Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise to honor Dr. John Vassall II for his exemplary work in our community. For over thirty years, Dr. Vassall has made the greater Puget Sound Region a healthier and more equitable place.

Dr. Vassall has made many valuable contributions to Washington state's medical community. In 1978, he received his medical degree from the University of Washington. He then completed two competitive residency programs at Grady Memorial Hospital and Emory University Affiliated Hospitals. After his residencies, Dr. Vassall returned to the Puget Sound region in 1983, when he accepted an offer at Swedish Medical Center, where he has remained for 34 years. As Chief Medical Officer, he has been a key player on an outstanding medical team. In 2006, the Washington chapter of the American College of Physicians named Dr. Vassal]. the Internist of the Year.

Dr. Vassall's contributions to our community have not been limited to his professional work at the hospital. For 15 years, Dr. Vassall served as the vice-speaker and speaker of the House of Delegates for the Washington State Medical Association. He is a trustee at Seattle University and for the American Hospital Association, as well as a board member at the Washington State Hospital Association and the Washington State Medical Association. Through these roles, Dr. Vassall has shaped the future of medicine and has advanced quality care in Washington state. His long record of advocacy earned him the Alumni Service Award from his alma mater in 2008. Dr. Vassall's contributions to Washington's health care industry cannot be overstated.

It is because of physicians like Dr. Vassall that the Greater Puget Sound Region is now a global center for health care innovation and education. Again, I would like to thank Dr. Vassall for his contributions to Washington's 9th District, and I look forward to working with him in the future as we work for a healthier world.

Mr. Chairman, I simply associate myself with the remarks of Mr. Nadler. I think he explained the history of this law very, very well.

It is a very basic principle. People who work on these cruise ships should be compensated and taken care of if they are injured. There is no reason that the cruise line industry cannot afford to do this.

To discriminate against people who happen to be from different countries who are working on these ships makes no sense whatsoever. Our laws apply to whoever is working on the ships and should continue to do so. This is simply an effort to deny workers' rights from a cruise line industry that can more than afford to take care of the people who work there.

These are not easy jobs. I confess, I have only taken one cruise in my life, but the people who work there work very long hours, very hard, in very difficult conditions. If they are injured or sick, they should be taken care of. As Mr. Nadler said, the best way to do that is under the current common practice, which is the cruise line does take care of them and makes sure they get the healthcare they need until they are able to work. But if that is not done, the right to sue in court to protect your rights as a worker should not be taken away.

I do not believe that we have a problem in this country that workers are being too highly compensated and have too many rights. We don't need to take away the few that they have.

I urge opposition to this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Florida (Mrs. Murphy), a member of the Armed Services Committee.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Wisconsin (Ms. Moore).

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Nolan).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Moulton), a member of the Armed Services Committee.

Mr. Chairman, I have no further speakers on this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

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

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

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

Mr. Chairman, I don't have any speakers either, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Chairman, I urge support of this bill. I want to begin by thanking the chairman and all of the members of the committee. As has been noted many times, this is the most bipartisan committee in Congress; and I think, once again, even in difficult circumstances, we have proved that this year. That is, in large part, due to the leadership of Chairman Thornberry. I thank him for that.

I also thank our staff, which does an unbelievable job. There are hundreds, if not thousands of amendments, that come at them. They manage that. You see the very few that actually come through either in committee or on the floor. They work through literally thousands of ideas and do an amazing job, so I really want to thank our staff for their great work.

In particular, I want to thank Vickie Plunkett. This will be her last markup. She is retiring. She has done a fabulous job for our staff. She basically exemplifies everything I just said about how great our staff is, how they work in a bipartisan manner and do a great job to serve our country. So, I thank Vickie for her incredible service to our committee and to the country.

Mr. Chairman, I think this is a good bill that we should support because, make no mistake about it, what the chairman and many others have said is true: we face a complex threat environment. The U.S. national security is at risk.

I take Mr. Nolan from Minnesota's point that spending a lot of money on wars that we didn't need to engage in does cost us at home, and that point is valid, but so is the point that we face threats we must confront.

North Korea is testing intercontinental ballistic missiles. It is no doubt that their goal is to develop a nuclear missile, capable of striking the U.S.

Being from the West Coast--and they always say that it could hit Seattle. I don't know why they don't talk about any other city on the West Coast. It could hit a lot of different places. We need to be worried about that. We need to be prepared to stop that.

Russia continues to undermine not just our elections, but democracy itself, across Europe, and even down in the Middle East and Africa. We need to be prepared to confront that.

We face a terrorist threat. 9/11 killed 3,000 people in this country because we weren't ready to prevent it. The groups that supported that attack have not gone away; they have metastasized.

Now, I will completely agree with some of my friends on the left, who think that the terrorism threat is often overblown. I think it is often also a mistake to demonize the Muslim religion. And even though I know some people don't do that, they simply want to confront groups like al- Qaida and ISIS, Steve Bannon, who works right next to the White House, has said that Islam is a totalitarian ideology of subjugation, it is not a religion. He thinks all Muslims are a threat.

To the extent that we adopt a national security policy that views the world that way, we make the problem worse. That is what ISIS wants; that is what al-Qaida wants. They want a clash of civilizations. We should not want that. They have killed more Muslims than any other religion on Earth. Muslims have the biggest stake in this. We must work with them, not against them, to confront that terrorist threat that ISIS and al-Qaida and others present.

On the broader budget issue, as I mentioned a couple of times, the first 6 months of this year, we had a number

of folks in the Pentagon come over and spell out all kinds of nightmare scenarios about every bad thing that could conceivably happen--some of ones that I mentioned, and hundreds of others that I haven't. And I understand that. That is their job. Their job is to worry about what could come at us.

But, past a certain point, that isn't helpful. We need a plan, we need a strategy to confront this, and we need to make choices. That is the one thing that I am still concerned about with this bill. It really doesn't make choices. It continues to spend money in a variety of different places, without a recognition of finite resources and choices that need to be made about how to confront the threats that are most dangerous to us--how to spend that money in the best way possible. That is something that I think we need to work on going forward.

We also have the budget problem that I described. And I won't give the same full speech that I gave before, but I will simplify it and say that there is a consensus in Congress and in the country that we need to balance the budget without raising taxes and without cutting any programs that people might like. That doesn't work. It simply is not possible. It doesn't add up.

That is why we don't have a budget resolution. Any budget resolution that the Republican Congress could put on the floor will fail to meet some of the promises that they, and others, have made. We have got to be honest about that, because this bill, again, is $72 billion over the budget caps. It is actually $91 billion over the budget caps, if you add in--well, sorry, $81 billion over the budget caps, if you add in the money that we took from OCO to put into the base.

So, if we do not raise the budget caps, this goes away and leaves us, once again, in the land of uncertainty for the Department of Defense. We have to make choices on the budget going forward so that we don't leave the Defense Department in the lurch, not knowing how much money that they are going to have. So, we still don't have a budget resolution in front of us.

And, lastly, I do want to point out that the rest of the budget does matter. The chairman and I have had a little bit of an argument about this: we are the Armed Services Committee, we should pay attention to that; you know, don't sacrifice our troops for the sake of domestic--he always says political priorities. That is the one word in his argument that I find not really appropriate.

