- 4 months ago
During a House Armed Services Committee hearing in July, Rep. Marilyn Strickland (D-WA) introduced an amendment that "prevents any funds appropriated to the Department of Defense from being used to contravene or reverse the work of the naming commission." Then, Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) criticized Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth during the debate.
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00:00We will now consider log number 5113R1 by Ms. Strickland. For what purpose is the
00:06gentlelady from Washington State seat recognition? Mr. Chairman, I have an
00:09amendment at the desk. Will the clerk please distribute the amendment? Without
00:13objection, the reading of the amendment is dispensed with. The chair recognizes
00:16the gentlelady for the purpose of explaining her amendment. Thank you,
00:19Chairman. In fiscal year 2021 NDAA, which covers 2020, this committee created the
00:27commission on the naming of items of the Department of Defense that commemorate
00:31the Confederate States of America. Since the height of the Jim Crow era, our
00:36service members who come from every background and walk of life have been
00:41working and living at installations that honor men who took up arms in rebellion
00:46against our country, fighting to protect the institution of slavery. This committee
00:52put in the work to correct this injustice and the naming commission followed with
00:56extensive community engagement, site visits, congressional briefings, and
01:00deliberation. This commission specifically rejected proposals to rename bases after
01:08service members who shared the same names as the Confederate traders. Now we know
01:13politics isn't about nuance these days, so just pay attention to these details.
01:17Instead, this commission chose to honor a new generation of Army legends, including
01:22General Richard Cavazos, Lieutenant General Hal Moore, and Dr. Mary Edwards Walker.
01:27Unfortunately, Secretary Hegseth and the Trump administration decided to troll the
01:33American public and discard the hard work of this committee and commission by
01:37reverting base names. And they used the same ploy that the commission rejected,
01:43finding new service members who shared the last names of these Confederate
01:47traders. These service members are heroes in their own right, and we don't deny that. Like
01:51Private Fitz Lee, a Buffalo soldier who was awarded the Medal of Honor. Yet
01:56Secretary Hegseth saw them as nothing more than convenient names. Their families
02:01were not given the opportunity to weigh in if their legacy should be used this way.
02:06President Trump gave up the ruse last month when he said out loud that Fort Greg
02:12Adams is being restored to Fort Lee in honor of Robert E. Lee, not Fitz Lee, as a
02:18secretary claimed. This cynical exercise was done with no input from the
02:23communities who collaborated on this important change and stripped away the
02:27honor bestowed upon patriots, again, without the input of their descendants.
02:31Secretary Hegseth's work was so sloppy that my colleagues are now trying to
02:36correct his mistakes and offering amendments to again modify individual base names in a
02:41way that is less offensive to some families of fallen service members. In 2020, a bipartisan group of
02:48legislators actually overrode Trump's veto of the NDAA because he did not want this
02:54commission to exist. So this was a bipartisan effort. My amendment simply
02:59prevents any funds appropriated to the Department of Defense from being used to
03:03contravene or reverse the work of the naming commission that was established in
03:072020. In the spirit of government efficiency, the department must stop lighting
03:11taxpayer money on fire to play games with military history. I urge my colleagues to
03:16please vote yes on this amendment. I yield back.
03:19Generality yields back. Chair and I recognize the gentleman from Virginia, Mr. McGuire.
03:22Mr. Chairman, I oppose this amendment from the gentlewoman from Washington. I have many
03:28disagreements with the recommendations and actions of the naming commission. However,
03:33President Trump and Secretary Hegseth are working to restore and honor American history. Contrary to Ms. Strickland's
03:40amendment, Secretary Hegseth is not renaming bases in support of Confederate heroes. Example,
03:47Secretary Hegseth renamed Fort Greg Adams, Virginia to Fort Lee, a member of the all-black Buffalo
03:54soldiers who was awarded the Medal of Honor after serving in the Spanish-American War. However,
04:00the naming commission's actions were perceived by many people, including a sizable part of my district,
04:04Virginia's fifth congressional district, as an attack on American history. Right or wrong, Winston Churchill,
04:10famously stated, those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. I feel this applies
04:16to attempts to erase history, much as the names of our military installations. There were also places
04:23that many of those who served during the same time as myself feel a connection to and have fond memories
04:29from our time in military service. When I was stationed at SEAL Team 4, I sometimes considered Fort Pickett
04:36my second home. I applaud the work being done by the administration and oppose this amendment on the
04:42grounds that it further seeks to prevent this wrong from being rectified. And again, history should be
04:47taught, not erased. And with that, I yield back.
