[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 205 (Wednesday, December 13, 2023)]
[House]
[Pages H6936-H6939]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 EVERY AMERICAN WANTS A STRONG MILITARY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 9, 2023, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Cloud) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. CLOUD. Madam Speaker, every American wants what every Republican 
wants, and that is a strong military. We realize that is our number one 
constitutional obligation.
  We want the most capable, the most lethal military in the world. We 
need them to maintain peace and security. When we have to send them 
into harm's way, we want them to go with a clear mission and with every 
tool they need for victory. When they come home, we want to take care 
of the veterans and make sure they are welcomed and cared for. We want 
to make sure they have everything they need to succeed following their 
service in uniform to our country.
  Unfortunately, what we have seen lately is our military has, in many 
ways, gone off its primary mission of protecting, securing, and 
preparing to continue to secure our Nation. They have gotten into 
social engineering, indeed, teaching CRT, DEI, and advancing things 
like gender ideology.
  We have heard about drag shows at military bases, taxpayer-funded 
abortion travel, and taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries. It has 
certainly affected our recruiting. It has affected our capabilities. It 
has affected our readiness and ability to project power around the 
world.
  I was happy to support the NDAA as it left the House and went to the 
Senate because it was focused on getting our military back to its 
focus, its purpose of protecting and securing our country; being that 
strong, lethal fighting force; and getting out of what we have known to 
become this woke move toward the military that has affected our 
capability.
  Let's talk about the process it was supposed to go through. We 
understand that we send forth a good bill from the House, and then it 
goes to the Senate. There is supposed to be a conference on that. As a 
matter of fact, many Members worked to get on that conference 
committee. Many other Members worked to support people who would get on 
that conference committee in order to work and support different 
objectives that were in there.
  A couple of things we were working on in our office was a bill that 
would let rank-and-file military be able to go into work in military 
contracting right after service. There has been a law that was meant to 
keep, for example, generals who were making big-time decisions about 
government, for example, from going to Raytheon and serving on a board 
because it wanted to make sure that their military decisions were not 
affected by future board positions. But the rank and file of our 
military kind of fell under that.
  For example, we have an Army depot in our district. The rank and file 
cannot be employed there for 6 months after their retirement from 
military service. By then, they have often had to move on and find 
other careers.
  We also had another provision that we were working on to make sure 
that the depots throughout our country that are tasked with the 
important duty of restoring and refurbishing our military hardware, 
supporting the warfighter and doing it in an efficient manner, that 
they continue to be able to thrive and survive. Those things fell off 
in what was our alleged conference.
  This conference--instead of the Members that we elected to send there 
to represent this body--were instead four people who got together and 
the staffs probably of those four people made the decisions. Those two 
provisions were taken out of this bill, as well.
  Let's talk about the House rules. All year, we talked about rewriting 
the muscle memory of Congress. We worked hard. I cannot tell you how 
many times we have heard the importance of single-subject bills and 
that we as Republicans were going to advocate for that. We were not 
going to marry things that were extraneous to each other. We were going 
to have bills that had to deal with germaneness. We added a germaneness 
rule in January that had never existed. We were going to say that any 
amendments to bills have to be germane. Anything we are going to add 
onto a bill has to be germane.
  Come to find out that we now have the NDAA, which has come back from 
the Senate with a number of woke provisions in it, and added to that 
now is a FISA extension. In the Senate, the Parliamentarian says that 
is not germane to the NDAA. In the House, we actually have a tougher 
germaneness rule.
  How are we getting around that? We are going to put it on the 
suspension calendar. We are just going to suspend the rules and say the 
rules that we said we were going to operate by, we are not going to 
operate by when it comes to this bill. This is a tragedy.
  Finally, when it comes to the Constitution, the Constitution is clear 
that Americans should not be warrantlessly surveilled. We know we have 
a DOJ that has been doing that. They have well extended their 
authorities.
  We had so much FISA abuse. There were literally hundreds of thousands 
of instances of FISA abuse. Yet, we are asking for a clean extension of 
these provisions.
  The Constitution was not written to be shredded in times of crisis or 
urgency. As a matter of fact, the Constitution was written specifically 
to place limits on our government in times of crisis and urgency.
  It is not a time for us to look away and say that we will shred the 
Constitution a little bit here. The very purpose that the Constitution 
exists is to protect us in times like this and to make sure that we 
continue to protect the rights of the American people.
  It is extremely important that we do everything we can to make sure 
that we do not pass a FISA out of this House that does not protect the 
American people. We cannot continue to allow them to spy on the 
American people, to surveil them without a warrant.
  Let's get back to what we are here for. We want an NDAA that is going 
to focus on our military. We realize the importance of the first 
constitutional responsibility of this House, and that is to fund a 
military that will defend our Constitution and protect this land.

