Armed Services Committee.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Escobar), who is a member of the committee.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), who is the majority leader.

Mr. Chair, may I inquire as to how much time each side has remaining.

Mr. Chair, I am the only remaining speaker at this point, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Chairman, I have one more speaker, and then I will be prepared to close.

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

Mr. Chair, I would start on a note of agreement. I stand by the comments I made in 2016: Voting against the defense bill doesn't mean you don't support the troops.

Now, it is interesting, as we go back to the transcript from 2016, the number of folks on their side of the aisle who said the exact opposite, who rather passionately said we were betraying our country by not supporting the bill. I didn't agree with that then, and I don't agree with it now.

But the only partisanship that is going on on this floor is coming 100 percent from the Republican Party. I appreciate the gentleman's words, and I worked very well with him as the ranking member. I continue to work well with him. But on the statement about how the Republican side of the aisle stands ready to work with us to make this bill better, I have seen no evidence of that.

Talking about amendments on the floor, the decision to oppose this bill was made in committee before we even got to the floor, and what we are hearing is a whole series of excuses for why they are opposing the bill.

It is very simple and straightforward why they are opposing the bill: pure partisanship. They keep talking about the number of times the Democrats voted with them and how this is different, yet the difference is the Republican Party has decided that, if it is not their defense bill 100 percent, they will not vote for it, and then they will stand up and accuse us of being partisan.

The reason I cite all of those numbers is that all of the outreach and effort we did to make this bill bipartisan, they did not reach back. This is pure partisanship: If we are in charge, they are not going to support it to try to make us look bad.

And the to-ing and fro-ing matters, because that is what guts the bipartisanship. If they will not even try to work with us if they are not in charge, that is the definition of partisanship, and it jeopardizes 58 years of history.

I am not going to give up; I am going to keep trying to reach out and keep trying to work with them. But, please, for those of you watching this, understand the only partisan thing going on here is, if the Republicans aren't in charge, they are not going to vote for it. And I will pick just a couple of examples.

We heard that we have taken a hatchet to the nuclear budget, so I am sure you are wondering how much we have cut the nuclear budget by. Well, we have increased it by 4 percent. That is taking a hatchet to it?

We are engaged, believe it or not, in unilateral disarmament on the floor of this House as we increase the amount of money that we spend on nuclear weapons by 4 percent, as we fully fund the B-21 bomber, the Columbia-class nuclear submarine, the LRSO, and the modernization of our nuclear weapons force. All of these arguments are nonsense.

Going back to the personnel argument, they cut the personnel account by more than we did because they didn't agree with the President.

All of these arguments are pure partisanship, and nothing drives this point home more clearly than the $733 billion.

Now, I can't say it any better than the majority leader said it, but the quote from General Dunford in January of 2017. Well, if that is the case, why did Chairman Thornberry--I am sorry; that is the way I always think of him--write an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in November of 2018 insisting that we had to have $733 billion?

If we had said $750 billion, they would be on the floor saying, ``Not enough. It has got to be $775 billion,'' because that is the partisanship.

This is a really important policy point. These numbers also matter, because accountability at the Pentagon matters. I would submit to you that this bill doesn't just maintain the bipartisan tradition; with Democrats working on this bill, this bill is better for national security because we don't believe in sending a blank check to the Pentagon, and sending a blank check to the Pentagon is not in the best interest of our troops or our national security.

Now, Mr. Thornberry is the best person working on reforming our procurement system to try and increase efficiency, and I support him in that effort. But if you try to reform a system and make it more efficient but then say, ``You know what,'' at the last minute, ``here is another $17 billion,'' the people are not going to get the message. They are going to say, ``Accountability? You don't want accountability. You are going to give us more money no matter what we do,'' which is what we have done for far too long.

So, yes, we have accountability in this bill, but you have not heard a single good reason to oppose this, other than pure partisanship. And it is a brilliant way of doing things.

As a friend of mine said a long time ago, when you are in an argument with someone who is unreasonable, it is hard not to sound unreasonable.

It is brilliant. Just vote against the bill and say it is partisan; okay?

