Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Rogers), the chairman of the committee. Mr. Chairman, I yield 45 seconds to the gentlewoman from Virginia (Ms. McClellan).…
Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition.
Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Rogers), the chairman of the committee.
Mr. Chairman, I yield 45 seconds to the gentlewoman from Virginia (Ms. McClellan).
Mr. Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Wilson), a member of the House Armed Services Committee.
Mr. Chairman, may I inquire as to the time remaining.
Mr. Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Houlahan).
Mr. Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from New Jersey (Ms. Sherrill).
Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time just to say we need to support Ukraine. Ukraine was brutally invaded by Putin. The only way to make this war stop is to make Ukraine strong enough so that Putin realizes he cannot succeed. Please defeat this amendment and continue to support Ukraine. Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. Chairman, this is an incredibly important issue in the bill this year. We have several amendments that go after diversity, equity, and inclusion in the military, and it could not be more misguided.
We need a diverse military. We need to recruit from all across the country, regardless of race, creed, color, religion, and gender. We need to make sure that we are taking advantage of the talent of all in America. Sadly, we haven't really historically done that. We still have a major challenge.
Just to give one example, when you look at the promotions within the military, the statistics have come out, and this is from 2023, not 20 years ago: Every single ethnicity gender is promoted at a lower rate than White men.
Now, is it the case that White men are just naturally better at this than anybody else? Absolutely not. Why do we have this disproportionate level of promotion? I don't know for sure, but I think it is worth it to have somebody at the Pentagon trying to answer that question. If you are a Black person, if you are a woman, if you are a Hispanic person, if you are a gay or trans person and you are looking at this and saying, should I sign up for the military, one central question you are going to have is: Am I going to get a fair shot?
Historically, all of those groups that I just mentioned have not gotten a fair shot. I challenge anybody on the floor to dispute that fundamental fact. Let's have at least some people at the Pentagon who are trying to make sure that they do and that we are able to recruit a diverse population and bring them in.
Two final points on this.
One, there is such a thing as bad diversity, equity, and inclusion. I have seen it. I have witnessed it. I have seen efforts that throw out actual standards in favor of a rather narrow-minded racial agenda. That is wrong and shouldn't happen. That is not what is happening in the United States military. If the folks on the other side of the aisle wanted to go after that, I would be happy to work with them, but that is not what they are doing. They are eliminating all diversity, equity, and inclusion in the military, an enormous mistake that will cost us an enormous amount of talent.
The second point is the only way this makes any sense is if you buy into this argument that we are past all of that, that racism doesn't happen anymore, that it is just not out there, and that it is not something we need to worry about.
I may need an additional 30 seconds, but I want to read you something from
David French, who is a conservative columnist who adopted a 2-year-old Ethiopian.
Mr. Chair, he is a conservative, but he happened to adopt a 2-year-old Ethiopian. He is not a fan of Trump, so people started turning on him in his own church and his own community.
He said: ``The racism was grotesque. One church member asked my wife why we couldn't adopt from Norway rather than Ethiopia.'' Shout-out to the former President for that one.
``A teacher at the school asked my son if we had purchased his sister for a `loaf of bread.' We later learned that there were coaches and teachers who used racial slurs to describe the few Black students at the school. There were terrible incidents of peer racism, including a student telling my daughter that slavery was good''----
--``slavery was good for Black people because it taught them how to live in America. Another told her that she couldn't come to our house to play because `my dad said Black people are dangerous.' ''
Let's deal with this rationally and intelligently, not just throw everything out. Please preserve diversity and inclusion in our military and oppose this amendment.
Mr. Chair, I do talk to people in the military all the time, and our military is doing just fine.
Now, there will always be people who are opposed to greater inclusion. We have seen this throughout the military in a wide variety of areas. Way back when, it was opposition to Black people serving in the military. Then there was a lot of opposition to gay people serving in the military. Every single time you had some people in the military saying this is going to destroy us, unit cohesion will fall apart, we can't possibly treat people fairly and function, they have all been proven wrong every single time.