                              {time}  1945

  We are willing to do that.
  Let's revisit this NDAA. Let's send this back to conference. Let's 
get us focused on what needs to be done, and for goodness' sake, let's 
not put a FISA extension that does not protect the rights of the 
American people.
  I am happy to be joined by my good friend from the great State of 
Texas.
  Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Roy).
  Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I appreciate my friend from Texas yielding, 
and I appreciate his remarks because we share a committed interest to 
defending the United States, defending our military, and ensuring that 
our military is able to do its job.
  Just in the last 24 hours, I saw that one of our generals put forward 
a report basically detailing the extent to which our recruiting levels 
and morale levels are low and that it is a particular time of 
difficulty for them in terms of recruiting.
  I have been engaging with my colleagues, particularly on this side of 
the aisle, about the National Defense Authorization Act. It is, I 
believe, going to be on the floor tomorrow under a suspension of the 
rules. That means we are not going to go through regular

[[Page H6937]]

order, we are not going to be able to amend it, and we are not going to 
be able to have any real significant debate on it.
  We are suspending the rules of the House, and we are going to try to 
jam this bill through by basically trying to get two-thirds of the 
Chamber to just say: Let's get this done, let's get out of town, and 
let's go home for Christmas, and send it to the Senate.
  That is wrong.
  That is a problem. To my colleagues who think we need to do this for 
our men and women in uniform, the truth is this is undermining our men 
and women in uniform. We are destroying the soul, we are destroying the 
culture, and we are destroying the morale of those men and women who 
signed up to serve and who are frustrated.
  They are frustrated by being put in indoctrination classes on 
diversity, equity, and inclusion. They are frustrated by critical race 
theory being pushed. They are frustrated by abortion tourism being 
funded by taxpayer dollars and transgender surgery. They are frustrated 
by being fired from their job because they dared to say no to getting a 
COVID vaccine. They are frustrated about the state of affairs when our 
military is being turned into a social engineering experiment instead 
of being committed to its core function, which is to defend this 
country when called upon to do so.
  That is the truth.
  Our men and women in uniform want change. They want us to stand up 
and change it.
  So what did Republicans do?
  In one of the great demonstrations of what a body can do with a bare, 
thin, and razor-thin majority, we passed a National Defense 
Authorization Act in July that was a responsible bill and that would 
fundamentally make sure our military is focused on its core 
responsibilities and would ensure that our military is able to do its 
job without being focused on engineering.
  I appreciate getting the message from those who delivered it. We have 
more people than just the two of us on the floor, I am pretty excited. 
It is a great night in the House Chamber. This is fantastic. We had a 
great audience. I am not just speaking to the echo chamber, as it were. 
We have a couple up in the bleachers up there.
  Madam Speaker, here is the thing: Republicans passed a responsible 
National Defense Authorization Act that will make sure our military is 
focused on its mission.
  Madam Speaker, you can see here the House GOP's bill. All of the 
green checkmarks are what we are talking about here. We ended President 
Biden's taxpayer-funded abortion travel fund which enables abortion 
tourism with taxpayer funded dollars. We ended taxpayer-funded gender 
transition surgery. We ended Biden's radical climate agenda in the 
carrying out of his executive order, which will promote and push his 
radical agenda into our military so that we will have a forced 
migration to electric vehicles and all of the mandates of the Biden 
executive orders in the Pentagon.
  It would protect servicemembers who were discharged for refusing the 
COVID-19 vaccine. It would ban the drag shows and drag queen story hour 
on DOD installations and prohibit critical race theory. It would create 
an inspector general for Ukraine aid. It would prohibit race-based 
admissions at our military academies, and it would eliminate the chief 
diversity officers and all these positions that are divvying us up by 
race.
  Here is the thing: Senator Schumer and the Democrats created a bill 
that did none of those things because they want our military to be a 
social engineering experiment.
  Now, to my colleagues on this side of the aisle who have said: Chip, 
you are just focusing on the social issues. That is not true. That is 
not true.
  COVID vaccines that force some of our men and women in uniform off of 
their duty is not a social issue. That is their job. They have got 
shoved out of their job because they didn't want to have an 
experimental vaccine shoved in their arm.
  It is also not true if you go look through all of the things, Madam 
Speaker, for example, the Inspector General with respect to Ukraine and 
other issues, none of the changes that we embraced to try to get our 
military focused where it needs to be were embraced by Democrats.
  So then what happens?
  At the end of the year when everybody is panicked, they go around 
this town, and all the defense lobbyists and all the people go around 
saying: Oh, my God, you have got to pass the National Defense 
Authorization Act, or the entire world is going to end, and we are not 
going to be able to defend the country.
  That is not true. It is not true. We believe we should pass such a 
bill, but that is not true. That is legislating by fear.