Partisan is when you ignore the other side. And, my goodness, the people behind me, I mean, I have worked on it, but nobody has worked on it more than my staff and, frankly, the minority party staff. If you could see the hours that we spent working with Republicans to get to ``good'' on a variety of different amendments, you would laugh out loud at the partisanship claim.

And I think this is important. I think if the minority party, if the Republican Party, cannot work with us unless they are in charge, then we are not going to get to a bipartisan place.

And again, we talk about how we cut the President's budget. It was the President who tweeted out in November that $733 billion was too much. That is what the President said.

So as the majority leader said, we took your number, and after we took your number, you said we are being partisan. That is absurd.

This is a good bill that protects our country. Every Member of this body should be proud to vote for it.

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

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

Mr. Chair, I yield myself 2 minutes.

This is an amendment that was actually adopted at the committee level, but there was a technical problem with it which we couldn't get corrected by UC, so we are re-debating it on the House floor. I think it is appropriate.

Last year, the Trump administration decided to stop reporting on civilian casualties that were caused by our raids. This amendment reinstates that and requires the Director of National Intelligence to report to us on civilian casualties that have resulted in raids that we have done outside of existing combat zones.

We are engaged in many military operations, which we have read about, in places like Somalia, Libya, and Yemen. We think it is appropriate to keep statistics on how effective those raids have been, and one of those measures of effectiveness is the number of civilian casualties that are included in that.

That is what this amendment does. We have gotten the support of the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Mr. Schiff, to do this for both DOD operations and intelligence operations.

I think it is an important transparency measure that will help us better understand the effects of our military policy.

And, I guess, the final thing I would say on this is it is part of an underlying theme. One of the other things that the minority party doesn't like about our bill is that, again, we want to hold the Pentagon accountable. We think Congress actually has a role in defense policy and we shouldn't simply turn it over to the Pentagon.

For us to know what is going on with this will inform our decisions as we attempt to exercise legitimate and effective oversight of Pentagon operations.

Mr. Chair, I urge adoption of the amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I would simply say that there are reporting requirements; there are not comprehensive reporting requirements. And that is the purpose of this amendment, to make sure we report everything and so that we have all of the information that is available to us.

And, I guess, to a certain extent, if the opposition feels like it is already being done, then why not do it effectively and efficiently. Regrettably, DOD is not in charge of all of the operations involved here.

The Director of National Intelligence would take into account everything we are doing and make sure that we have an accurate picture of that.

Again, I urge support, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Just a couple of quick points: First of all, we did not bypass the committee of jurisdiction. We were in constant consultation with the Intelligence Committee, with their staff, and we had that conversation and worked with them to get this result.

We did not bypass them. In fact, we got a waiver from the Intelligence Committee to have this amendment before our committee.

Our committee takes jurisdiction that this bill has a number of provisions in it, including one on which I worked very closely with the gentlewoman from New York, that has jurisdiction within the intelligence community. We include in this bill items that have their jurisdiction, but we worked with them and in careful consultation.

I really don't think it is a lot to ask of our national intelligence to look at the very important issue of how our military action, regardless of who is doing it, impacting casualties, both civilian and otherwise.

That is all this amendment does. I think that it is something that we should be doing, regardless, and it is information that will be valuable to this House.

Mr. Chair, I would urge adoption of this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, pursuant to House Resolution 476, I offer amendments en bloc.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Engel), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Mr. Chair, I have no further speakers on this first en bloc. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I have an additional speaker. I yield 2

minutes to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Cicilline).

Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume to say that I urge support for the en bloc package.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, this is a very important issue and something that our committee worked on over a long stretch of time on export controls. We made very carefully thought-out reforms in that process.

The process was a nightmare. Dual-use was the big problem. We could have, just as an example, a bolt that happened to go into a piece of military equipment. If it was to be put in something else, it was subject to this far more aggressive export control thing. But we fixed all of that.

What the gentlewoman is trying to prevent is stepping way over the line here and allowing the export of things that really are clearly within the military use concern. We covered what wasn't. This goes beyond that and undermines our ability to make sure that we are not giving potential adversaries access to weapons that can jeopardize our national security.

I do think we need to take this step to make sure that the Trump administration doesn't go beyond what we worked out. I realize this word is being overused, but we did work this out in a bipartisan way. With the chairman's help, we included this in the National Defense Act a few years ago. That was helpful.