The people I talk to in the military say things are going just fine, that they are, in fact, being more inclusive, and the military is as strong as it has ever been.
It is completely wrong for a rightwing political agenda to denigrate our military to try to make the point that there is some kind of excessive wokeism going on. That is not what the overwhelming majority of people in the military are telling me and others.
What they are saying is that inclusion does matter. People need to be treated fairly. The idea that if the military goes like this and says that we don't see color, we don't see gender, we don't see any of this, that it will all just go away and everything will be fine is absurd. Reasonable diversity, equity, and inclusion works. That is what the military is doing. Please let them continue to do it.
Mr. Chair, to respond to the issue of why recruitment is down, there are actually three reasons why recruitment is down.
Number one is the pandemic, when they were restricted in their ability to recruit for a year and a half.
Number two is because we have very low unemployment. Recruitment is always down when we have low unemployment.
Number three is because the rightwing has decided to demonize the military as some sort of woke place that no one should serve in.
Yes, some people do listen to that message. I have spoken to Members and others who are pushing that message who say, well, it is not really a problem. They say, well, it is out there. It is out there because you all are putting it out there and creating this level of division that doesn't need to be created.
Recruitment can be just fine with diversity. In fact, it would be better.
Madam Chair, I rise in opposition to this amendment.
Madam Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Deluzio).
Madam Chair, I yield myself 2 minutes.
Madam Chair, what is at dispute here is fact-checking. It is not true that businesses or anyone in America can say whatever they want. Facts do matter.
I mean, if the U.S. Government is doing business with a company that says that their product will let you live to 200 years and cure cancer, they don't have the freedom to do that. I would hope that someone with the administration would check that and say that is not somebody we want to do business with.
This amendment basically is saying facts do not matter and basically saying that they don't exist, that everyone says what they want to say, and we just go along with it. That is completely wrong. You should do fact-checking.
Now, I completely agree with the gentleman that facts are not as black and white as a lot of times people say they are. We should have robust disputes about what actually happened, what the information is out there.
This amendment does not allow for that. This amendment says anything goes. Any effort whatsoever to check the accuracy of what is being said and done by people we are doing business with is going to be strictly prohibited.
I understand where this is coming from. A lot of this is coming from disputes conservatives have, but you can't just say whatever you want to say. The people who tried to overturn the 2020 election are learning that. We have heard about the attack on this Capitol on January 6. We have heard people say that it didn't happen or that it was antifa, an inside job, the government.
All of these things are wrong. It is not: You say this; I say that. Wrong. Facts do exist, even if some of them turn out to be wrong. This amendment says: No, we are giving up. We are not even trying to figure out what is true. Anything goes. Have fun with it.
I don't think that is a good idea in general, but it is a particularly bad idea in our national security environment that we are in right now because Russia and China love that approach. They regularly feed the disinformation battles in the U.S. on both the right and left.
Madam Chair, I yield myself an additional 30 seconds.
They find stories that agitated people on the right or agitated people on the left, and they amplified them. We are seeing this all over the place with the Ukraine war as Russia has spread story after story that is picked up by people here.
It is in our national security interests to check those facts and not spread propaganda damaging to this country. Dispute it. Sometimes they get it wrong. Let's have that debate, but please let's not pass this amendment that basically says there are no facts, that whatever you say is true just because you said it.
That is not correct. Please defeat this amendment.
Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.
Madam Chair, I yield myself the balance of my time.
Madam Chair, what this amendment says, as the gentleman just said, is that it is not the government's job to figure out what is true. That is a shocking statement.
What would be accurate is the government needs to be careful when they are trying to figure out what is true. I don't disagree with that. If they mess that up or get something wrong, let's talk about it, but please, let's not have the United States Congress say that the government should have no interest whatsoever in what is true or what is not true. You all just go have fun, say whatever you want to say, and we
will keep giving you money for whatever.
