Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, it is always hard for me to understand why our colleagues on the other side of the aisle embrace junk science, whether it is around global warming, where 99 percent of the scientists say, yes, it is happening, or in this case.

We have the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists from 2010 indicating that ``connections from the periphery to the cortex is not intact until 24 weeks. The cortex is necessary for pain perception.''

In 2012, ACOG, in the Journal of American Medical Association embraced that statement. So the vast majority of physicians and scientists say there is not pain perception at 20 weeks.

But let me talk about Dr. Jenn and Sammi. Sammi was 17, terrified, and pregnant when she went to a ``clinic'' that ended up being a crisis pregnancy center. The center gave Sammi a free, private ultrasound, which was actually broadcast throughout the clinic for all to see--a violation, I might say, of HIPAA. When Sammi said she wanted to end the pregnancy, the center called her almost daily saying she would die, get sick, and go to hell.

The center also lied about her due date, telling Sammi it was too late for an abortion. Finally, Sammi called her mom, who flew her to California to see Dr. Jenn.

On behalf of Dr. Jenn and Sammi, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on H.R. 36.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I ask unanimous consent to bring up H.R. 3440, the DREAM Act, to protect DREAMers like Mariella. She is a Ph.D. student at UC Irvine. It is time.

Mr. Speaker, due to an unavoidable conflict, I missed the following votes on July 28. Had I been present, I would have voted YEA on Roll Call No. 437, and YEA on Roll Call No. 438

Mr. Speaker, I was unavoidably detained. Had I been present, I would have voted ``nay'' on rollcall No. 426.

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

Mr. Chairman, the American people are becoming more and more aware of the degenerative disease known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy, CTE, due to the crisis in the NFL. The NFL, of course, has been trying to sweep this under the rug.

Very recently, the Journal of the American Medical Association, a premier journal that is peer-reviewed, provided a study that found severe neurological damage in the vast majority of former football players' brains that were donated for research after they developed mental symptoms during life. Eighty-seven percent of all football players' brains showed CTE, but a truly horrible figure, 99 percent of the brains of NFL players showed CTE.

However, the dangers of CTE are not confined to football. Our servicemen and -women are subject to similar--or, oftentimes, even worse--dangers in the line of duty for the service they provide to our Nation.

Last year, I was honored to host Dr. Bennet Omalu for the State of the Union. He is the doctor portrayed in the film ``Concussion,'' exposing the impact of CTE on professional football players. He began his research covering his own expenses and exposing a coverup of the suicides of former athletes. However, his research and the research of others is limited by the funding, which is why I am offering this amendment.

Today we have an opportunity to prevent a similar kind of coverup among our service agencies. This amendment would dedicate $25 million in funding as part of the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs to award grants to medical researchers and universities to support early detection of CTE.

This amendment would not increase spending, but take the funding already allocated and put some of it--a very small part of it--towards

Mr. Chairman, I thank both of my colleagues for their expression of support for the concept of making sure that CTE is studied.

I am just hopeful that we can guarantee, through this amendment, that of that $125 million, some portion of it is set aside for CTE research. The fact that only $2.9 million has gone to CTE research since 2012, and not a dime since 2013, makes me worry that it is not a high priority within the Department.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the ranking member for yielding.

I voted for this bill in committee because we have brave servicemembers in harm's way that depend on it. But I want to make clear that I don't believe we have done our job to address the unbridled waste in this bill; billions of dollars, the sheer amount of waste in this bill, billions upon billions of dollars. And even worse, the bill, as currently written, sets us up to throw away billions more for years to come.

I know it can be political suicide to take on defense contractors, but we owe the taxpayers a level of accountability and discipline. It is the same thing every single year, like the greatest hits of defense waste: the littoral combat ship, a combat ship that can't even survive combat, a ship on perpetual port call because it is always in need of repair, a ship the Navy said it needs only one of.

But, apparently, the White House knows better, because they forced the Navy to ask for another one. And even that wasn't enough, because our committee decided to give them a third one. We are tripling the number of ships the Navy said they need.