This goes too far by the President. I think this amendment is perfectly appropriate.

Madam Chair, I strongly support this amendment.

The documents that the gentleman just pointed to don't even begin to scratch the surface of addressing the issue that the gentlewoman is raising. Those are very broad documents about where the Defense Department spends its money.

And I am sure they mention in there--actually, I am not sure. They might mention in there exactly how much money they spend on overseas bases.

Actually, I would be surprised if they outline all the overseas bases we have and what their purpose is, and that is what this amendment calls for. Not the broad strategy, but really how many bases do we have, how much money are we spending, and what do they all contribute to that national security policy.

I have read through those documents. They do not have that type of detail. Yes, they point out, for instance, here is why we are in all the places that we are--in Asia, for instance--as we are trying to defend it, but they don't go through all the bases and say why this particular place, that particular place.

We are overseas in a lot of places that many people are not aware of. It is not just the big ones that we are all aware of that would be contained in that. There are a lot of other places where we own property and maintain bases.

And the gentlewoman is also correct that the inability of the Pentagon to audit--in fact, one of the things that the audit found is that the Pentagon doesn't actually know all of the property that they own--or they can't document it, at any rate.

So getting this piece of it documented would be helpful and would begin to answer the question: Is that money well spent? Is that even advancing the policy that is outlined in all of those documents?

So I think this is necessary, appropriate, and will be helpful in getting us to a more efficient defense budget.

And, again, that is a major difference in our approach from the minority. We don't want to just give the Pentagon money. We want to make sure that they are accountable and spending it well.

Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk, which I am offering as the designee for the gentlewoman from Massachusetts (Ms. Clark).

Madam Chair, this amendment is very straightforward.

Currently, all Members of Congress are prohibited from having contracts with the Federal Government, either way. In other words, if you are a Member of Congress, you own something, you can't lease it to the government, rent it to the government.

Similarly, you cannot rent or lease something from the government for, I think, obvious reasons. As Members of Congress, we could potentially have undue influence. We could get a deal that other Members of the public could not get. Therefore, we would have an unfair advantage and be using our position as elected officials to enrich ourselves, which is supposed to be prohibited.

This amendment is very straightforward. It adds the President, the Vice President, and Cabinet members to that list of people who cannot contract with the Federal Government, again, either the Federal Government leasing something to us or we leasing something back to the Federal Government that is owned, in this case, by the President, the Vice President, and members of the Cabinet.

Because, again, particularly in the executive branch, they would actually have, in many ways, more control over this than a Member of Congress, who does not have the power over the assets that the President, the Vice President, and Cabinet members would.

It prohibits them from doing that so that there are no ethical problems, so the President, Vice President, and Cabinet members cannot profit off of being in the office that they are in. This is part of the way we maintain a transparent and ethical government.

I think it is a good amendment that will improve the ethics of our government, and I urge all Members to vote in favor.

Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

This doesn't require someone to commit a crime. It requires you to divest of your interest if you move into this position, something which, by the way, all Members of Congress have to do.

We are not permitted to have outside income over what we have as a Member of Congress. So if you are elected to Congress and you have another job, you have to leave that job; you have to let go of a particular business interest. That is part of public service.

It does not require them to be criminalized. That is like saying having a law against taking bribes is criminalizing the elected official. Now, there is actually something you can do: Don't take the bribe, and you will be okay.

As far as our ``obsession'' with the President, I couldn't help but laugh at the statement, ``instead of doing the hard work of governing.''

I am counting how many hours I have slept over the course of the last month-and-a-half as we have worked to put together a nearly 2200-page bill that fully funds the Defense Department--sorry, in my opinion, fully funds the Defense Department--and all the amendments.

Let me assure you, we are capable of doing both. We are capable of doing the hard work of government and actually trying to make sure that our elected officials are at least passingly ethical so that the American public doesn't think what they already think, which

is that too many people get elected simply to enrich themselves.

This is not something new. We have a long list of ethics laws that restrict what you can do as an elected official or a member of government. I would hope that the gentleman is not suggesting that we shouldn't have that because it is somehow inconvenient.

I think it is incredibly important that we have ethical standards, that we make sure that elected officials are not able to enrich themselves based on being in the elected position that they are in.