Let's try to get an accurate picture of what is going on. As difficult and challenging as that can be at times, the alternative of saying that facts don't exist and truth doesn't exist, so say whatever you want, is not an alternative we should embrace.
Please defeat this amendment.
Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.
Mr. Chair, the problem with this is that many think that a radical gender ideology is that trans and gay people exist. We heard a Member on the floor earlier today on the Republican side of the aisle say trans people don't exist. So that is not a radical ideology. This would ban that. We have seen this happen. You are not allowed to acknowledge that gay or transgender people exist. That is deeply damaging. It is not a radical ideology and it shouldn't be banned.
Mr. Chair, I urge defeat of this amendment.
Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.
Mr. Chair, I rise in opposition to the amendment.
Mr. Chair, there is actually quite a bit in this amendment that I do agree with. I think ideologies that are explicitly racist are problematic, and I certainly have seen that done. There are examples of the teaching of critical race theory and promotion of critical race theory that I personally disagree with, but there are two reasons to oppose this amendment.
Number one, that is not happening in the United States military. We had a great debate earlier about why recruitment is down. Part of it is because of the fundamental dishonesty that the rightwing is saying about the military in terms of what is going on.
They are not promoting critical race theory. It is a theory they do talk about, just like they talked about communism and fascism and a whole wide variety of other things that they don't agree with. To suggest, as this amendment does, that our military is promoting any of this ideology is completely wrong.
The second problem I have with this amendment is thatt it does sort of push in the other direction, to want to sort of suggest, as we have seen in Florida and other States, that racism isn't really a thing.
There was a famous example where it was said: What we ought to be teaching people is that, in fact, slavery had its upside. So there are problems with taking that approach.
In particular, there is something in here about whether or not the Declaration of Independence is a racist document. That is a debate, I think, certainly we should have, but a document that basically enshrines--actually, it is the Declaration of Independence. I guess the Constitution is in there, too--enshrines the fact that if you are a Black person, you cannot vote and you count as three-fifths of a person. I think it would kind of be interesting to debate whether or not that was racist because I think it kind of was. To ignore the history of our country, both good or bad, is a mistake.
This amendment pushes us toward ignoring any of the history that is racist, that has promoted white supremacy, which has promoted slavery and Jim Crow. To say that the people being educated in our military schools should ignore that history, I think, is a great weakness.
The military does not promote CRT. They should have a robust discussion about various ideologies and also the history of racism in this country. Ignoring it will do a disservice to the men and women who serve in the military and to the country.
Mr. Chair, I oppose this amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Hawaii (Ms. Tokuda).
Mr. Chair, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from Hawaii.
Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Chair, I think we have concluded our remarks as well. For all the reasons stated, I urge opposition, and I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.
Mr. Chair, I rise to claim the time in opposition to the amendment.
Mr. Chair, I yield myself 2 minutes.
Mr. Chair, the maker of this amendment is correct. This is an issue that we have litigated before the House already. I forget how many years ago it was now, but controversy arose over different flags being flown at different military institutions.
We attempted to resolve that issue, and we did resolve that issue. We resolved the issue by saying there would be these approved flags.
The other piece of it is that if the local leadership agrees, they may fly a flag as well because there are a whole lot of flags out there in the world, and we didn't want to contemplate absolutely all of them. If somebody is a Dallas Cowboys fan and wants to fly a Dallas Cowboys flag somewhere, the commander or civilian leadership can rightly decide whether or not it is appropriate within that unit.
I am with him on the initial part about how much he loves the U.S. flag. I love the U.S. flag, as well. Let's be clear: This amendment has absolutely nothing to do with the U.S. flag. The U.S. flag can be flown, as it well should be, and we appreciate it. This is about commanders and civilian leadership at local military installations being able to decide whether or not they want to fly other flags. That was part of the compromise that we agreed to. There is no necessity for banning this.
If you rise to be the person who is in charge of a military installation, I am going to trust you to be able to make this decision. It is not something that Congress needs to insert itself into. We don't need to decide on whether every single flag should go up or go down. We litigated this issue. We resolved it in the NDAA. We do not need to reopen it.