Now, how outrageous is that?

That is $500 million a pop. That is $1 billion more than the Navy wanted.

The F-35, the President has trumpeted how he brought down the price of this bloated program. But just a few days ago it was revealed that the bill for this program is actually going to jump 7 percent. You probably won't be seeing this on the President's Twitter feed, but the Pentagon now says it needs another $63 billion for the program.

But instead of demanding accountability, this bill rewards Lockheed and the Pentagon by committing the government to block buy F-35s without the testing that is required.

Then there is the USS Ford, a brand-new class of carrier that is at least 25 percent over budget right now. You would think that before sending a crew of 4,300 out to sea in a $13 billion carrier with a host of new mission-critical systems, we would want to ensure that the ship can actually survive in combat conditions. But you would be wrong. This bill actually eliminates the requirement for shock testing that Congress itself imposed just a few years back.

Mr. Speaker, forgoing this testing could not only put our sailors at unnecessary risk, but could also lead to expensive retrofits for years to come. And for what?

This is not what Americans expect when they tell us they want a strong defense. This is not what Americans expect of us in our congressional oversight role. We are not doing our job if we don't do oversight, if we don't say ``no'' to wasteful spending, and if we don't say ``no'' to blank checks to defense contractors.

Mr. Chair, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Chair, I am truly impressed by my colleague, Mr. Rooney, on any number of issues. This is not one of them.

This is absurd. It is absolutely absurd. We have military academies to train the next leaders of this country. We are not running a training camp for the National Football League.

If you want to serve as a leader of the military, then you go to one of the

military academies. If you decide you want to have a pro football career, then pay back the $500,000 that the taxpayers of this country have paid for each and every one of these students.

In the Rules Committee yesterday, Mr. Rooney listed three names of examples of academy graduates continuing in professional sports after graduation. All of the names he mentioned--Roger Staubach, David Robinson, and Alejandro Villanueva--served on Active Duty for at least 2 years.

The model for how this should work is like Villanueva, who served his 5-year commitment, deployed three times to Afghanistan, received a Bronze Star for valor, and then pursued a professional football career.

Mr. Chair, I will just say that going pro, as Mr. Rooney has said, is not the goal of our military academies. If we are concerned about morale because we want to make sure they can go out on the football field and have great games against the Army and the Navy, fine. If in the end you want to go pro, then pay back the money and go pro. Otherwise, you are taking a very important slot from any number of talented young men and women who want to be trained and then serve as the leaders of our military.

Mr. Chair, I thank the gentleman for yielding and for his outstanding leadership and candor on our committee. I want to give a special shout-out to our chairman, Mr. Thornberry, who shaved an hour and a half off our deliberations a couple of weeks ago by bringing us into the 21st century, and laptops to look at our amendments. So it was a great improvement.

I also want to thank my chair, Chairman Mike Coffman, for his leadership. We have worked well together, and I look forward to continuing that relationship, and also to a top-notch staff.

This bill includes provisions that will provide the military services flexibility to recruit and retain members of our armed services and continues our commitment to taking care of our military families.

The NDAA continues funding for DOD impact aid for schools with large numbers of military-connected families and authorizes reimbursement, up to $500 for military spouses' expenses related to obtaining a professional license or certification when moving to a new State.

The committee continues to provide oversight of important programs in the bill requiring reviews to ensure the Morale, Welfare, and Recreation programs are properly funded to required levels and the Department of Defense's debt collection practices are fair and do not place undue burdens on servicemembers or their families.

The bill includes the PRIVATE Act, which I cosponsored with Congresswoman Martha McSally and other members of the committee to prohibit the wrongful broadcast or distribution of intimate visual images and ensure the military services have the tools to prosecute those who violate the law.

The bill also provides support for victims of sexual assault by mandating training for Special Victims' Counsel to recognize and address unique challenges often faced by male victims of sexual assault.

