- 6 weeks 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
01:08after service members who shared the same names as the Confederate traders. Now we
01:13know politics isn't about nuance these days, so just pay attention to these
01:16details. Instead, this commission chose to honor a new generation of Army legends
01:21including General Richard Cavazos, Lieutenant General Hal Moore, and Dr. Mary
01:26Edwards Walker. Unfortunately, Secretary Hegseth and the Trump administration
01:32decided to troll the American public and discard the hard work of this committee and
01:36commission by reverting base names. And they used the same ploy that the
01:41commission rejected, finding new service members who shared the last names of
01:46these Confederate traders. These service members are heroes in their own right and we
01:50don't deny that, like Private Fitz Lee, a Buffalo soldier who was awarded the Medal of
01:55Honor. Yet Secretary Hegseth saw them as nothing more than convenient names. Their
02:01families were not given the opportunity to weigh in if their legacy should be used
02:05this way. President Trump gave up the ruse last month when he said out loud that
02:11Fort Greg Adams 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.
02:32Secretary 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
02:40names in a way that is less offensive to some families of fallen service members. In
02:452020, a bipartisan group of legislators actually overrode Trump's veto of the
02:52NDAA because he did not want this commission to exist. So this was a
02:56bipartisan effort. My amendment simply prevents any funds appropriated to the
03:01Department of Defense from being used to contravene or reverse the work of the
03:05naming commission that was established in 2020. In the spirit of government
03:09efficiency, the department must stop lighting taxpayer money on fire to play games
03:14with military history. I urge my colleagues to please vote yes on this
03:17amendment. I yield back. General Lady yields back here and I recognize
03:20gentleman from Virginia, Mr. McGuire. Mr. Chairman, I oppose this amendment from the
03:25gentlewoman from Washington. I have many disagreements with the
03:29recommendations and actions of the naming commission. However, President Trump and
03:34Secretary Hegseth are working to restore and honor American history. Contrary to
03:40Ms. Strickland's amendment, Secretary Hegseth is not renaming bases in support of
03:45Confederate heroes. Example, Secretary Hegseth renamed Fort Greg Adams, Virginia to
03:51Fort Lee, a member of the all-black Buffalo Soldiers who was awarded the Medal of
03:56Honor after serving in the Spanish-American War. However, the naming
04:00commission's actions were perceived by many people, including a sizable part of my
04:04district, Virginia's fifth congressional district, as attack on American history.
04:08Right or wrong, Winston Churchill famously stated, those that fail to learn from
04:13history are doomed to repeat it. I feel this applies to attempts to erase history,
04:18much as the names of our military installations. There were also places that
04:24many of those who served during the same time as myself feel a connection to and
04:28have fond memories from our time in military service. When I was stationed at
04:33SEAL Team 4, I sometimes considered Fort Pickett my second home. I applaud the work
04:39being done by the administration and oppose this amendment on the grounds that it
04:42further seeks to prevent this wrong from being rectified. And again, history should
04:47be taught, 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.
05:00Okay, so let's just be clear. These bases were reverted back to the names for the
05:06confederates for whom they were named in the first place. Okay, you're gonna have us
05:10believe that there was just this unbelievable coincidence of all the
05:15names of all the service members that have served honorably in this country for
05:20for a couple centuries now. We just happened to pick the exact same names of the
05:27confederates that went before. So let's at least be honest about what was done.
05:32There were people, a minority, who opposed changing the names away from the
05:38confederates. Okay, that did exist. All right, and so Trump got elected president
05:42and you tore it up and you went back to the names of the confederates. But if we
05:46can please just dispense with that idiotic argument and then at least focus on
05:50what the actual debate is about, that would help number one. Number two, the
05:55commission that was put together and Mr. Scott on this committee served on it,
06:00did an incredible job of going into the communities and having a broad
06:06conversation about why the names were being changed and what they should be
06:10changed to. The communities contributed enormously to the names that were
06:14selected. They weren't a couple people in the Pentagon off in a corner making some
06:19decision. It really honored the communities in a way that this committee ought to
06:24respect, even if you think the so-called heritage in this case should be preserved,
06:29you should recognize that the committee that changed those names did it in a
06:34bipartisan way that was incredibly respectable and honoring of what
06:38representative democracy is supposed to be about. So those are two huge points.
06:43And the last point is erasing history. Honest to God, you think if we change the name of a base, oh my God, we've erased history.
06:52Nobody remembers the Civil War anymore. No one remembers Robert E. Lee. No one
06:57remembers any of these generals. We changed the name. No, what we are changing is what we
07:02at this current moment in our history think we should honor. What we think we
07:07want to value and respect. And I won't belabor the point because I've made this
07:13argument over the course of four years repeatedly, but we should not honor the
07:18people who fought against our nation, who rebelled and tried to destroy the
07:22country in order to maintain their right to enslave their fellow human beings. We
07:28should not honor that. And I swear to you, it's just astonishing to me that we're
07:34having that debate. I mean you can go after DEI aggressively in a thousand
07:38different ways for a thousand different reasons and not even have some sympathy in
07:42a few places on that one. But they were having a debate about whether or not we need to
07:46honor the history of the Civil War from that perspective. And again, you can argue,
07:52and I'm not, I don't disagree with the notion that we shouldn't pretend like it
07:55didn't happen. We are not pretending like it didn't happen. We are not erasing
08:01history. There are history books all over the place that talk about the Civil War and
08:06all the generals who fought in it. We just shouldn't be honoring the people who
08:12rebelled against our nation to preserve slavery. We shouldn't be. And we set up a very
08:16bipartisan process to fix that. And now they've just reversed it to go back to
08:21honoring the Confederates. It's not to honor the these other people who are
08:26worthy of honor. It's to make sure you put the name back so that the people who
08:30want to honor the Confederates can still think they are. We shouldn't do that. We
08:34shouldn'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.