Mr. Chair, I urge opposition to this amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Chair, I would say Congress has decided. We decided on 13 flags, and we decided to trust the military installation commanders to make other decisions. We did decide. We have done this two or three times. They want us to decide something different. That is not violating anything. That is just going at what they think Congress ought to decide to do.
We have exercised the law and the right that was laid out. We exercised it in the way we did. We approved it in this body, the Senate, and the conference report. It does not need to be reopened.
Mr. Chair, I urge us to defeat this amendment, and I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Virginia (Ms. McClellan).
Mr. Chair, I yield myself the balance of my time. It is ironic, the gentleman arguing about how Congress doesn't need to pass a bunch of laws while he is urging us to pass another one. He is the one
who is actually proposing and having us pass something else that would place a restriction after we have already dealt with that.
This is not an issue that needs to be revisited. We worked it out. We have a bunch of approved flags for everybody. We allow the local commanders to make local decisions.
Congress certainly should exercise our authority of oversight over the Department of Defense, and there are a wide variety of different areas where we need to do this. Micromanaging what flag is flown at every single installation in the United States of America and beyond is not a place I think we need to insert ourselves.
Mr. Chair, I oppose this amendment and urge the body to do so. I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.
Mr. Chair, I rise in opposition to the amendment.
Mr. Chair, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from New Jersey (Ms. Sherrill).
Mr. Chair, I will point out, as I am sure the gentleman recognizes, there are helicopter pilots in the Army and there are helicopter pilots who are in combat, so it is perfectly appropriate to have a helicopter pilot talk about what it is like to serve in a combat role, and I think the gentleman would agree with me on that.
There is one other aspect of this amendment that has always troubled me. We talk about combat MOSes, but the actual substance of the amendment would set a gender-neutral standard to be in the Army, period, and that is what is concerning because there are a lot of different jobs within the Army. There is combat, which you described, absolutely. We also need intel officers, we need linguistic experts, and we need a whole lot of people who will have a different set of qualifications.
What the Army was concerned about with this last year, how we came to a compromise--which you have decided you didn't like, apparently, even though you guys are in the majority, and we passed this last year--was that they were concerned that if you required this you would be booting a ton of women out of the military now who aren't in combat roles. The breadth of this amendment is what concerns me.
In addition, like I said, last year we did this, and the Army is tasked with coming back to us with new fitness standards for the broad Army and also for the very specific combat MOSes to make sure that they meet the standards, that the gentleman is quite correct must be there, for certain jobs, but it depends on the job.
It also is something that is not said on this floor, and I love the fact that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle would have you believe that the military has always been this completely unbiased, unbigoted place, and no one has anything to worry about. We are just going to treat everybody perfectly equally, and everything will be fine.
I confess, I have not served in the military, and maybe someone who has served in the military will say, oh, no, we have never done that. I would think you were being dishonest if you said that because bias and bigotry have been a problem. It has been a particular problem for women serving in the military, as any woman, Republican or Democrat, who has served in the military in the last 40 years can tell you. Efforts to make sure that women know that they will be included and given a fair shot are important. This amendment undermines that.
Mr. Chair, I urge opposition, and I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.
Mr. Chair, I rise in opposition to the amendment.
Mr. Chair, I will be brief. I don't fundamentally disagree with the idea that we learned a lot about the relative effectiveness of masks. I am not a huge fan of them myself. The main reason they tend not to be effective is people don't wear them or they don't wear them correctly.
I think what we have learned is that there are some circumstances in which masks could conceivably be helpful.
I don't like the way the scientists in this country presented the mask information to the American public. I think they undermined a lot of credibility in the way they did it by not explaining it in an honest way, and I think they were wrong in a number of different areas.
This amendment says there is never any time ever when a mask mandate makes sense, and that is just further than even I am willing to go. I don't know when that time is going to be. I have not done an exhaustive study of the science. I have read a few New Yorker articles in other places that raised some of the concerns.