I am pleased that the bill continues the committee's efforts to assist those with post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury, as well as ensuring families are educated on suicide factors that are often associated with TBI or post-traumatic stress.

However, as Ranking Member Smith has said, this NDAA fails to make the hard choices and trade-offs that are expected of us. The NDAA goes beyond the President's request to provide 2.4 percent pay raises for our servicemen and -women, at an additional cost of $200 million, an expense simply added to the top line.

The NDAA also authorizes an increased end strength for the Army at a cost of $4 billion, again, simply adding it to the top line. Certainly, our troops deserve a pay raise, but the question that must be asked is: Where is the money coming from? And on what basis are these decisions being made?

Congress has not received a strategic plan from the Pentagon that would inform us on how large the military needs to grow. By just adding funding to the NDAA, Congress is not providing the stable, predictive funding the military needs. In order to do that, we need to address the big elephant in the room, the sequestration and budget control act caps.

Despite all of these additions, the committee was unfortunately unable to find the required offsets to fund an extension to the Special Survivor Indemnity Allowance to ensure it does not expire in May 2018. This falls short of my strong desire, shared by other members of the committee, to permanently fix the survivor benefit compensation.

This also amounts to a shameful tax on over 60,000 surviving spouses who are already struggling emotionally and financially. While the SSIA extension would be an important temporary fix, Congress must make a permanent fix to the offset.

We cannot continue to allow surviving military spouses to suffer from our inaction.

Mr. Speaker, I rise along with my colleagues, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, Congressman Jared Huffman and Congressman Mike Thompson, to recognize Roger Thomas, Captain of the Salty Lady, member of the California Outdoor Hall of Fame, and lifelong advocate to keep west coast salmon fisheries alive and sustainable. Many in this chamber, the California Legislature and multiple agencies have worked with Roger for decades and are proud to call this honorable and remarkable man a friend, mentor and colleague. He is one of the most decent and hard-working human beings one can know.

Roger's passion for fishing started as a child. Born in Gilroy, California, he started fishing at an early age for striped bass from the beaches along Monterey Bay and later for salmon from a small boat launched at the Monterey Pier. He was hooked on salmon fishing and became a regular customer on charter boats out of San Francisco. Before too long, one of the captains offered Roger a job as a deck hand and, as they say, the rest is history. Roger received his captain's license in 1968.

While working full-time for the County of Santa Clara on housing issues, he ran charter boats on weekends. At one point he had acquired a fleet of five boats that were run by several captains. In 1981, he retired from his government job and dedicated all of his time and energy to fisheries and ocean conservation. There hasn't been a salmon related association or council that Roger hasn't served on.

Since 1973, he has been the President of the Golden Gate Fishermen's Association which represents charter boats from Fort Bragg to Monterey and carries some 200,000 anglers each year. He is also the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Golden Gate Salmon Association which represents commercial and recreational fishermen and works on protecting salmon habitat. For 14 years, he has served on the Pacific Fisheries Management Council which, among other duties, sets the ocean salmon seasons. Roger is a member of the Bay Delta Advisory board, the Winter Run-Captive Broodstock Committee, the Central Valley Fisheries Coalition, the Marine Advisory Committee to the Secretary of Commerce, the Coastal Resources Foundation, the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission, the National Sea Grant Review Panel and the Marine Resources Committee.

Roger runs his charters on the Salty Lady out of Sausalito and Half Moon Bay. He proudly calls himself a salmon charter operation, but additionally runs whale watching and nature trips and has introduced thousands of children and adults to the magic of marine life. He has spent more than 10,000 days on the ocean and you will be hard-pressed to find someone with deeper knowledge and appreciation for that ecosystem. He also has the gift of storytelling and a mind that remembers every detail, including one of his most vivid ones from his childhood. He saw the last of the San Joaquin Spring run chinook salmon before they went extinct. His uncle took him to Friant Dam right after it was constructed. The salmon were stuck at the end of the line imposed to divert water to fields in the San Joaquin valley. They were ``big fish,'' Roger says stretching out his arms, ``just big fish.''