There is nothing political about it. It is a policy choice. It is basically deciding what domestic priorities are important.

And, make no mistake about it, the discretionary budget is a zero-sum game. I mentioned yesterday the President's budget: a $54 billion plus- up for defense, and $54 billion cut from nondefense discretionary. So don't tell me that one thing doesn't have anything to do with the other.

But even the so-called budget resolution, the budget agreement that the House Republicans have come up with, but have not yet dared to put to a vote, has a $72 billion plus-up for defense, and a $5 billion cut for domestic spending. So, again, the two are absolutely connected.

What are we talking about with domestic spending? I won't go through all of it. I will just mention a couple of things.

Yesterday, I mentioned our infrastructure. Bridges are collapsing all across the country. I saw a big story yesterday about how the Memorial Bridge is about to fall down. We have incredible infrastructure needs that lead to the strength of our country that are connected, just like national defense is to the strength of this Nation.

But another example, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center--it is close to my district, it is in Seattle--is doing incredible research right now, that figured out how to not use chemotherapy but actually go in, take out the white blood cells that aren't working, get them to work, and send them back in to successfully fight cancer. This has worked for blood cancers. They just started studies on lung cancer. But, basically, we could cure cancer, without going through the hell of chemo. The President's budget would cut Fred Hutchinson's funding by over two-thirds.

I don't think curing cancer is a political agenda. That is a very real need that has an incredible impact on the lives of Americans, just like national security. It is like making sure that North Korea doesn't hit us with a nuclear weapon, making sure that terrorist groups don't attack us. Curing cancer, stopping bridges from collapsing, these are priorities.

Because we are not making budget choices, these are priorities that get pushed aside. And if you plus-up defense and take it from nondefense discretionary, then you are having that very real impact.

Now, I am not going to say it has to be dollar for dollar. I think it probably should be, but we can negotiate around that. But to simply gut the nondefense discretionary budget to plus-up defense does not make this country safer.

We heard yesterday, hey, in a time of war, you make domestic sacrifices. And we have all read about World War II, all the domestic sacrifices that were made at that time. I get that.

But you know what else you do in a time of war? Well, you don't cut taxes. You raise them. Prior to 2001, we had never gone to war without raising taxes or issuing war bonds or, basically, asking for more money. But that, of course, we cannot do.

Again, I will say I care enough about the national security of this country, I would raise taxes to pay for it instead of simply adding to the deficit or stopping the ability of somebody like the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center from finding a cure for cancer. That is the choice that I would make. These choices are not being made in this budget resolution, and I think that places us at risk.

Lastly, the nondefense discretionary budget is the State Department, it is USAID, it is the Department of Homeland Security. If you are going to have a national security strategy, it can't just be the military. And you know who will tell you that more often than anybody? The military. They don't want to bear the entire burden.

General Secretary Mattis had the best quote on this. If you are going to cut diplomacy, if you are going to cut development, you better give me four more divisions because that is how many more wars I am going to have to fight.

So to say we are going to add all this money to defense, and defense is so important, and if you are against it because of other priorities, then you just don't care about the troops, is incredibly disingenuous because all of these other things matter to the national security of this country. And all we are getting out of the majority right now is an effort to plus-up defense at the expense of everything else.

I say an effort because they haven't actually voted on it yet. It hasn't actually happened. And it is more likely than not that this bill--good, though, it is--and the great work that has been done on a number of different policy divisions that don't have anything to do with the money, the good work on acquisition reform to try to make sure we get more for the money that we spend, all of that is in jeopardy because this bill has at least $72 billion in it over the budget caps that is, more likely than not, not going to be there come October 1 or the end of this year.

So if we don't make the choices on the budget that reflect the priorities of the entire country, that actually reflect the budget numbers, then we are doing a disservice to the men and women who serve our country.

It is a good bill. It is going to be better once we figure out the budget issues and actually start making the choices that are necessary to make us stronger in every aspect of society.

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

Mr. Chair, I claim the time in opposition.

Mr. Chair, I yield myself 1 minute.

Mr. Chair, this amendment goes backwards in an area where we have gone forward. This amendment takes us in the wrong direction. For years, we have had people serving in the military who are openly gay, lesbian, and transgender, and they have served, and served this country well.

For a lot of years, we did not allow them to do so openly. We finally repealed that for lesbians and gays, and now, just last year, we had the Department of Defense say we are going to do the same thing for transgender. So the people who have been fighting and protecting our country will be allowed to do so openly. It does not harm readiness at all. These people have served in

the military, served it honorably, and served it well.

As far as the costs, the military pays for people who have addictions, who have alcoholism, who smoke. They pay for a lot of things that are contained within the military.

This amendment would target one specific group, and very unfairly. And most unfairly, it wouldn't just, first of all, target transgender surgery, it would target some of the hormone drugs, which cost, like, $100 a year, cost absolutely virtually nothing to the military.

Mr. Chair, I yield myself an additional 30 seconds.

Most importantly, this wouldn't just impact transgender people who are serving, it would impact their children. If you are serving in the military and you happen to have a child who is transgender, you would now be cut off from this military service. All these other things, alcoholism, drug addiction, smoking, all manner of different problems would be served, but transgender people would be targeted to not be allowed to provide healthcare for their children.

This isn't going to help readiness. This is a social agenda that has no business being in the Defense bill. We didn't have it in committee, we shouldn't have it here on the floor.

Let's focus on the threats that Mrs. Hartzler talked about, not make this into a social agenda based on the ignorance of what transgender truly is.

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

Mr. Chair, there is no study whatsoever that shows this is going to cost $3.7 billion. And this amendment is not just about transgender surgery, it is about any treatment. Let's keep that in mind.

Mr. Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), the distinguished minority leader.

Mr. Chair, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Sean Patrick Maloney).

Mr. Chair, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the distinguished minority whip.

Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I really want to follow up on the committee chairman's remarks. He is absolutely right. In 2011 and 2012, I was actually very intimately involved in the process of trying to update the AUMF, and I have all the bruises and scars to show for it. It is a very difficult process.

The main thing I want to accomplish in my 2 minutes here is to explain to everybody why we haven't updated it, because there are actually very clear reasons. I am not sure they are good reasons, but they are very clear. Everyone sort of acts like: Well, we just haven't done it. Why are we twiddling our thumbs?

The reason is because, well, lawyers and how words are interpreted. As we went through and tried to word it exactly correctly, and as we negotiated with the Senate, we discovered that basically no matter how you word it, two groups are going to oppose it for diametrically opposite reasons. One side is going to say that it is too broad; it gives the President way too much power for too long a period of time and gives him too open a hand. Other groups will look at that exact same language and say that this unfairly restricts the President; it is going to make it more difficult.

You have these conversations those of us on the committee have with the Pentagon as they are trying to figure out--I haven't had as many conversations with the current administration as with the previous, but I talked at length with the Obama folks about deciding what could they do? Where could they commit a strike? Against which groups? It was a very lengthy process to go back through and try to figure out whether or not it was under the law allowed.

