During a House Armed Services Committee hearing prior to the congressional recess, Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) spoke about domestic production of military equipment.
00:00bipartisan bill. Chair now yields to the ranking member for any opening statement he may have.
00:06Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate that. Thank you very much for your leadership. I agree. It's
00:10been a very bipartisan effort between the chair ranking, all of the members and the staffs to
00:17produce an excellent product that we have as the base bill and as the starting point. I think the
00:23chairman's emphasis has been right on point, emphasizing acquisition reform. I sort of think
00:29of three big challenges we have. One is to make sure that we support the servicemen and women and
00:35their families. We took a big swing at that last year, again, in a very bipartisan way, put together
00:41a bill that I think is making a real difference. This bill enhances that. Second, get after the
00:46innovation problem, the acquisition problem, how slow the Pentagon moves to acquire the critical new
00:51technologies that we need. We've done some good work on that over the years. This bill represents
00:58the most comprehensive and effective swing in acquisition reform that I've seen in my almost
01:0429 years here on the committee. The chairman did an outstanding job of bringing people together,
01:08having conversations over the course of the last year to prepare us to get the text right. And I think
01:14this bill is incredibly important because of acquisition reform. The third big challenge is to get
01:20to capacity in terms of critical munitions, critical technologies that we need to make. We don't make as
01:27much as we should, whether you're talking about drones, basic artillery, different pieces of
01:32equipment. Obviously, the ship problems have been well documented. We still have a lot of work to go
01:37to get to the numbers that we need and to get to the manufacturing efficiency that we need. But I think
01:42this bill does a decent job of that as well. The problems that I have are unrelated to what this
01:49committee has done. But when you look at the needs within national security, the other budget decisions that
01:56have been made by this administration and by this Congress really put us in an incredibly deep hole.
02:03You know, we just passed a budget bill that added another $3.5 trillion to the debt, cut a massive
02:09number of taxes, many of which are sunsetted, by the way. So we're going to come back and we're going to
02:13have the same argument about, oh my gosh, you can't increase taxes in two or three years. So we're going to
02:19lift those sunsets, drive ourselves even deeper in debt, put ourselves in a position where we cannot pay for the
02:25very national security needs that I know pretty much every member of this committee supports.
02:31I've used this line a number of times and I'm going to keep using it. If you believe in the importance of
02:38funding national security, of funding our troops, then you ought to be willing to pay for it. We can't just
02:44keep putting it on a credit card, which is what we're doing. And then we also had in that bill $170 billion for border security, $170 billion to secure a border that according to the president, the same president, who was asking for that $170 billion is already secure.
03:05Which, by the way, I kind of agree with him. I think he was the one who said we don't need to change the law, we just need to change presidents. But apparently we need to change the law too if we're going to throw another $170 billion at it.
03:18And that undercuts our ability to meet our national security needs, particularly because they're also grabbing a lot of Department of Defense assets to use in that effort and undermining our ability to meet our national security needs.
03:32And the last complaint I have, I'll go back to the Secretary Gates made the comment, if you're going to cut the State Department, you better give me more ammunition. Well, we are absolutely gutting the State Department. We've shut down USAID. We've effectively shut down foreign aid. Now we're firing on a, sorry, I lose track of the numbers and they change from day to day. So it's in the thousands that we're firing from the State Department. So we're gutting diplomacy. We're gutting development. We're spending all of this money to secure a border to
04:02that is already secure. And then throughout this hearing, next year, well, sorry, next month, next year, two years, we're going to hear from everyone that's going, oh my God, we need more money for defense. We need more money for defense. How are we possibly going to meet our national security needs?
04:15You've got to set priorities. And the priorities set in the overall budget do not reflect the priorities that should be set, despite the best efforts of the leadership of this committee in the majority and elsewhere.
04:26So I appreciate the bipartisan effort. I look forward to the debate and discussion as always, and I yield back.
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