To have an amendment that says under no circumstances can our medical professionals within the military conclude that this is a good idea goes too far.
I oppose the amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Chair, I actually don't have any more arguments on this point other than what I have said.
Mr. Chair, I urge opposition, and I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. Chair, I rise in opposition to the amendment.
Mr. Chair, I yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Jacobs).
Mr. Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Virginia (Ms. McClellan.)
Mr. Chair, I am prepared to close, and I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Chair, I yield myself the balance of my time.
Mr. Chair, two quick points: The United States Congress shouldn't be making medical decisions, and that is what this amendment is. It is telling the military what medical services they should provide. That, I think, is a huge mistake regardless of the context.
Second, trans people have served in the military for a long time, even before it was officially allowed, and, certainly, now they are continuing to serve with the same honor and dignity as everybody else who has served. To imply otherwise is completely wrong.
Various people throughout the military need healthcare. We spend money on a lot of different healthcare provisions. There is a favorite stat about how much money the United States spends on Viagra for people who serve in the military. There are different purposes.
This amendment is wrong for two reasons: One, it is bigoted and discriminatory against trans people who serve and serve in the military very effectively.
Number two, it has Congress making medical decisions that should be left up to medical professionals and their patients.
Mr. Chair, I urge opposition to this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.
Mr. Chair, I rise in opposition to the amendment.
Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume before I yield to Ms. Jacobs.
I will say, just on the comment about doctors being like gas station owners, of course, a doctor is going to want to operate whenever you show up, that is not the way the medical profession works.
I have been through a number of operations myself. I don't always agree with decisions the doctors make, but I will stand up for the medical profession and say they are not selling a product to the point where the more of it they sell the happier they are. They are not just going to operate on anyone who walks in.
It is the purpose of a medical doctor to make a medical determination about what the proper treatment is, not to sell as much of it as is humanly possible.
I stand by what I said earlier: Congress should not be telling doctors what medical decisions they should make.
Mr. Chair, if you have got a doctor out there who is passing out treatment like he is at a gas station, then please report him, and let's make sure that that license is taken away.
Mr. Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Jacobs).
Mr. Chairman, I want to follow that last train of logic.
Basically, if a trans person receives medical care, it is, by definition, taking medical care away from somebody else. I guess, if a cancer patient is receiving medical care, that is taking it away from somebody else.
That is simply not true. That is not the choice here. If you need healthcare, you should get healthcare. There will be a robust debate within the medical community about what is appropriate, certainly, but, in this case, we are talking about trans children of people who are serving in the military being denied healthcare that they need.
I don't feel that we should be denying healthcare to children whose medical professionals say they need it, and it is
not a choice of taking it away from somebody else. It is not the way our healthcare system works.
What this amendment would do is clearly take healthcare away from families and spouses of servicemembers that a medical doctor has determined that they need.
I come back to this argument that somehow our military is being destroyed by wokeness. This is completely and totally untrue. Number one, as we stand here today on the floor, we have the best military in the world. They are serving ably all across the world. It is incredibly talented and incredibly effective. I am offended that the other side of the aisle seems to want to continue to denigrate our military because of a rightwing agenda to wage a culture war.
That is not what is going on in the United States military. Recruitment is a problem primarily because of how good the economy is. Again, for a period of time, they weren't able to recruit because of COVID. Recruitment is also a problem, in small part due to the rightwing bashing on the military 24-7.
Are there some people in the military who long for the days when gay people and trans people and women and even people of color weren't in a position to compete with them? I am quite certain that there are. I am also quite certain that it is a relatively small number.
All we are trying to do is make sure that we have equal access in the military.
Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.
Mr. Chair, I yield myself 3 minutes.
Mr. Chair, there is so much completely wrong about what the gentleman just said about that amendment that it really needs to be corrected.
First of all, just on the last point about what Chairman Milley had to say about this, the United States military is not fighting in Ukraine. We have not sent the United States military to accomplish a mission, and the specificity is an entirely different place.