Roger is a familiar face in Congress where he has represented the interests of the charter boat fleet and the health of west coast salmon stocks for decades. In the 1980s, he was appointed by then Vice President George Bush to the National Sea Grant Review Panel. In this role he traveled to ports around the country and helped decide which projects were worthy and would be funded.

Roger was instrumental in former Representative George Miller's 1992 Central Valley Improvement Act and its eventual passage. The CVP is a key law to stop environmental harm to salmon and the Bay Delta. When salmon populations collapsed in 2008 and 2009, Roger worked closely with Representative Mike Thompson to provide disaster relief to salmon fishermen.

Roger Thomas' tireless work has earned him the respect and adoration of countless people. With his recent tragic diagnosis of late stage cancer, it is our intention through these extended remarks in the Congressional Record to express our appreciation for his outstanding work and lasting contributions.

Mr. Speaker, I ask the Members of the House of Representatives to join us in celebrating the life of Roger Thomas who loves fish, loves the ocean, and above all loves people. He has touched many hearts, protected many livelihoods and has earned the admiration of coastal communities up and down the western seaboard.

Mr. Speaker, I rise with Congressman Jared Huffman and Congressman

Mike Thompson to recognize Roger Thomas, Captain of the Salty Lady, member of the California Outdoor Hall of Fame, and lifelong advocate to keep west coast salmon fisheries alive and sustainable. Many in this chamber, the California Legislature and multiple agencies have worked with Roger for decades and are proud to call this honorable and remarkable man a friend, mentor and colleague. He is one of the most decent and hard-working human beings one can know.

Roger's passion for fishing started as a child. Born in Gilroy, California, he started fishing at an early age for striped bass from the beaches along Monterey Bay and later for salmon from a small boat launched at the Monterey Pier. He was hooked on salmon fishing and became a regular customer on charter boats out of San Francisco. Before too long, one of the captains offered Roger a job as a deck hand and, as they say, the rest is history. Roger received his captain's license in 1968.

While working full-time for the County of Santa: Clara on housing issues, he ran charter boats on weekends. At one point he had acquired a fleet of five boats that were run by several captains. In 1981, he retired from his government job and dedicated all of his time and energy to fisheries and ocean conservation. There hasn't been a salmon related association or council that Roger hasn't served on.

Since 1973, he has been the President of the Golden Gate Fishermen's Association which represents charter boats from Fort Bragg to Monterey and carries some 200,000 anglers each year. He is also the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Golden Gate Salmon Association which represents commercial and recreational fishermen and works on protecting salmon habitat. For 14 years, he has served on the Pacific Fisheries Management Council which, among other duties, sets the ocean salmon seasons. Roger is a member of the Bay Delta Advisory board, the Winter Run-Captive Broodstock Committee, the Central Valley Fisheries Coalition, the Marine Advisory Committee to the Secretary of Commerce, the Coastal Resources Foundation, the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission, the National Sea Grant Review Panel and the Marine Resources Committee.

Roger runs his charters on the Salty Lady out of Sausalito and Half Moon Bay. He proudly calls himself a salmon charter operation, but additionally runs whale watching and nature trips and has introduced thousands of children and adults to the magic of marine life. He has spent more than 10,000 days on the ocean and you will be hard-pressed to find someone with deeper knowledge and appreciation for that ecosystem. He also has the gift of storytelling and a mind that remembers every detail, including one of his most vivid ones from his childhood. He saw the last of the San Joaquin Spring run chinook salmon. before they went extinct. His uncle took him to Friant Dam right after it was constructed. The salmon were stuck at the end of the line imposed to divert water to fields in the San Joaquin valley. They were ''big fish,'' Roger says stretching out his arms, ``just big fish.''

Roger is a familiar face in Congress where he has represented the interests of the charter boat fleet and the health of west coast salmon stocks for decades. In the 1980s, he was appointed by then Vice President George Bush to the National Sea Grant Review Panel. In this role he traveled to ports around the country and helped decide which projects were worthy and would be funded.