  Nevertheless, what you see here, Madam Speaker, is this NDAA 
compromise, National Defense Authorization Act compromise.
  Now, Madam Speaker, you would think that we went through some regular 
process that we have been fighting for this year. Go to conference 
committee between the Senate and the House.
  Wrong. That didn't happen.
  There was a conference set up, but what happened is the leaders all 
got together, they decided what they wanted to jam through before 
Christmas, they went to the conference, and they said: Take it or leave 
it. Basically they said: Take it.
  Then their conferees sent it back to us. Five of them didn't sign it. 
That is the truth.
  So what do we get?
  Madam Speaker, do you see the red Xs?
  You see the one green check bans critical race theory which, by the 
way, is hard to enforce, but, okay, we got that. We have got some weak 
reforms here with respect to the vaccine issue with COVID-19, and we 
have got weak reforms with respect to the Inspector General of Ukraine.
  In other words, we got one piece of it. We didn't get everything we 
had put in there, and that is it. We didn't get the other stuff. 
Nonetheless, that is not what they are telling you, Madam Speaker. They 
are going around telling you saying: Oh, yeah, we ended the drag queen 
story hour.
  That is not true. What they did is they are accepting the Defense 
Department's characterization of the rules they are going to follow. 
They didn't actually include the language that restricts it.
  So here is the way this town works, and then I am going to yield to 
my friend from Georgia because I just want everybody to understand, 
this is the way this town works: you govern by fear. You go up to a 
deadline, and you say: You must do this because I haven't got to the 
whipped cream with the cherry on top, which is this Defense bill 
watered down that not one Republican should support.
  Let me be clear. There is no justification for supporting a bill that 
does not materially change the direction of our military away from 
being social engineering back toward its mission.
  Nevertheless, what did they do?
  They added the extension of surveillance, what we call FISA.
  What does that mean?
  Madam Speaker, you have read about all of the surveillance that has 
been carried out on American citizens. You know all about it through 
Carter Page. You know about the extent to which there has been rampant 
abuses by the FBI targeting American citizens and backdooring the 
ability to gather information on non-Americans and use that to target 
Americans. It happened.
  They took January 6 names, they stuck them into the database, the 
query, the database that was collected on these non-American targets, 
and they have put the names of January 6 people into the database. Oh, 
the FBI says: Don't worry. We fixed it.
  Nevertheless, Madam Speaker, can we really see what it was that they 
fixed?
  Can we really look under the hood?
  We are trying to pass reforms to what we call FISA, the Foreign 
Intelligence Surveillance Act. We should pass reforms right now before 
we leave town.
  If we don't, then we should all be eating our Christmas dinner on the 
floor of this House, but, no, what are we going to do tomorrow?
  We are going to take the National Defense Authorization Act with all 
of these red Xs--yes, it is true, all of you leadership hack staffers 
who are running around and saying that it is not true, come down and 
debate me on it

[[Page H6938]]

because it is true--they are going to add a FISA extension that will 
take it to April of this next year, and, worse yet, the procedures 
under that will extend all the way until April of 2025.
  Then my colleagues get frustrated, and they say: Well, Chip, why do 
you say things like name one thing we have done?
  It is because of this. It is because we extend the same stuff and 
kick the can down the road. We do a National Defense Authorization Act 
which changes precious little, we jam it through, violating our own 
rules with respect to germaneness and single subject bills, we pile on 
FISA, we extend it to April of 2025, and then we go to the American 
people. We lie to them, and then we say that we did something great.
  We should reject this. My colleagues should reject it tomorrow. We 
should stand up for the American people and do what we said we would 
do.
  Mr. CLOUD. Madam Speaker, may I inquire how much time remains.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Texas has 12 minutes 
remaining.
  Mr. CLOUD. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. 
Clyde).
  Mr. CLYDE. Madam Speaker, I thank both of my friends from Texas. What 
an incredible job they have done so far in communicating that the 
swamp's compromise NDAA is, indeed, woke, weaponized, and wrong for 
America.
  Why, you may ask.
  It is because during backroom negotiations, virtually all of the 
conservative wins that the House Republicans fought for were removed. 
This is a disaster for both our military and the American people.
  Now, due to the so-called compromise, this year's NDAA green-lights 
the Biden administration's horrendous policies of treating our military 
like a social experiment.
  For a long time, I have firmly believed that our Nation's incredible 
military will never be defeated by an outside force before we rot from 
the inside first, and that is exactly what these woke policies are 
doing. It is the real reason that recruiting is at rock-bottom levels 
for our military.
  For example, the NDAA fails to eliminate the Pentagon's chief 
diversity officer, it fails to ban mask mandates on military 
installations, and it fails to prevent the Department of Defense 
education activity from teaching radical gender and racial ideologies.