Second, there has been a clear mission from day one that the Biden administration has articulated on two points: Number one, preserve a sovereign, democratic Ukraine; number two, don't get into a war with Russia.
They have said that from day one over and over and over again. I have heard people who don't want to support Ukraine continually generate this excuse: Oh, it is not clear. We don't know what we are doing there.
We have known what we were doing there from day one. We are trying to stop Russia from destroying Ukraine. We could not possibly be more clear. That is what we are trying to do. The resources that we provided Ukraine have helped make that possible. Ukraine still exists as a sovereign, democratic country.
There was also all throughout that speech all kinds of Russian propaganda that is untrue. Neither the United States nor any NATO allies blocked this mythical peace deal that existed in April 2022. Putin never agreed to any such peace deal and neither did Zelenskyy. We didn't block it. Our strategy in Ukraine is crystal clear: stop Russia from destroying it.
Now, in an ideal world, we would like Russia completely out of all of Ukraine as it existed post-1991. That is not the stated goal or stated strategy.
The stated goal and stated strategy are to preserve a sovereign, democratic Ukraine. I hope everybody on this floor recognizes, number one, that that is a really important goal. It is worth fighting for. To make sure that Russia can't simply destroy a sovereign, democratic nation because if they destroy one, they will be sorely tempted to destroy more, and Ukraine is worth preserving.
Number two, for the 2-plus years we have been engaged in this, we have been pushing that strategy effectively against tall odds. We seem to have forgotten now that in the immediate days after the Russian invasion, the assumption of everyone was Ukraine was finished. They were gone. They were done. There was no way they could stand up to Russia. Yet for 2-plus years they have, and they are capable of continuing to do that if we don't back off on our support for them.
Now, the amendment that is in the en bloc, I am not thrilled about. It asks for a strategy. My opinion is the strategy already exists, so that has been met. The administration is, once again, going to send up their strategy in the next couple of months, which will meet the requirements and concerns of this amendment and will stop us from cutting off our support for Ukraine.
Please don't believe every piece of anti-American, anti-Ukraine, pro- Russian propaganda that gets put out there about what is going on. It is really rather simple.
Mr. Chair, I yield myself an additional 30 seconds.
Mr. Chair, Putin wants Ukraine. He has said over and over again that Ukraine should not exist as a country, that it should be part of Russia. We are helping Ukraine stop him from doing that.
At the end of the day, that is what is happening. It is not complicated, and we ought to support that effort.
Mr. Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Casten).
Mr. Chair, I yield myself an additional 1 minute.
Mr. Chair, I forgot to mention one thing about the Ukraine amendment. The gentleman referenced a number of different people, including Senator Lindsey Graham and what he thought the strategy was. I will make sure that people understand that that is the thing about a democracy. We know what Russia's strategy is because Vladimir Putin doesn't let anybody else have an opinion.
In the United States of America, we have got 535 Members of Congress. If you ask all 535 Members of Congress, I don't doubt that you would get a wide variety of different answers as to what our strategy is in Ukraine. Again, that is living in a democracy, where people are free to have their own opinions. If you ask the administration what our policy is, it has been consistent and clear: A sovereign, democratic Ukraine must be preserved and don't stumble into a war with Russia.
It is not an easy policy to implement, but they have successfully done it for 2-plus years now. That is clear. Don't be confused by a whole bunch of other
opinions from independent contractors who absolutely have a right to their opinion about what the strategy ought to be, but that is different than what the strategy is.
Mr. Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Michigan (Ms. Tlaib).
Mr. Chair, I yield 4 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Porter).
Mr. Chairman, I urge adoption of the amendments en bloc, and I, too, yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. Chair, I, too, urge Members to adopt the en bloc package and yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. Chair, I ask unanimous consent that the request for a recorded vote on amendment No. 47 be withdrawn to the end that the amendment stand disposed of by the earlier voice vote thereon.