That is all this amendment does. It is targeting good government, which is part of our job.

Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

I don't know where the gentleman was over the course of the last month when we passed 10 appropriations bills and took hundreds of votes on the substantive business of funding the government. That is not a waste of time.

I realize the Senate has decided that they are not going to do it, but it is our job to pass appropriations bills. That is what we did for the last month-plus.

We are now working on the defense bill. I would trust the gentleman wouldn't think of that as a waste of time. It is incredibly important.

We have passed an entire rewrite of the ethics laws for the United States House of Representatives. Whether you support it or not, it is certainly not a waste of time.

We have passed countless other bills and important pieces of legislation.

The Senate hasn't been doing much. I understand its rules are more complicated, so I am sympathetic, but we are working on the substantive ability to govern. We are doing it, even if the gentleman doesn't agree with the bills.

This is where bipartisanship becomes difficult because as we do that, to have someone stand up and say that is not what government is supposed to be doing, I mean, what are we doing here? That is what we have been doing.

Part of that should also be to have an ethical government; ethical elected Members of Congress; and ethical Presidents, Vice Presidents, and Cabinet members.

As I have said, there are a bunch of rules governing that. This is one more that I think would help to make it appropriate.

Madam Chair, I urge support for the amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, pursuant to House Resolution 476, I offer amendments en bloc.

Madam Chair, I don't have any speakers, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I ask for a ``yes'' vote on the en bloc package, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, pursuant to House Resolution 476, I offer amendments en bloc.

Madam Chair, I don't have any speakers. We have been doing so many votes on the House floor that it appears we have worn down the Members of Congress. We don't have as many people over here to speak as we normally do on our en bloc packages.

Madam Chair, I urge a ``yes'' vote on the en bloc package, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, pursuant to House Resolution 476, I offer amendments en bloc.

Madam Chair, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Cuellar).

Madam Chair, I have no further requests for time. I urge a ``yes'' vote on en bloc package No. 4, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Madam Speaker, on Monday, May 20, 2019, I was not present for recorded votes due to air travel delays coming to Washington, D.C. I would have voted: yes on roll call vote No. 218 (on the motion to suspend the rules and pass H.R. 1952, as amended), and yes on roll call vote No. 219 (on the motion to suspend the rules and agree H. Res. 106).

Madam Speaker, I rise to honor the life and accomplishments of Washington State Senator Margarita Lopez Prentice, who will be remembered for her dedication to public service.

I had the pleasure of serving with Ms. Lopez Prentice in the Washington State Legislature, where she was the first Latina elected as a Washington State Senator. After first being elected in 1988, she served as a public official in the Washington State House of Representatives for four years, and then in the Washington Senate, for 27 years. Before her retirement in 2013, Ms. Lopez Prentice served as the Senate Pro Tempore, and as Chairwoman of various committees. She was known for her caring manner, her mentorship, and her ability to forge bipartisan partnerships. Ms. Lopez Prentice's many contributions to the State Legislature earned her the distinction of Legislator of the Year in 2006 from several organizations, including the Washington Health Care Association and the Washington State Labor Council.

Ms. Lopez Prentice was dedicated to bettering the lives of others. Her career in nursing and her passion for women's health, LGBTQ rights, veterans' benefits, and migrant workers' rights, demonstrate her commitment to helping others. During her 30-year career as a nurse and nurse administrator, Ms. Lopez Prentice was active in the Washington State Nurses Association, where she ultimately became vice president of the association. Ms. Lopez Prentice spent countless hours giving back to the Renton community through her service for the Renton Historical Society and the Renton Area Youth Services, as well as on the Renton School Board.

Madam Speaker, it is with great sadness that I offer my condolences to the family and friends of Senator Margarita Lopez Prentice. I am confident that her love of public service will continue to inspire Washington State Legislators for years to come.

Madam Speaker, I rise to honor the life and legacy of Jacquie Jones-Walsh, whose work combating injustice in the workplace has improved the lives of an unmeasurable amount of people in Washington State.