  Not to mention, the NDAA allows Joe Biden's Department of Defense to 
waste taxpayer dollars on transgender surgeries, drag queen shows, and 
abortion travel. Abortion travel, imagine that. The radical left will 
stop at nothing to advance the evils of abortion, even if their vile 
efforts violate Federal law.
  Additionally, a vote for this year's NDAA is a vote to reauthorize 
warrantless surveillance on the American people. That is right. To make 
matters worse, a clean reauthorization of FISA 702, which has been 
dangerously abused to illegally spy on Americans--literally, last year 
278,000 times--was attached to this year's National Defense 
Authorization Act.
  So let me be perfectly clear: the Fourth Amendment is not a 
suggestion, and I certainly will not be fearmongered by the 
intelligence community in order to allow this egregious and 
unconstitutional abuse to continue.
  So either get a warrant or let FISA go dark, which means let FISA's 
authorization expire on 12/31.
  Furthermore, FISA's reauthorization should never have been attached 
to the NDAA in the first place. An extension of FISA is not germane to 
the NDAA, meaning this legislation violates our January agreement of 
germane, single-subject bills.
  Nevertheless, since leadership plans to pass the NDAA under 
suspension of the rules, Members will have no opportunity to raise the 
appropriate point of order against this nongermane matter.
  Madam Speaker, this is not how Washington should operate. Members 
deserve the opportunity to debate legislation and vote on these matters 
separately. That is what we agreed to in January, and that is the 
standard we must now follow.
  For all these reasons, I am a hard no on the fiscal year 2024 NDAA, 
and I urge all my colleagues to join me in taking a firm stand against 
this bad bill. As a 28-year Navy combat veteran, I am disgusted by the 
Biden administration's ongoing efforts to weaken our great military 
with woke and weaponized policies.
  I am greatly disturbed by this body's blind acceptance of these 
nefarious efforts, so they can go home early for Christmas. Our 
military and our Nation deserve better.
  Mr. CLOUD. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. 
Good).
  Mr. GOOD of Virginia. Madam Speaker, I thank my friend, Mr. Cloud 
from Texas, for holding this very important discussion here on the 
House floor because what we will be voting on tomorrow represents the 
very worst of Washington.
  I was thankful that back in the summer, for the first time since I 
have been in Congress, I could vote for an NDAA after 2 years in the 
minority where the majority party under this President believes that 
the greatest threat to the military is climate and that the greatest 
threat to the military are conservative patriots, God forbid, Trump 
supporters in the military. That has been the focus of this 
administration as it relates to our military.