Roger was instrumental in former Representative George Miller's 1992 Central Valley Improvement Act and its eventual passage. The CVP is a key law to stop environmental harm to salmon and the Bay Delta. When salmon populations collapsed in 2008 and 2009, Roger worked closely with Representative Mike Thompson to provide disaster relief to salmon fishermen.

Roger Thomas' tireless work has earned him the respect and adoration of countless people. With his recent tragic diagnosis of late stage cancer, it is our intention to express our appreciation for his outstanding work and lasting contributions.

Mr. Speaker, I ask the Members of the House of Representatives to join us in celebrating the life of Roger Thomas who loves fish, loves the ocean, and above all loves people. He has touched many hearts, protected many livelihoods and has earned the admiration of coastal communities up and down the western seaboard.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to honor Steve Kawa for his 25 years of service to the city and county of San Francisco. Steve Kawa is no ordinary staff member. He is an exceptional public servant who has served three mayors of San Francisco in a wide variety of positions.

Most San Franciscans have never heard Kawa's name--and he prefers it that way--but they have certainly felt the impact of his work. He helped guide the City through the aftermath of 9/11 and the Great Recession. He played a key role in achieving marriage equality and universal health care access, and he oversaw unprecedented investments in affordable housing and infrastructure projects. His bosses have called him a cautious, shrewd negotiator, a driving force behind policy decisions and one of the best Chiefs of Staff a mayor could have. His effectiveness and style have also earned him nicknames such as the enforcer, the shadow mayor, the sphinx and the man behind the curtain.

Steve Kawa was born in Dracut, Massachusetts as the fifth son out of six children of Edward and Janet Kawa and grew up in a Polish-Irish American Catholic family. Mrs. Kawa was a school bus driver. Mr. Kawa was a construction worker. Steve credits his mother with his interest in politics. She loved the Kennedys and was fascinated with the Watergate hearings. Steve grew up watching the hearings on TV and says the inner workings of government mesmerized him.

Steve was the first member of his family to attend a four-year college and graduate from Merrimack College with a bachelor's degree in political science in 1983. To pay for school he worked four jobs as a bartender at the Polish American Veterans Club, as a dishwasher in a nursing home, as a florist's delivery man and as a security guard working the night shift. While attending law school at Suffolk University, he served as a legislative aide in Boston's State House at night. He graduated in 1989.

Two years later at the age of 30, Steve traveled to San Francisco for the first time and decided to make it his home. Within a month he found his first job working as a legislative aide to Supervisor Tom Hsieh. In November 1995, Willie Brown was elected Mayor and hired Steve as liaison to the Board of Supervisors. He promoted him to Director of Legislative Affairs and then Acting Director of the Mayor's Budget Office and then Deputy Chief of Staff. The next mayor, Gavin Newsom, hired Steve as his Chief of Staff in 2003. In 2011, Mayor Ed Lee did the same and Steve remained Chief of Staff until he recently decided to retire from his career at city hall.

Steve is the ultimate public servant. He is still mesmerized with the inner workings of government, just as he was when he was watching the Watergate hearings with his mother. He recently told the San Francisco Chronicle, ``There is so much cynicism about government and politics, and when I'm here I don't see the cynicism. I just see people working really hard for other people.'' There is no question that Steve is one of the hardest working people working for others.

Wherever his well-deserved retirement will take Steve Kawa, I am confident he will be effective and hope he will have more time to spend with his husband Dan Henkle and their two children Michael and Katherine.

Mr. Speaker, I ask the House of Representatives to rise with me to recognize an exemplary public servant who would rather stay out of the limelight and get things done. Steve Kawa's absence at San Francisco City Hall will be deeply felt, but his contributions will remain part of the fabric of our beloved city by the bay.

Mr. Speaker, I, too, want to join with all of my colleagues in recognizing the heroism of David Bailey and Crystal Griner, wishing them a speedy recovery, and that they take time to recover emotionally as well.