So if we change this, the lawyers on both sides are going to go bananas saying that this new language proves that you can't do that or it is too broad.

Now, all of that is not to say that we shouldn't do it. We should. But I just want people to understand the difficulty of it and for our House to actually be willing--and the Senate--to do the work we should do.

Don't kid yourself that this is something, well, gosh, we could just do it, it would be easy, and if everyone understands it, we are just ducking it for no good reason.

It is going to be really, really hard. It is going to take bipartisan, bicameral cooperation. But it is way past time for us to do it. Yeah, when we do it, lawyers will interpret it, and there will be some uncertainty. But there is uncertainty now as they try to, as the chairman described, bootstrap the 2001 AUMF on to a whole bunch of other things. We have an obligation to do this even if it is difficult.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment basically unnecessarily ties the hands of our administration in terms of choosing how best to spend Defense dollars.

Now, the gentlewoman mentions that this does not say anything about reducing our submarine force or reducing our bomber force. It does, however, lock in a certain amount of ICBMs that we have to have, and, in that sense, it does impact all other choices in terms of our Defense policy not just within the nuclear framework.

But within the nuclear framework, there is, as I keep emphasizing and people keep resisting, a finite amount of resources available to fund the Department of Defense. In fact, that is the central problem with this whole bill, as I have mentioned.

We don't have a budget resolution. This is $72 billion over-the- budget caps that the House has shown no willingness to vote to lift. So here we have $72 billion that we are just kind of hoping is going to be there. So at some point we are going to have to make some choices. I keep saying that. We keep delaying it--doing CRs. We even shut down the government once.

We continue to sort of stumble forward with no clear plan, but amendments like this are just another example of how we lock in a lack of flexibility in terms of how we spend our money.

What is the best approach to our national security?

Now, it has been mentioned and I keep harping on the fact that we don't have a national security plan yet. And it has been mentioned, well, Presidents usually take awhile to deliver them. And okay, fine, we will, you know, sometime in the next year hopefully get that plan. But amendments like this trap that plan, restrict the ability of the President to deal with a finite amount of resources to come with what is the best approach.

And there are a lot of arguments that ICBMs are not the best approach to nuclear deterrence. Do we need an absolute fixed amount? I don't think so. I think we need greater flexibility, particularly as we await the findings of the Nuclear Posture Review to figure out what our best strategy going forward is.

So we have all these little parochial pieces where we make sure that the piece that is closest to us, you can't touch that. We have to have exactly the same number. That is not in the best interests of a comprehensive National Security Strategy.

We need flexibility in this budget. We are not going to have as much money as everybody seems to think that we are going to have. That is just the fact. We are $20 trillion in debt, running up deficits of $700 billion a year. We have the budget caps. At some point, we are going to have to start making choices. This amendment does not help in that.

As I like to quote: ``Gentlemen, we are out of money; it is time to think.''

We are, in fact, running out of money--that is a Winston Churchill quote, by the way--but we appear to not be willing to do the thinking part about making choices on where we should not and should spend our money.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from New Jersey (Mrs. Watson Coleman).

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 4 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Schneider).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from New Mexico (Ms. Michelle Lujan Grisham).

Mr. Chairman, I have no further speakers, and I urge adoption of the amendments en bloc.

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

Mr. Chairman, I agree with the chairman. I support the en bloc package, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 5 minutes.

I thank the chairman, first of all, for his hard work on this bill, and all the members of the committee and the staff. As the chairman has pointed out, this is a bill that we have passed for 55 straight years. It is a long and complicated bill that essentially sets the defense and national security policy for our country, and there is a lot of good work that has gone into this bill.

Again, I thank the members for doing that. They recognize the complex threat environment that the chairman correctly described, and we are attempting to address it as best we can in this very difficult environment.

I think the thing that is most difficult that I really want to emphasize is what the chairman said in the middle of his remarks: that over the past 6 years we have had one government shutdown, a number of continuing resolutions, several threatened government shutdowns, and the unpredictability that that has presented to the Defense Department.

Now, to be clear, it has also presented a fair amount--the same amount of unpredictability to the nondefense discretionary budget that also has to deal with those challenges. But that uncertainty about our budget has made it very difficult to plan, and nowhere is that more important than at the Department of Defense.

As they try to lay out a strategy for national security, not knowing from one month to the next how much money you are going to have or what you are going to be able to spend it on is a huge problem. I will say a little bit more about this later, because as big a problem as that is, we haven't solved it.

As we debate this bill here today, we do not have a budget resolution from either the House or the Senate. This is a problem we still need to work on. However much money we wind up spending on defense, if we had a cohesive plan and a clear idea of how much money we were going to have over the next few years, it would be a lot easier to plan for those contingencies.

Again, I do want to compliment the work that has been done on this bill. Particularly, I focus a lot on unconventional threats. I think that is the changing nature of the world. I used to chair what is now called the Emerging Threats Committee. I want to thank Congresswoman Stefanik and Ranking Member Langevin for their work and focusing on cyber, focusing on supporting our special operation forces that have borne so much of the brunt of the fight that we face in countering terrorism.

I also want to thank Chairman Rogers and Ranking Member Cooper for their work on the Strategic Forces Subcommittee, focusing on space, in particular, on the importance of emphasizing that. For a long time, our country dominated space. We didn't have to worry about it. But now a lot of other countries are catching up and competing with us. I think this bill reflects the importance of that.

So there are a lot of very solid things in this bill, but I want to close by emphasizing two significant problems that we still need to address.

One I mentioned already. We don't have a budget resolution. This bill has $621 billion in it, as I understand it, in the base bill, and another, I believe, $75 billion in the overseas contingency fund. We are spending nearly $700 billion in this bill on defense. That is a lot of money, and the chairman mentioned a lot of the very necessary programs that it is going towards. However, that breaks the budget caps.

In order to break the budget caps, the House and the Senate have to vote to break the budget caps. It is July. We haven't done that. I will emphasize that in the Senate it actually requires 60 votes to break the budget caps.

So as much as I see the need in defense, given the complex threat environment out there, it is very possible that $72 billion of what is in this bill is going to disappear between now and the end of this year unless we address the broader issue of sequestration and budget caps.

I will also emphasize that addressing that issue by gutting funding for the nondefense discretionary budget and plussing up defense is not going to work for a couple of reasons.

Number one, a lot of the national security needs that we have come out of some of those other items. The proposal to cut the State Department by 31 percent in a time when we face the complex threat environment that was described is ridiculous. In fact, I will quote Chairman Mattis as well, who said:

If you are going to cut the State Department by 30 percent,

you better give me five more divisions because I am going to

need them. We are not going to be able to resolve conflicts

in a peaceful way.

And also, of course, we have domestic needs that are very important as well. We are still waiting on the infrastructure package from the administration.

There are a lot of needs that are not being met, and we are not yet voting to bust the budget caps. Here we have a bill that does that, but this House has to step up and take that vote if this defense authorizing bill is going to go forward.