                              {time}  2000

  I voted four times against bad NDAAs that were focused on climate 
extremism; that were focused on forcing our military to convert to 
electric vehicles; that were focused on diversity, equity, and 
inclusion and CRT training in our academies; red flag for our military 
members; forcing our daughters to be drafted; focused on funding for 
abortion in the military; funding for transgender surgery.
  This past summer, our Republican Conference passed a good NDAA that I 
was proud to vote for because it reversed those harmful policies. Then 
we were supposed to have a Conference Committee that would go and 
negotiate with the Senate. We are actually the stronger body with our 
majority than the Senate is because the Senate has to have 60 votes to 
pass legislation and, last time I checked, there is only 51 Democrats 
over there; however, in the House, we can pass whatever we want with a 
one-vote majority.
  We should be the stronger party in negotiations, but that Conference 
Committee really never took place. Instead, a new NDAA was negotiated 
from what I call the four corners--the House Speaker, the House 
minority leader, the Senate majority leader, and the Senate minority 
leader. They came up with a new NDAA that takes out all of the good 
things that we fought for; the policy wins in the NDAA we voted for 
last summer.
  To make it worse, we are going to combine that with an extension of 
FISA, surveillance on U.S. citizens, trampling on our most precious 
constitutional freedoms in this country with no reforms.
  Our friend,   Andy Biggs, authors the bill out of Judiciary with help 
from individuals like Chip Roy, who is here with us tonight, and Warren 
Davidson. Instead of bringing that bill to the floor for a vote as an 
individual bill, instead we are going to take a FISA extension with no 
reforms--not fixing the constitutional issues, not protecting Americans 
from warrantless surveillance on them like they are foreign 
terrorists--and we are going to combine the two together in an effort 
to force passage on suspension of the rules, nonetheless, that some 
Members of this body might be afraid to vote against a bad FISA bill 
because they don't want to be accused of being against the military. 
The NDAA is a bad bill. Attaching it to FISA makes it that much worse. 
Every Republican should vote against it.
  Madam Speaker, I thank Mr. Cloud for holding this time of discussion 
tonight.
  Mr. CLOUD. Madam Speaker, may I inquire as to the time remaining.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Texas has 4 minutes 
remaining.
  Mr. CLOUD. I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Roy).
  Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I thank my friend from Texas. He is one of my 
best friends in the House, and one of the best Members we have in this 
body. His constituents are blessed to have him.
  Madam Speaker, I am proud to stand here with these gentlemen here on 
the

[[Page H6939]]

floor. I will say in firm defense of our men and women in uniform and 
in firm defense of our appropriate use of intelligence surveillance on 
foreign subjects, on foreign targets, that is what we should be doing, 
but instead it has been abused by the FBI, abused by our intelligence 
apparatus to target Americans.
  What are we going to do when we finally get the chance to deal with 
the reauthorization? We kick the can down the road, extend it to April, 
and that means extending it until April 2025; thus, the same 
procedures, the same abuses can continue with nothing but the promises 
of reforms within the FBI.
  That is not good enough. This is the people's House. We are supposed 
to stand up and defend the people who sent us here.
  I want to read something. In a Christmas Day 1944 letter to his 
mother and sister Rose, living in Washington, D.C., Sergeant David 
Warman, 1st Infantry Division, wrote: ``This is Christmas morning, and 
I'm writing from a foxhole. The weather is very clear and sunny and 
there is slightly over two inches of snow which fell the other day. It 
is way below freezing, and I am wrapped in blankets as I write.
  ``As you know from the papers, the Germans have come out of their 
holes to put on a great drive to push us off their soil.''
  He later writes in that letter: ``Let's hope the end is near and 
peace again comes to Earth quickly and this time permanently.
  ``How are you both? I hope you have a happy holiday season and don't 
have too many gloomy thoughts about me. True, my life is very 
uncomfortable and, I might say, uncertain, but I'm still around and who 
knows--I may get out without a scratch. So don't worry about me.''
  He and the men next to him in those foxholes knew why they were 
there. Those of us in this body need to pause and consider whether we 
know why we are here, whether we are doing our duty with the 
seriousness demanded by the sacrifices like theirs.

  When we get on our planes and fly home for Christmas, rather than 
doing our job to protect the civil liberties of the American people by 
reforming FISA and doing our job here, we are doing a disservice to 
those men who sat in the foxholes on Christmas Day in 1944 and to the 
men and women in uniform we ask to go around the world defending us.
  I get a little sick and tired of the preaching on the floor about 
what we need to do to defend our men and women in uniform by saying, 
you must pass the NDAA and you must do it now, but never mind the 
reforms you need to do to ensure we are doing it the right way; to make 
sure our military is focused on its mission rather than social 
engineering, so you can boost the morale, boost recruiting, boost the 
effectiveness, undo the damage being done, and not layer on it a 
disastrous kicking the can down the road by putting more surveillance 
power still on the back of our men and women in uniform. That is not 
the way that we should be conducting business.
  I implore my colleagues on this side of the aisle, don't do that. 
Don't use our men and women in uniform as an excuse to shirk our 
responsibility to actually reform the laws we were sent here to reform.
  We have bipartisan legislation sitting right before us--Judiciary 
Committee, Intel Committee--that would reform these things. We should 
put them on the floor--or put one of them on the floor--we should amend 
them, and then we should send it to the Senate and tell them to do 
their job.
  We should stop governing by fear and the false pressure of deadlines. 
Let's do our job for the American people. Let's send them a Christmas 
present that we are going to stand up and defend them and their civil 
liberties. That is what we should do tomorrow.
  Madam Speaker, I implore my colleagues to oppose the NDAA with FISA 
added on it.
  Mr. CLOUD. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________