04:49The gentleman yields back. Chairman, I recognize the ranking member.
04:52Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The fundamental dishonesty of this argument is just staggering to me. Okay, so let's
05:01just be clear. These bases were reverted back to the names for the confederates for whom they were named
05:07in the first place. Okay, you're going to have us believe that there was just this unbelievable coincidence
05:14of all the names of all the service members that have served honorably in this country for for a couple
05:21centuries now. We just happened to pick the exact same names of the confederates that went before. So let's at least be
05:30honest about what was done. There were people, a minority, who opposed changing the names away from
05:38the confederates. Okay, that did exist. All right, and so Trump got elected president and you tore it up
05:43and you went back to the names of the confederates. But if we can please just dispense with that idiotic
05:48argument and then at least focus on what the actual debate is about, that would help number one. Number two,
05:55the commission that was put together and Mr. Scott on this committee served on it, did an incredible job
06:02of going into the communities and having a broad conversation about why the names were being changed
06:09and what they should be changed to. The communities contributed enormously to the names that were selected.
06:15There weren't a couple people in the Pentagon off in a corner making some decision. It really honored the
06:21communities in a way that this committee ought to respect. Even if you think the so-called heritage
06:27in this case should be preserved, you should recognize that the committee that changed those names
06:32did it in a bipartisan way that was incredibly respectable and honoring of what representative democracy
06:39is supposed to be about. So those are two huge points. And the last point is erasing history.
06:47Honest to God, you think if we change the name of a base, oh my God, we've erased history. Nobody remembers the Civil War anymore.
06:54No one remembers Robert E. Lee. No one remembers any of these generals. We changed the name.
07:00No, what we are changing is what we at this current moment in our history think we should honor.
07:06What we think we want to value and respect. And I won't belabor the point because I've made this argument
07:13over the course of four years repeatedly. But we should not honor the people who fought against our
07:20nation, who rebelled and tried to destroy the country in order to maintain their right to enslave
07:26their fellow human beings. We should not honor that. And I swear it's just astonishing to me that we're
07:34having that debate. I mean you can go after DEI aggressively in a thousand different ways for a thousand
07:39different reasons. And I'd even have some sympathy in a few places on that one. But that we're having a debate
07:45about whether or not we need to honor the history of the Civil War from that perspective. And again,
07:51you can argue, and I'm not, I don't disagree with the notion that we shouldn't pretend like it didn't happen.
07:56We are not pretending like it didn't happen. We are not erasing history. There are history books all over the
08:04place that talk about the Civil War and all the generals who fought in it. We just shouldn't be
08:09honoring the people who rebelled against our nation to preserve slavery. We shouldn't be. And we set up
08:16a very bipartisan process to fix that. And now they've just reversed it to go back to honoring the
08:22Confederates. It's not to honor these other people who are worthy of honor. It's to make sure you put the
08:28name back so that the people who want to honor the Confederates can still think they are. We shouldn't do that.
08:34We shouldn't have done it. And I support this amendment to reverse it.
08:38Gentleman yields back here. And I recognize the gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Scott.
08:42Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Some agreed with the name selected by the commission. Some didn't. As
08:46someone who served on the commission for three years, I will tell you the commission used a process.
08:53They went to every base. We narrowed down through historians what we felt like were 10 appropriate
09:00names for the bases. We presented those names to the community at the bases, the soldiers,
09:06as well as the civilian support networks. We then asked them if they had additional names that they
09:14recommended for the base renaming. And I'll speak only to one of them. Specifically, I'll speak to Bragg.
09:20So the base renaming commission, we went to Bragg. We met with them. They were not happy,
09:30as many of the people were not happy. But don't blame the commission because the commission followed
09:34the law. Blame the law if you don't like what the law did. But the commission went to Bragg.
09:39And we had 10 names that eventually got narrowed down to Shugart Gordon, Benavidez, and Ridgeway.