The second and final point, we still don't have a national security strategy from the White House. Now, we have a very complex threat environment, as I have said more often than I meant to during the course of the last few minutes--we do. We have got Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, a variety of terrorist threats. What we have heard in our committee for the last 6 months is a series of people from the Pentagon coming over and saying the house is on fire. We don't have enough money to do--fill in the blank. There are a whole lot of different things.

What we haven't heard is a strategy, and the most disturbing conversation I had in that regard was with someone from the Office of Net Assessment.

I yield myself an additional 1 minute.

He explained to me that we laid out a strategy in 2012 and said we do not have the money to fund that strategy right now. So I asked him: Well, how short are you? How much more money do you need?

He looked at me like he didn't understand what I was asking, so I sort of explained it. The short answer: he didn't know.

How could he not know? I mean, if you can sit there confidently and say, ``My gosh, we don't have enough money; we are way crazy short of our 2012 strategy'' and you still can't say how short, then you don't have a strategy. We need a strategy to make sure this money is spent wisely.

I will close with a compliment of the chairman for something that he has done. We should also not assume that simply spending more money at the Department of Defense is necessarily going to make us safer. We have to make sure we spend it efficiently and effectively. I think this bill has a lot of very solid efforts to try to make us do that, towards acquisition reform, towards spending the money more wisely.

It is not just a matter of spending more money. We have got to spend it smarter, and we have got to confront the lack of a strategy, and we have got to confront the fact that we still have not resolved our budget resolution problem.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Massachusetts (Ms. Tsongas), the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces.

I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Guam (Ms. Bordallo), ranking member of the Subcommittee on Readiness.

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Langevin), the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Speier), the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Military Personnel.

I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentlewoman.

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Davis).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Brown).

Mr. Chairman, may I inquire as to how much time remains on each side.

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

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Courtney) who is the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces.

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

Mr. Chair, what I really want to focus on is the budget problem, because that is really underlying all of this.

We have heard a lot of good speeches from Members talking about what is in this bill, how important it is, how what is in this bill is attempting both to meet our national security threats and, as importantly, to make sure that we take care of the men and women who serve our military, who fight to protect us to make sure, first of all, that they and their families are taken care of from a financial standpoint, but also to make sure they have the equipment and training they need to be ready to fight the fights that we ask them to go to. I think that is one of the great challenges.

Whatever it is we decide ought to be our national security strategy, I think the thing we all agree on is we need to make sure we provide the training, equipment, and support so that the men and women who serve in the military are ready for that fight.

The worst thing we can do is create a hollow force and set up an expectation that: You need to do all of this, but we are only going to train you for that. So if this other stuff comes up, you are not going to be ready.

We have talked about this a lot in our committee to make sure that we are ready for the fight that comes. And that is where the budget creates a very significant problem.

We have talked a lot about the Budget Control Act and sequestration. It is pretty clear why we had the Budget Control Act and sequestration. I was here for it. We were days away from not raising the debt ceiling and basically not meeting our commitments to pay our bills. There are those who figure that that can be a significant problem.

So we made an agreement. We were going to try to get the budget under control. Sequestration was put in place, with the expectation that it wouldn't be implemented because we would come to a grand bargain on revenue and spending that would get our deficit under control. Well, we didn't, and sequestration kicked in.

But as we sit here today, even if we got rid of sequestration, even if we got rid of the budget caps, we are still $20 trillion in debt. We are going to run a $700 billion deficit. This is projected to go nowhere but up in the years ahead. I don't believe that is sustainable.

Now, I don't think we need to balance the budget tomorrow or next year or even in the next 5 years, but we need to get ourselves on a sustainable path. And we flat refuse to do that.

You don't see a lot of campaigns promising to cut specific programs or promising to raise taxes. I love the fact that if you poll the American people, there is a very clear consensus on what they think we ought to do about this problem.

First of all, somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 percent of them support a balanced budget now, by the way. Not 5, 10 years, but right now.

You ask them: Well, here are all the places where the government spends money. What would you like to cut?

The answer to that question is: nothing. Literally nothing.

The Pew Research folks do a poll on this every year, and in every single category a majority of people would rather keep the money the same or increase it, as opposed to decrease it.

Of course, if you ask them what taxes they would like to increase, by and large, they don't want to increase taxes. It is interesting. If you can convince people that the taxes in question will not apply to them, for a brief moment they will be supportive of it. But then someone will come along and convince them that at some point it might apply to them, and then they oppose it.

So our task as Members of Congress is to balance the budget without raising taxes or cutting spending. That, of course, is impossible. So what we have chosen to do is put off that decision for as long as is humanly possible.

That is why we do not have a budget resolution. Any budget resolution this body could create would fail on probably multiple fronts of what the public expects. It wouldn't balance the budget. It would cut spending they didn't want to cut. It probably wouldn't raise taxes, coming from this majority, but if it did, it wouldn't be popular. So we have to start having an honest conversation about the budget.

We hear in the Armed Services Committee all the time about all the needs, all the shortfalls, all the critical things we need to do. We argue about it and argue about it, but in 6 years the Republican majority has not put forward a plan to control mandatory spending. They say that is the problem. No plan to do that. Certainly, they haven't even considered the possibility of increasing revenue.

If we are this serious--and we should be--about making sure that we have the funds necessary to provide an adequate national security, then we should stop cowering from the budget debate.

Personally, I am all for raising taxes because I see the needs that the chairman and everybody else has described, and I am actually prepared to pay for them. So we need to do that. That overarching budget problem is what has put us in this mess.

As we talk about this bill, as I said, it is $72 billion over the budget caps. Unless we get a vote to lift those budget caps--which I just mentioned is politically unpopular, which is why we haven't done it for the full 6 months we have been in session this year--then that $72 billion goes away and the Pentagon is back in chaos.

So this may be a good bill. It may be solid. It doesn't have the backing of the budget.

Let me finally suggest that there are some things that the Department of Defense could do. This is why the strategy is so important.

Yes, the Obama administration waited until May of 2010. They didn't have 6 years of CRs and government shutdowns and threatened shutdowns and the changing threat environment that we have. They had a reasonably consistent set of problems. It was a set of problems, but they had the same Secretary of Defense from the previous administration. They had time to look at that.

We need this strategy urgently because the big question is: Are we spending the money correctly? Is the Department of Defense spending the money in the right way? Do we have a strategy to figure out how we should prioritize?

We don't. With this crushing budget environment, it is absolutely critical that we do. We need to consider the possibility, for instance, that we might be spending some money that we shouldn't be spending.

I will often ask that question of the generals who come over and tell us how short they are of everything. I say: Well, where are we spending money, in your opinion, that we shouldn't be?

They never answer the question. You cannot tell me in a $700 billion budget in a place as large as the Pentagon that there isn't somebody over there who knows to say: Look, we shouldn't be doing this.

Just to give one suggestion, we have had the BRAC debate forever. We have had a shrinking military, yet we have maintained the same infrastructure. We have seen study after study from the Air Force and others about how much excess capacity they have and money that could be saved from doing that. But again this year, for, I submit, political reasons, BRAC is prohibited.

So we need to get a lot smarter about how we are going to spend this money and a lot smarter about our budget if this bill is actually going to become reality.

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

Mr. Chair, I claim the time in opposition, although I am not opposed.