Ms. Jones-Walsh tirelessly worked with, and in many cases led, a number of organizations with the singular purpose of supporting the rights of all workers. Ms. Jones-Walsh fought to eliminate the barriers that people of color and women so often face. She served tirelessly as a leader representing several organizations. Ms. Jones-Walsh was the second Vice President of the Seattle King County Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), State President for the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW), Vice President of the Washington State Labor Council, President of the Seattle Blacks in Government (BIG) Chapter, a founding member of the Seattle MLK Jr. Organizing Coalition, and served several terms as President of the Washington Federation of State Employees (WFSE) Local 843, to name a few.

A long-time advocate for expanding and protecting affirmative action, Ms. Jones-Walsh played an active part in a recent campaign to approve Initiative 1000. This Washington state initiative lifts a ban on affirmative action in education, employment and contracting and extends it to include women, veterans, people with disabilities, and all people of color. Her advocacy on this and countless other projects will be missed.

I have personally worked with Ms. Jones-Walsh several times. Each time I've had the pleasure of meeting with her, she exhibited the passion, diligence and intelligence that her groundbreaking causes deserved. It was these qualities and her devotion to the community that made her such a staple in Washington State.

Madam Speaker, it is with great honor that I recognize the life of Jacquie Jones-Walsh, whose leadership in the labor community has been an inspiration for many people. Her dedication and commitment to fighting for equality will live on through her legacy, and she will be greatly missed.

Madam Speaker, I rise to honor and congratulate Kathy Haggart, the CEO and President of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Bellevue, on her retirement.

Kathy Haggart has had a remarkable career in the nonprofit sector-- having worked in nonprofit management for nearly 36 years. Ms. Haggart has spent the majority of her nonprofit work with the Boys & Girls Clubs of Bellevue serving as the President and CEO for 22 years. She was appointed as the President and CEO in 1997 after a successful term as the Club's Director of Development. In her position as President and CEO, Kathy oversaw 12 Club locations and managed a multi-million dollar budget. Ms. Haggart is an incredible, high-performing leader with an exceptional ability to bring teams together.

During her time as President and CEO, Ms. Haggart fostered strong relationships between the Boys & Girls Clubs and the larger community. She strengthened partnerships with the City of Bellevue, the Bellevue School District, the King County Housing Authority, Youth Eastside Services, and other notable community organizations. She has helped shift the focus of the Clubs to include community outreach and services for parents as well.

Under her guidance, the Boys & Girls Clubs of Bellevue expanded from one clubhouse to over 12 program sites. Additionally, the Club received many awards for program excellence from the Boys & Girls Clubs of America and local organizations. These include ``Best of'' recognition in several local publications, and selection as a ``Community Treasure'' by a local school. The Boys & Girls Clubs of Bellevue serve over 11,000 children and teenagers with educational programming, afterschool activities, summer programs, and athletics. The Boys & Girls Clubs of Bellevue thrived under Ms. Haggart's innovative leadership.

Madam Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I recognize and congratulate Kathy Haggart on her retirement from her longtime service to the adolescents of the Bellevue community.

Madam Speaker, I rise to honor and congratulate Jon Fine, the CEO and President of United Way of King County, on his retirement.

Jon Fine has served as the CEO and President of United Way of King County for the past 18 years. He has been credited with making King County one of the leading branches of United Way. Before joining United Way, Mr. Fine had a distinguished career in finance, which aided his ability to restructure United Way of King County's giving program.

Under his leadership, United Way of King County's programs have thrived. Mr. Fine led the growth of the homelessness prevention program to include over 2,200 units of permanent supportive housing. In addition, Mr. Fine's commitment to ensuring all youth have access to education helped to scale the United Way's parent-child home program from serving 160 families to over 1,300 families--with the goal of providing better educational outcomes for low-income children. Mr. Fine also spearheaded the creation of the Gates Challenge Endowment, which is one of the largest fundraising campaigns of any United Way chapter.

Throughout his tenure, Jon Fine fostered innovative partnerships with businesses and other organizations that strengthened United Way of King County. Mr. Fine always encouraged program staff to think big. He challenged them to reach more people, start more services, and expand fundraising. Mr. Fine's commitment to service, innovative thinking, and vibrant nature are sure to remain with the United Way of King County going forward.

Madam Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I recognize and congratulate Jon Fine on his retirement from his longtime service to the communities of King County.