09:52Ridgeway being one of our greatest generals, the 82nd who's based at Bragg. Benavidez, who was
10:01one of our greatest soldiers, Medal of Honor recipient from Vietnam. And then Shugart Gordon,
10:08the two Delta guys that went in in Mogadishu, which are both Medal of Honor recipients died at the same
10:19time. We got a phone call from the commission, from the base area. And the Gold Star parents asked
10:25that it be named Liberty. And we honored the request of the Gold Star family. That's, now the name
10:34Liberty never took hold. I say that just to say that is the process that the commission used. Now I
10:40understand some people don't like the end result of it. That's fine. But the commission followed the
10:45law and the commission did their job. What has been done now is that the names are, the bases are named
10:53after people because of their surnames. That's literally why they're named. And so
10:58I respect the lady. I don't intend to vote for the amendment. I think the next president,
11:09if it's a Democrat, will rename the bases. The president has always had the ability to name
11:14the bases. And they still do. And so my fear is that we've started a cycle now
11:23where the pendulum continues to swing. And we have unfortunately politicized
11:29the naming of our military installations. But I expect that these names will probably be changed
11:34the next time there's a Democratic president because of the way it's been done in the past. And with that,
11:39I yield. Gentleman yields back. Chair, I recognize the gentleman from New Mexico, Mr. Vasquez.
11:44Mr. Chairman, I yield my time to my colleague from Washington, Ms. Strickland.
11:48All right. Well, thank you very much, everyone, for this very thoughtful discussion. Although,
11:53I have to point out the hypocrisy that's happening right here. So we don't want to run from history,
12:00and we want to maintain and honor it if it's a confederacy. But don't let a woman or a person
12:04of color have their story told on a DOD website. Let's not teach history in schools about what happened
12:12if it makes a certain group of people uncomfortable. So I don't like the fact that I think to your point
12:18that this is going to become politicized. But this commission was created, they had a task,
12:24they received community input, and they named these bases. And what is happening right now is
12:29disingenuous. They're trying to be sneaky and they're trying to be cute. But again, if you want to honor
12:35history, then honor it all over the place. If you want to keep these bases in confederacy, then don't erase
12:40people from your website, or from history books, or teach history at the military service academies.
12:51I yield back.
12:52General Lee yields back, Chair, and I recognize the gentleman from Nebraska, Mr. Bacon.
12:56Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I intend to support the amendment, bottom line. We debated this in 2020.
13:06And some folks in here voted yes, some voted no. But it was debated in a Democrat House and a Republican
13:13Senate, and it passed. So it was a bipartisan bill. And then the President vetoed it, not just for this reason,
13:20but there was a couple reasons. It was overrode by that Democrat House and the Republican Senate.
13:27This has been hashed out. And for what the administration's doing, particularly the Secretary
13:33of Defense, is sticking his finger in the eye of Congress by going back and changing the names to
13:39the old names. Granted, you know, different first names. But it's not right. And I get it. Some people
13:44support the names, the old names, others don't. I come from a family from Virginia. We were raised in
13:50Charlottesville in the Civil War time frame. But we fought for the North. My family was abolitionists.
13:56So I know where my family stands on this whole debate. But a few things we should know. General
14:01Bragg was one of the worst generals in the history of this country. He was a failure. And a base is
14:08named after him. I get it. Some people don't associate with him. But some do. I also think having a base
14:13named Eisenhower. I can't think of a better base name than Hal Moore and his wife. Heroes in Vietnam. Beloved by
14:22everybody. And I don't know anybody that doesn't like Eisenhower or the Moors. So I, it chagrined me
14:29that the administration went back on it. I think Austin Scott is right. The next president is going to
14:33change it back. We should stick with what Congress voted on and overrode in the vetoes. And that was
14:40policy. We debated it fairly and it went one way. And with the Republican Senate. I just want to point
14:48that out. So with that, I yield.
14:50General Bragg was back here and I recognize the gentleman from Massachusetts. Mr. Moulton.
14:54Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My colleague, Mr. Bacon, is exactly right.
15:01So is Mr. Scott. This is politicization of the military. You can teach history without honoring
15:09traitors. And with all due respect to my colleague and fellow veteran from Virginia,
15:14you were brave enough to serve on SEAL Team 4, and yet you can't deal with the supposed discomfort
15:21of not feeling nostalgia for the name of your base?
15:26So let's cite a celebrated military leader of the past few decades who served at these bases,
15:30including Bragg, Pickett, Polk, and Benning, longer than I think anyone in this room. General David Petraeus.