Mr. Chair, I am not going to take that much time. I agree with the chairman. This is uncontroversial and should be adopted.

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

Mr. Chairman, there is nothing political about a domestic agenda, and this isn't conditional on additional money being spent. In fact, the chairman has got it exactly flip-flop.

The money that we are providing for the armed services at this point, the extra money, is conditioned on cutting it from everything else. As we saw in President Trump's budget, $54 billion-plus up for defense and $54 billion taken away from the domestic agenda.

And it is beyond insulting to say that if you support any sort of domestic spending, you don't care about the troops. That being concerned about transportation and infrastructure, which, by the way, bridges have collapsed and killed people in this country because of the problems with our transportation and infrastructure.

The Department of Homeland Security is part of nondefense discretionary spending. Does it not protect us? We have heard from the President it does.

The State Department is also part of nondefense discretionary spending, where we have heard from the Secretary of Defense that it saves lives.

So for our committee--the Armed Services Committee to say, ``We are all that matters, to hell with everything else; and if you care at all about transportation or domestic agenda, you don't care about the troops,'' that is what is an incredibly disingenuous argument.

Mr. Chairman, I just want to make two quick points, first to the point Mr. Blumenauer made about how we are planning on recapitalizing our entire nuclear arsenal.

Now, we have had a robust debate about how much that is going to cost over 10, 25, 30 years. I have some sympathy for the argument that Mr. Rogers made. It is going to be very difficult to estimate how much it is going to cost over 25 or 30 years.

But I do know that if we are talking about recapitalizing our entire nuclear arsenal, all of the submarines, all of the ICBMs, a new bomber, it is going to cost a lot. I don't know if it is $1.2 trillion or $2 trillion. Whatever it is, it is going to be enormously expensive.

At a time when we face a multiplicity of threats from Russia, North Korea, and where missile defense is critical, I do not believe this is the best investment of our money to get caught up in the Cold War, in the battle against Russia and their nuclear weapons, and making sure we can counter every possible scenario. It is not an efficient use of money.

This amendment is but one piece of it to say let's take a step back and see if this is the best place to spend the money. Maybe it would be better to spend it on cybersecurity. Maybe it would be better to spend it on missile defense.

There are a whole lot of other places I think that are better than trapping ourselves in these nuclear scenarios that require us to build an unbelievably expensive nuclear arsenal.

Secondly, I will disagree with Mr. Rogers on one point: the more you build nuclear weapons, the more the other side tends to build nuclear weapons.

I cannot agree that this is not going to potentially lead to an escalation. In fact, the reason we are so hell-bent on building the LRSO and all of these others is because we are concerned about what Russia and China are doing.

That is how it works. It does have that destabilizing effect. I don't think this is the best place for us to spend our defense dollars.

Mr. Chairman, I support this amendment. I disagree very strongly with the remarks of the gentleman from South Carolina.

First of all, the past BRACs have saved us an enormous amount of money. There have been five rounds. The first four saved us pretty much exactly as much money as they said they were going to. The fifth one was more expensive, but the fifth one was done in 2005, at a time when we were building up the size of the military. It wasn't so much a closure as it was a realignment. But even then, it is now saving us money.

So if you want to argue against BRAC, argue against BRAC; but please, let us not argue that it doesn't save us money because that is just factually ridiculous. It absolutely saves us money.

Second, there have been a number of studies by the Air Force and others. The Air Force has estimated that they are 20 percent over the capacity of their installations. It would be great if we could have a comprehensive study. I agree with that. What our bill has done every year for the last several years is prohibit them from even thinking about a BRAC.

So it is a brilliant argument to say, well, you can't do a BRAC because you haven't done a comprehensive study, and then to put in the bill you are prohibited from doing a comprehensive study. It is a nice little tautology, but it isn't helping our military.

As we have been discussing throughout the night, we have more needs than we have money for. We cannot afford for parochial interests to get in the way of what is in the best interest of our troops. We need a

Mr. Chair, I claim the time in opposition, though I am not opposed.

Mr. Chair, I just want to say very quickly, I still have the concerns that I have expressed about the broader nuclear weapons issue and will talk a little bit more about that in a minute. But you know, this is a way to at least give an option to get a greater idea of the costs. So it may not be everything that we would want, but it is certainly not something that we should oppose, so I do not oppose it and would urge support.

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

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

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Suozzi).

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

Mr. Chair, I yield 90 seconds to the gentleman from California (Mr. Correa).

I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Lipinski).

Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Gottheimer).

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

Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume just to clean up a couple of earlier debates we had on amendments. I just wanted to make a couple of arguments.

On the nuclear weapons issue, I just want to be clear, we support a strong and robust nuclear deterrence. We are not advocating unilateral disarmament by any stretch of the imagination.

We are simply asking: In the budget challenge environment that we have, is this the best use of our money to totally rebuild our entire nuclear weapons system?

And the amendments that were offered weren't even necessarily saying no. They are just saying this is something we ought to study and ought to talk about.

And I will, however, disagree with one argument that was made about how somehow it is a myth that over the last 70 years, all of our adversaries are building nuclear weapons in response to the nuclear weapons that we have built. I think that is a big misreading of history.

We all recall that we were first to the table on this. And thank goodness we were. It enabled us to end World War II. But we are still the only nation on Earth that has actually used nuclear weapons. And when the Soviet Union developed theirs, we had them and they didn't. And I think it is a little ridiculous to assume that no part of their thinking was that:

Well, if the United States of America, our prime adversary,

has nuclear weapons, we better have them, too.

And then we saw the arms race accelerate, even to the point of the famous debate in 1960, how candidate John Kennedy talked about the missile gap that we had. That turned out to be a total fabrication. It wasn't true. We didn't have that gap. It was unfair to what the Eisenhower administration was doing. But the argument from the other side that the notion of an arms race is ridiculous is something that I think is wrong.

Arms races do happen. And part of what we need to do in working with our adversaries is to try to contain them in a reasonable fashion. So I do believe that in many cases, it becomes a self-perpetuating thing. We build them, they build them; we build them, they build them. And I hope that part of our nuclear strategy isn't just building as many nuclear weapons as is humanly possible, but is actually opening up lines of communication with potential adversaries like China, with adversaries like Russia.

Now, I will grant you that where North Korea is concerned, and as I have said repeatedly, we have to deter them, but we have the power to destroy North Korea, I think, hundreds of times over. We have the capacity in terms of our weapons systems to deter them.

So I hope, as we look at modernizing our nuclear weapons systems, we will consider the cost and the effectiveness of doing that. And I know Mr. Rogers has offered his thoughtful amendment to give the Department of Defense some opportunity to do that, but that is all we were trying to say on that.

On BRAC, a couple of arguments were made at the end there that were somewhat misleading. One was that Secretary Mattis had said that he wanted to totally relook at the situation, implying that Secretary Mattis didn't think that a BRAC was a good idea.

The Pentagon--President Donald Trump's Pentagon and Secretary Mattis' Pentagon--recommended a BRAC round that we rejected. So make no mistake about it, the Republican President and Secretary Mattis support a BRAC round.