I also want to extend a love note to the children of Steve Scalise. This is a love note to Madison and Harrison:

Father's Day is on Sunday, and I know for both of you it is going to be

really difficult because dad is in the hospital, and you are concerned about his well-being. He loves you very much, and he is beloved here in this Chamber. Know that he will recover. He will be able to read with you and play ball with you. And what he needs most from you on this Father's Day is just to have you there, to hug him, and to love him, and to kiss him, and to know that he is the best dad in the world.

God bless you both.

Mr. Speaker, due to an unavoidable conflict, I missed the following votes on June 6. Had I been present, I would have voted yea on Roll Call No. 286, and yea on Roll Call No. 287.

Mr. Speaker, for more than 7 years, I have spoken out against the broken military justice system that allows commanders to decide how sexual assaults and other criminal offenses are prosecuted under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Our servicemembers are stuck in a world where their fates rest within the chain of command, where bias is king and justice often a jester.

Today, I stand here sick at heart that, once again, a rape conviction has been overturned because of the broken military justice system. In this instance, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces threw out Airman Rodney Boyce's rape and assault conviction because of the involvement of Lieutenant General Craig Franklin, who referred the case to court-martial.

This all came about because, in 2013, General Franklin was admonished by his superiors for tossing out the aggravated sexual assault conviction of a fellow F-16 pilot, a unanimous decision by a jury of his peers. Certainly, a general should not have the power to overturn the findings of a court of law simply because he thinks his buddy could not possibly have committed the sexual assault.

But because Franklin was appropriately admonished for this abuse of power, the U.S. Court of Appeals found that his subsequent decision to move forward with an entirely separate Boyce case constituted unlawful command influence.

This is made more ridiculous by two facts: first, the military judge during the actual trial found no evidence of unlawful command influence; second, the appeals court that threw out the Boyce case also did not find evidence of unlawful command influence, just the ``appearance'' of it.

So, apparently, unlawful command influence is like pornography: there is no definition, but judges know it when they see it.

Colleagues, it is past time to reform this unjust system that ignores jury decisions on the whim of a convening authority. The military must remove the power to decide whether or not to prosecute sexual assault cases from the chain of command and give the authority to independent military prosecutors.

I have met with countless survivors who have suffered in unique and horrifying ways. There is a hauntingly clear pattern to nearly all of their experiences: the perpetrator was let off the hook and the victim fellow servicemember was revictimized by an unjust system, all at the hands of the chain of command that is supposed to be there to protect and defend them.

The sense of betrayal by their command is marrow deep and life altering. Many describe the feelings of this betrayal more akin to a violation at the hands of a family member rather than a boss or coworker.

All that we need to do is to allow trained and experienced lawyers in the military to make a legal judgment about a crime. This in no way impacts the commander's authority. It simply gives servicemembers what we civilians take for granted, which is relying on a trained prosecutor to decide whether to move forward with serious charges of sexual assault.

Our servicemembers deserve and need a system that they can trust to be fair and impartial. Letting a convicted rapist walk free because of a mere appearance of unlawful command influence--forget the fact that he was, in fact, convicted of the assault--shows just how deep the problem runs.

As this case shows, the perception and the reality is that commanders with a built-in conflict of interest and with little or no legal training are deciding whether to move forward to trial. They make this decision not solely based on legal reasoning, but a myriad of other factors--like how well they fly a jet or how well they are liked by others--that should not be injected into the decisionmaking.

Our servicemembers deserve and need a system that they can trust to be fair and impartial. We have the power and duty to fundamentally reform the system to ensure that they are treated with a level of fairness that befits their sacrifice and service.

Mr. Speaker, the words of one military servicemember still haunt me and ring in my ears, when she said to me:

I joined the military to fight the enemy. I never thought

that he would be right next to me.

Mr. Speaker, due to an unavoidable conflict, I missed the following vote on May 25. Had I been present, I would have voted YEA on Roll Call No. 285