15:37A couple years ago, a few years ago, he said, quote, for an organization designed to win wars,
15:42to train for them at installations named for those who led a losing force
15:47is sufficiently peculiar. But when we consider the cause for which these officers fought,
15:52we begin to penetrate the confusion of Civil War memory. These bases are, after all, federal
15:58installations, home to soldiers who swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United
16:04States. The irony of training at bases named for those who took up arms against the United States
16:10and for the right to enslave others is inescapable to anyone paying attention.
16:18It's time to remove the names of traitors like Benning and Bragg from our country's most important
16:25military installations. He concludes. Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
16:31The gentleman yields back. Chairman, I recognize the gentleman from Missouri, Mr. Bell.
16:35Sometimes this town is just absolutely crazy. You know, maybe I'm six months in, so, you know,
16:44I'm coming in from a different perspective. But, I mean, this is nuts. I mean, this is,
16:52this country has an original sin. We know that. So everything is looked at through the lens of
16:59Republicans and Democrats. But what about right and wrong? Slavery, first of all, when we talk about
17:05slavery, we were talking about taking people and making them into property. But that wasn't even
17:11the worst part of it. We're talking rape. We're talking about separating families. Like, this whole
17:18legacy is what we're talking about when we're talking about slavery. We're not talking about a little
17:22inconvenience like, hey, no big deal, rub some dirt on and move on. This was like generations. There are
17:28people who lived and died as slaves. And we want to continue this memory for some reason. Like,
17:35help me understand the logic of that. And, oh, let's take it a little bit further. After slavery,
17:40we didn't say, oh, we're sorry. We went into Jim Crow. And so we took people's rights away. We wouldn't
17:46let people vote. We were, black folks were terrorized by Ku Klux Klan. We had redlining. All of this stuff
17:53which was done by the same laws that you're talking about are somehow appropriate in this debate,
18:01which this isn't even a debate. It's just ridiculous. So this is not a complicated situation.
18:10People are making it complicated. Slavery was wrong. What happened to people was wrong. The
18:17discrimination, that legacy that we saw for generations and generations was wrong. So let's
18:24just, let's acknowledge it finally by at least not putting the names and putting the names on our,
18:32in our buildings and like they did something, like they did something worth honoring. Come on, stop it.
18:38That's insane. Chairman Yulzebac, Chair, I recognize Mr. Vindman of Virginia. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
18:50I served on more than half a dozen bases during my 25-year career. And you know what I think about
18:57when I think about those bases? It's not really the names. It's the people that you served with,
19:02the relationships that you built, who you deployed with. Those are the things that are important about
19:07those bases. It's the mission that you all serve together to accomplish. And this is just a massive
19:17distraction for all the reasons that my colleagues on the other side have talked about. The fact that
19:23there was a congressional process, you know, eloquent statements about the thought that went into
19:30thinking about what these base names should be. The great Americans that they were named after,
19:36Ridgeway and Eisenhower. Those are the reasons why this is a massive distraction. As a member of,
19:47as a retired member of the US military, this is just a massive distraction. It's unnecessary. We like
19:53our new base names in Virginia. And I hear from military families and active duty service members who
19:59are facing real challenges like increasing rents and mortgages and VA backlogs and the strain of high
20:05prices at the grocery store. Meanwhile, this administration is focused on everything but lowering costs
20:11for hardworking families. And we should just focus on what the American people expect of us.
20:17With that, I yield my time to Mr. Bell. Thank you. The last thing I'll say is,
20:24why not speak up for Americans who fought and bled for this country? African Americans fought in every single war,
20:32bled and died in every single war. Why not speak up for those Americans? Why not honor that legacy by saying,
20:40hey, this was wrong, which it seems to me in 2025 is insane that I have to actually say it in this house.
20:49But why not speak up? Why not honor those folks who actually built much of this country for free,
20:58were never given any compensation, and then fought in every war and died in every war and still love
21:04this country? How about that? I yield back. The gentleman yields back. Does any other members wish to speak
21:11on the amendment? Seeing none. The question occurs on the amendment offered by Ms. Strickland. For all those
21:17in favor, say aye. Aye. Those opposed, say no. No. In the chair, the ayes have it. The recorded vote is
21:26requested. The recorded vote will be postponed.
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