And two more minor points. It was argued that, well, we voted for this bill 60 to 1 out of committee, so we were all in favor of it. Yes, not all, but we were in favor of the bill. This was a small piece of that bill. So to argue in a bill--and forgive me, I don't know how many pages this year's bill is. I know last year's was 1,600--that in a 1,600-page bill, if you vote for it, you have got to support absolutely everything in it is a notion that I don't think any Member would support.

Again, I will emphasize an argument that I made with Mr. Wilson on the notion that, well, gosh, they don't have a study, they haven't looked at it, they haven't thought about what they are going to do, when, in fact, it is Congress that has prohibited them legislatively-- and I don't know how many of the last few years, but several of them-- from doing that.

Let's at least let them take a look at it to give us the numbers, because the same point as the nuclear weapons issue, as we have heard over and over today, we have crucial readiness shortfalls.

In many ways I will agree with the chairman: we are right now not doing right by the men and women who serve in the military by not providing them with the training and the equipment they need to do the missions that we are contemplating having them do. And if that is the case, if we can find savings by not building as many nuclear weapons as we need or by closing institutions that we do not need, then I think that is something that we owe the men and women who serve in the military.

And let's not kid ourselves. This is a very parochial issue. There are a whole bunch of bases in the State of Washington. I don't want to see any of them closed, but if the military decides that that is the best thing to do, I am not going to stand in the way of it.

And I hope, given the dire situation that we face that has been described by my Republican colleagues, that we would put parochial concerns to the side and do what is best for the military, to make sure that we are spending the money as wisely as we possibly can and to make absolutely certain that the men and women who serve are trained, equipped, and ready to fight whatever fight it is we ask them to go into.

Mr. Chairman, I urge adoption of the second en bloc amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, it is not clear that it has got a prohibition on a study, nor does it call for one.

So as we get into conference, I think it might be a worthwhile thing to say that we authorize, ask--you know, and I am not sure if this is something the Defense Department can do without our authorization or not, but it is something that we should discuss as we get into conference, to have them do that study.

I think that would be an excellent first step, but I am not sure that we

cover it in this bill. Maybe we do, and we can figure that out over the course of the next 48 hours. But if it doesn't, that is something that I think we ought to try to do.

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

Mr. Chairman, I support the en bloc package, as well, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on Thursday, June 29, 2017, I was unable to record my Roll Call vote. Had I been present, I would have voted YES on Roll Call vote No. 341, on the motion to recommit H.R. 3003, with instructions.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to honor the life and accomplishments of Dawn Lucien, an exemplary and civically-minded leader who, for decades, provided the city of Tacoma and its surrounding community with invaluable contributions.

After moving to Tacoma in 1947, Dawn quickly became involved in her city's civic and political life. Believing that Tacoma was truly the ``gem of the universe,'' one of Dawn's first accomplishments in the city was becoming one of just two women elected to the Tacoma

Board of Freeholders in 1956. Just four years later, Dawn served as an appointed member of the Tacoma City Council until 1962.

Dawn's early contributions not only gained the recognition of many at the local level, but also caught the attention of leaders at a national level. In 1962, she was a Nominee to Congress, and was then approached by Vice President Hubert Humphrey to assist overseas. Her commitment to her duties in her beloved Tacoma was so strong that she nearly turned down the opportunity to represent the United States at the 1967 United Nations Economic and Social Council in Geneva.

Continuing her commitment to community organizing, Dawn was instrumental in the 1990s rebirth of downtown Tacoma, and in the creation of the Tacoma campus of the University of Washington. She sought to revitalize her city through the promotion of the arts and education. Dawn was a fearless and independent leader who people viewed as the ``godmother'' of the city. She is remembered for working with others to bridge divides within her community. Dawn even won the Greater Tacoma Peace Prize for her 1988 work to resolve hotly disputed land claims between developers and the Puyallup Tribe of Indians.

Dawn's decades-long commitment to fiercely serving her community and getting results, has played a key role in the growth of the city of Tacoma since she arrived in 1947.

Mr. Speaker, it is with great privilege that I recognize the life of Dawn Lucien. She is truly an exceptional reminder of the high level of commitment to our communities that we should all aspire to every day.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to recognize Lisa Cohen, the Founder and Executive Director of the Washington Global Health Alliance. As Lisa steps down from her ten years of service to the organization, we acknowledge the successes of the WGHA under her leadership, and we thank her for her tireless service to the greater Puget Sound region.

WGHA was founded with the goal of facilitating collaboration between various health

and globally-focused organizations--empowering them to more effectively face the most challenging global health issues. Under Lisa Cohen's leadership, the WGHA has done exactly that; it has channeled the resources of Washington's vibrant healthcare sector.

In the time that I have represented Washington's 9th District, I have had the privilege of attending many WGHA forums and healthcare advocacy meetings. In the past ten years, Lisa Cohen has moderated more than 100 panels and presented to over 50,000 people. WGHA now has over 70 members who, because of her commitment to collaboration, are now better able to serve the communities they touch. It has been an honor to watch WGHA as it has built an international network that achieves more in a more efficient manner.

Lisa Cohen has not only helped to set WGHA on a path to success, she has tirelessly served the greater Puget Sound community. Her list of accomplishments include channeling resources to many of those who are most at-risk in our community, mapping the state's global health community, cofounding Global to Local, and leading the Washington Global Health Fund and Global Health Nexus. As a huge proponent of collaboration, Lisa has helped to form Washington's organizations into a community, so that they can collectively tackle the world's most pressing issues.

Lisa Cohen's unique ability to bring people together has left our community better equipped to handle future health challenges. As she takes her next steps, I know she will continue to make a positive impact and help to make our world a better place.

Mr. Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I recognize the global health work that Lisa Cohen has done in our community and wish her well in her future endeavors.

Mr. Speaker, on Monday, February 6 and Tuesday, February 7, 2017, I was unable to return to Washington, DC for recorded votes due to inclement weather at home in the Puget Sound region. Had I been present, I would have voted:

``Yes'' on rollcall vote No. 79 (on the motion to suspend the rules and pass H.R. 689).

``Yes'' on rollcall vote No. 80 (on the motion to suspend the rules and pass H.R. 337).

``No'' on rollcall vote No. 81 (on ordering the previous question on H.Res. 91).

``No'' on rollcall vote No. 82 (on agreeing to the resolution H.Res. 91).

``No'' on rollcall vote No. 83 (on passage of H.J.Res. 44).

``No'' on rollcall vote No. 84 (on passage of H.J.Res. 57).

``No'' on rollcall vote No. 85 (on passage of H.J.Res. 58).

Mr. Speaker, I rise to honor Ms. Naomi Bashkansky of Bellevue, Washington for her victory at the 2016 World School Chess Championship. Like many other students of Olde Middle School, Naomi works every day to balance extracurricular activities, family commitments, and school life. With the help of coaches, teachers, and family, she strives to mold her own unique identity as a student, a friend, a daughter, and a citizen. Although many aspects of Naomi's life may be familiar to us all, there was nothing ordinary about her performance at the chess championship.

Naomi's accomplishment and strength of character are deserving of the highest level of praise. Naomi not only out-performed 400 young chess players representing 3o different countries, but she graciously represented the people of the 9th Congressional District and the United States of America.

During the competition, Naomi's path to victory was not always clear; she suffered some early losses and could have easily admitted defeat, but she did no such thing. As she competed in the championship round, she bore not only the weight of her own expectations, but also the burden of representing the nation. At such a young age, Naomi's courage and determination is certainly extraordinary. I know I will continue to hear about her achievements for years to come.

Mr. Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I congratulate Ms. Naomi Bashkansky on a hard-earned victory and wish her the best of luck in the future.

Mr. Speaker, I stand in strong opposition to the President's unjust and un-American executive order that blindly bars individuals from entering our country. This action, and the situation that resulted from it, has hurt an enormous number of families, including several in Washington state. In fact, a constituent of the district I represent, a man who risked his life and the lives of his family by selflessly volunteering as an interpreter in support of U.S. forces in Iraq, was affected by this travel ban.

I demand the Statue of Liberty Values Act--the SOLVE Act--be voted on and passed by the House. This legislation would rescind and defund this ill-considered and harmful executive order that hurts refugees and many others who are arbitrarily denied the ability to travel to the United States. By sowing confusion in a thinly veiled attempt to ban an entire religion from entering our country, the President has clearly shown his inability or unwillingness to govern in an reasoned and inclusive manner.

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

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I want to thank the chairman, and I want to thank the members of the Armed Services Committee. I think we had a very excellent debate on this issue yesterday in committee. A lot of very well thought-out opinions on both sides were expressed in a respectful way.

I also want to thank the chairman because the second that it was said that General Mattis was going to be the President-elect's selection for Secretary of Defense, he joined me in saying that we wanted General Mattis to appear before our committee to answer our questions. This is something that has only happened twice, and the first time in 67 years; and our committee members wanted the opportunity to do our job as the House Armed Services Committee and hear from the nominee about how he felt about the civilian control of the military, which is the reason that this law was put in place back in 1947. So I thank the chairman for that. Unfortunately, it didn't happen.

The one thing I would correct, we do have to pass this piece of legislation in order for General Mattis to become the Secretary of Defense. We do not have to do it now. I will explain more on how we can do that in just a second. But the problem of where we are at right now because of the actions of the transition team, we basically, certainly on the House Armed Services Committee and, to some extent, in the full House, are being treated as irrelevant.

It was mentioned during our committee that General Mattis received an 81-17 vote on this legislation in the Senate. That is true, it was bipartisan. He appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee. The Senate Armed Services Committee was given the respect to do their job, and they heard him, and they asked him questions. It didn't take very long. He was done by 12:30, and they voted. That didn't happen for us.

Really, it is sort of a two-step process in which the legislative branch--in this case, the House--was basically ignored and treated as irrelevant. First was in the continuing resolution that we passed to keep the government open where, with guidance from the transition team, they insisted on very specific language in the CR to set it up so that General Mattis could be confirmed, and that was stuck into the CR. Now, we, on the Democratic side objected to a couple of things in that at the time, but those objections were ignored, and it was put in, and we were not prepared to shut down the government over this issue since it was put into the CR.

The chairman has mentioned one of the problems with it, and the biggest one, and that is in the past, in the case of General Marshall, they exempted him from this provision that retired officers are subject to the UCMJ. They did not exempt General Mattis. When we are talking about civilian control of the military, if you have a retired military officer who is still subject to military law, that, without question, blurs the line between his being a military officer and his being a civilian. It is something we easily could have fixed. But the way they wrote it into the CR there was no way for us to do that.

Then, second, and more--I can't think of the right word--second and worse, let's just put it that way, as we said, we agreed. We were going to have General Mattis come and talk to us. Both the chairman and I spoke to General Mattis on the phone. He was very anxious to come testify. In fact, 3 days ago, we noticed in our committee that we were going to have a public hearing with General Mattis before us answering our questions and addressing whatever concerns we might have. Then, the next day, 24 hours before he was supposed to appear, the transition team--and as I was led to believe, it was some low-level person on the transition team--said: Nah, we are not going to let him come.

Reporters have asked me many times: Why did the transition team do that? The best answer to that question is because they could, because they just really didn't feel like it. Some people have said: Well, it would be a lot of effort, a lot of work.

Like I said, General Mattis testified before the Senate committee. Most of us watched it on television. He was done at 12:30. We were scheduled to have him at 2:30. He could have had a nice lunch, walked over to the House, sat down for an hour, and the House Armed Services Committee could have been permitted to do its job.

The reason this is important--and I have heard for 8 years endless complaints from the Republican side of the aisle about how President Obama has ignored the legislative branch, how executive authority is making irrelevant the people's House, and how wrong that was. On a number of occasions I've actually agreed with them. I think that has happened.

But here we are before this President is even in office, at the very first opportunity, he is choosing to completely ignore us for no reason. You cannot tell me that General Mattis couldn't handle an hour- and-a-half's worth of questioning in the House Armed Services Committee. He has done it before countless times.

So what we can do and what I think we should do, what I think we should

have done at the time when the transition team called up and said that, is we should have said: Okay. We appreciate your opinion, but you need us to pass this law in order for General Mattis to be Secretary of Defense. We have been told that he is going to appear before our committee. We have told our members of the committee and everybody else that he is going to appear; and until he does, we are not going to pass that law.

Now, I am of the opinion that if we had said that, if we had shown some backbone and stood up for what is our right as the legislative body, that all of a sudden General Mattis would have been available and we could have avoided all of this.

Even today, I submit that if we defeat this bill on the floor, we couldn't get him in by January 20. I grant you that. But we are back January 23 and 24. We were scheduled to be here January 25. I gather that got canceled because the Republican retreat is going to be a bit longer than expected.

But we could certainly take that day back. We could wait 3 or 4 days, which I don't think would be the end of the world, and assert our authority as the legislative branch. Because, let me tell you something, if we set this precedent now, if you think President Obama exercised executive authority in a highhanded way, ignoring the legislative branch, there is every indication that President-elect Trump is going to have an even greater approach in that direction. So if we don't stand up for ourselves now, we are going to be rolled over countlessly.

We all want to support General Mattis. We want that bipartisan vote. The way to get that bipartisan vote is to do what we said we were going to do, have him come before the Armed Services Committee and simply address the issue we want to raise. That is why I would ask this body to reject this motion now, so that we can actually have the Armed Services Committee do its job.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. McEachin).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Davis).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Nevada (Ms. Rosen).

I yield the gentlewoman an additional 30 seconds.

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

This is not a vote against General Mattis. I think I made that very, very clear. I think it is very important that

the House have the opportunity to hear from him, as we said we were going to do.

Now, yes, he has appeared before the Senate. But, as all of us on the Armed Services Committee know, after the transition is over and the new Secretary of Defense is in place, one of the first things they do is come up and report the budget to us. The Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staffs will come up. They go to the Senate, too.

Are we just going to say we can watch the television? Why does he need to go to both places? Why would we bother to have him come all the way over to the House and have our members have the opportunity to ask him questions? I don't want to set that precedent.

So, as passionate as the previous speaker was, please understand--and I have expressed this directly to General Mattis--this is not a vote against General Mattis. In fact, I have said: if we have the opportunity to do our job as the House Armed Services Committee, if we simply do not roll over for the transition team, we would be more than happy to support General Mattis in a bipartisan way. We have plenty of time to do this right, instead of doing it in the rushed way that disregards the power and importance of the House Armed Services Committee.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds.

I have an enormous amount of respect for the gentleman from California. I have enjoyed traveling with him to Afghanistan and elsewhere.

I think what he said in the first part of his remarks was, basically, the Trump administration is going to ignore us, and we just need to get used it. That is not my interpretation of our jobs. I think we were elected as well, particularly on the Armed Services Committee, and, in our elections, we even got more votes than our opponents. That is how we were able to get here.

So I don't think we should simply roll over for the Trump administration because that is the way he is likely to behave.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Khanna), a new member of the Armed Services Committee.

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

Mr. Speaker, I would just point out that, because of the way this law is written, General Mattis actually will not be going back to civilian life after he leaves. He is still subject to the UCMJ and, therefore, is still, in some ways, a military officer while he will be the ``civilian head'' of the Defense Department.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds just to say, not to be a stickler for detail, but we are actually not giving a waiver here. We are changing the law, and that is what makes this appointment different. When you confirm someone to the Cabinet, the gentleman is absolutely right, the Senate, that is their authority. It is in the Constitution. We don't get involved in that. But when you are changing a law, the House has a say in that. It is the Senate and the House.

This debate actually makes me even more strongly opposed to this bill as I continue to hear about: We just don't matter. The Senate has got it. Trump has got it. What do we need to do?

We have a responsibility as the House, and when you are changing a law, it has to go through the Senate and the House.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I thank the folks for the debate. I think it has been very good, as it was in committee. But it is disturbing to hear this described as politics, or we feel slighted and we should rise above that. This isn't what this is about. It is about our exercising our constitutional authority as Members of the House and our constitutional authority as members of the Armed Services Committee. It is about us being relevant in the process and doing our jobs, as I said in the opening.

Again, there is every opportunity to confirm and then also pass this change in the law that is necessary to make General Mattis the next Secretary of Defense. We can simply insist with the transition team that he appear before our committee. As I have pointed out, if we had done that in the first place, we could have met the January 20 deadline; and even now we could still do it by January 23 or 24. I don't think a few days would make that big a difference compared to the institution of the House actually mattering.

Now, I will say that, as I listened to the debate today, I become even a little bit more disturbed, as we have heard some of the reasoning behind supporting this change in the law to allow General Mattis to become the Secretary of Defense. As was said, basically, the Trump administration is going to do this kind of thing quite frequently, as one Member of the opposite party said, so we should just get used to it.

I really do think that makes it all the more important at this point, at this moment, that we assert our authority. Again, we can do that and have a bipartisan vote and approve General Mattis. We just have to insist upon it instead of rolling over and accepting what the transition team has said. That was my original argument. I will not belabor it or restate it. I think it is compelling. I think we should stand up for our rights here in the House and on the Armed Services Committee.

The final thing I will say is, while I have an enormous amount of respect for General Mattis--and like many who have spoken, I have not served in the armed services, I didn't work with him there, but I certainly have worked with him on the committee--I will point out that General Mattis is not God. As we listen to the people talk here about how we absolutely have to have somebody from the warrior class lead us in the military, that we have to have him in there in order to protect us from this dangerous world, that sort of language kind of makes me a little nervous.

That is the point of civilian control of the military. We do not want to be run by the warrior class alone. Now, absolutely we have many Members on both sides of the aisle who have served in the military, and I think that is terrific. That perspective is enormously important. It is not the only perspective that is important to running a representative democracy. We have heard comparisons to the Roman Empire. Again, another analogy that is somewhat troubling. That is not what we want. But more than anything, what we don't want is we don't want a president who thinks that he can roll over the House Armed Services Committee and the entire House any time he feels like it, frankly, as in this case, for no reason.

General Mattis, as everyone has admitted, was perfectly prepared to testify, perfectly prepared to come before us, and they simply decided not to send him. I don't think it was mere pettiness or anything like that. I have watched the way President-elect Trump conducts himself, and he is, shall we say, aggressive. I think they wanted to make it clear that they are going to be running things and that we better get the heck out of the way.

Well, that is not what I was elected to do as a member of the House Armed Services Committee or a Member of the House. We are not here simply to get out of the way of President Obama or President-elect Trump. We are here to stand up for the people who elected us and for the country and to do our jobs. In this case, for no good reason, we were denied the ability to do that.

So, again, I will urge Members to vote down this bill today so that we can assert our authority, hear from General Mattis, get him approved, go forward, but do it in a way that shows that the House of Representatives and the House Armed Services Committee actually matter. We cannot set the precedent that the President of the United States can simply ignore us on a whim.

So I would urge us to vote ``no'' on this matter.

I, again, thank the chairman for his leadership on this. We have worked very closely on this issue, amongst many others. To echo the comments of the freshman colleague from California, this is a very bipartisan committee. It will continue to be. We have done a bill for 55 straight years, and I am hoping we will make it 56 this year. I look forward to working with Chairman Thornberry, all of the members of the committee, and all of the Members of the House to achieve that goal.

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

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the President's decision to defer the deportation of some of the 11 million undocumented immigrants who are in this country.

This is a decision that every President has made, to one degree or another. We do not have the resources to deport everybody, so he makes a decision about which ones should go and shouldn't. There is nothing illegal about that, and the House should not be holding up the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations bill because of that policy issue.

First of all, it is a policy issue best addressed by a policy committee, not by holding hostage an appropriations bill. There is an authorizing process to go through to have that fight. Secondly, and more importantly, the President's decision was the right one. There are millions upon millions of undocumented immigrants in this country who are valuable members of our community. They are wives and husbands. They are fathers. They are working productively and paying taxes. Tearing apart families and communities is not something that is going to help this country.

I think the President made the right decision. We should support it. And we certainly shouldn't be shutting down the Department of Homeland Security in a misguided attempt to go after that policy.

Mr. Speaker, on Monday, February 2 and during the first series of votes on Tuesday, February 3, 2015, I was unable to be present for recorded votes. Had I been present, I would have voted:

``YES'' on roll call vote No. 51, on the motion to suspend the rules and pass H.R. 361;

``YES'' on roll call vote No. 52, on the motion to suspend the rules and pass H.R. 615;

``YES'' on roll call vote No. 53, on the motion to suspend the rules and pass H.R. 623;

``NO'' on roll call vote No. 54, on ordering the previous question on H. Res. 70;

``NO'' on roll call vote No. 55, on agreeing to the resolution H. Res. 70; and

``YES'' on roll call vote No. 56, on approving the Journal.

Mr. Speaker, on Monday, January 12, 2015, I was unable to be present for a recorded vote. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes'' on roll call vote No. 17, on the motion to suspend the rules and pass H.R. 203, ``yes'' on roll call vote No. 18, on the motion to suspend the rules and pass H.R. 33, and ``yes'' on roll call vote No. 19, on approving the Journal.