08:41Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Some agreed with the names selected by the Commission. Some
08:46didn't. As someone who served on the Commission for three years, I will tell
08:50you the Commission used a process. They went to every base. We narrowed down
08:56through historians what we felt like were ten appropriate names for the bases. We
09:01presented those names to the community at the bases, the soldiers, as well as the
09:07civilian 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
09:19I'll speak to Bragg. So the base renaming commission, we went to Bragg, we met with
09:27them. They were not happy, as many of the people were not happy. But don't blame the
09:33commission, because the commission followed the law. Blame the law if you don't like
09:37what the law did. But the commission went to Bragg. And we had ten names that
09:43eventually got narrowed down to Shugart Gordon, Benavidez, and Ridgeway. Ridgeway being
09:53one of our greatest generals, the 82nd who's based at Bragg. Benavidez, who was one of our
10:01greatest soldiers, Medal of Honor recipient from Vietnam, and then Shugart Gordon, the
10:09two Delta guys that went in, in Mogadishu, which are both Medal of Honor recipients died
10:18at the same time. We got a phone call from the commission, from the base area, and the
10:24Gold Star parents asked that it be named Liberty. And we honored the request of the
10:30Gold Star family. That's, now the name Liberty never took hold. I say that just to
10:36say that is the process that the commission used. Now I understand some
10:41people don't like the end result of it. That's fine. But the commission followed
10:45the law, and the commission did their job. What has been done now is that the
10:51names are, the bases are named after people because of their surnames. That's
10:56literally why they're named. And so I respect the lady. I don't intend to vote
11:03for the amendment. I think the next president, if it's a Democrat, will rename
11:11the bases. The president has always had the ability to name the bases, and they
11:16still do. And so my fear is that we've started a cycle now where the pendulum continues to
11:24swing, and we have unfortunately politicized the naming of our military installations. But
11:31I expect that these names will probably be changed the next time there's a Democratic
11:36president, because of the way it's been done in the past. And with that, I yield.
11:40The gentleman yields back. The chair and I recognize the gentleman from New Mexico, Mr.
11:43Vasquez. Mr. 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
11:58from history, and we want to maintain and honor it if it's a confederacy. But don't
12:03let a woman or a person of color have their story told on the DoD website. Let's not
12:09teach history in schools about what happened if it makes a certain group of people uncomfortable.
12:15So I don't like the fact that I think, to your point, that this is going to become politicized.
12:21But this commission was created, they had a task, they received community input, and they
12:27named these bases. And what is happening right now is disingenuous. They're trying to be sneaky,
12:32and they're trying to be cute. But again, if you want to honor history, then honor it all
12:36over the place. If you want to keep these bases in confederacy, then don't erase people
12:41from 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.
12:55Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I intend to support the amendment, bottom line. The, we debated this in 2020.
13:05And some folks in here voted yes, some voted no, but it was debated in a Democrat House and
13:13a Republican Senate, and it passed. So it was a bipartisan bill, and then the President vetoed
13:19it, not just for this reason, but there was a couple reasons. It was overrode by that Democrat
13:25House and the Republican Senate. This has been hashed out. And for what, and what the administration's,
13:32particularly Secretary of Defense, was sticking his finger in the eye of Congress by going
13:38back and changing the names to the old names. Granted, you know, different first names. But
13:42it's not right. And I get it. Some people support the names, the old names, others don't.
13:47I come from a family from Virginia. We were raised in Charlottesville in the Civil War time frame,
13:54but we fought for the North. My family was abolitionists. So I know where my family stands on this whole
13:59debate. But a few things we should know. General Bragg was one of the worst generals in the history
14:03of this country. He was a failure. And a base is named after him. I get it. Some people don't
14:09associate with him, but some do. I also think having a base named Eisenhower. I can't think
14:15of a better base name than Hal Moore and his wife. Heroes in Vietnam. Beloved by everybody. And I don't know
14:23anybody that doesn't like Eisenhower or the Moors. So it chagrined me that the administration went
14:30back on it. I think Austin Scott is right. The next president is going to change it back. We should
14:35stick with what Congress voted on and overrode in the vetoes. And that was policy. We debated it
14:42fairly and it went one way. And with the Republican Senate. I just want to point that out. So with that, I yield.
14:49Gentleman yields 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, you were brave enough
15:15to serve on SEAL Team 4. And yet you can't deal with the supposed discomfort of not feeling nostalgia
15:22for the name of your base. So let's cite a celebrated military leader of the past few decades who served
15:29at these bases, including Bragg, Pickett, Polk, and Benning, longer than I think anyone in this room.
15:35General David Petraeus. A couple years ago, a few years ago, he said, quote,
15:39for an organization designed to win wars, to train for them at installations named for those who led
15:45a losing force is 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 States.
16:05The irony of trading at bases named for those who took up arms against the United States,
16:11and 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 here, and I recognize the gentleman from Missouri, Mr. Bell.
16:37Sometimes 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
17:46wouldn't let people vote. We were, black folks were terrorized by Ku Klux Klan. We had redlining,
17:52all of this stuff which was done by the same laws that you're talking about are somehow appropriate in
17:59this debate, which this isn't even a debate. It's just ridiculous. So this is not a complicated
18:10situation. People are making it complicated. Slavery was wrong. What happened to people was wrong.
18:17The discrimination, that legacy that we saw for generations and generations was wrong.
18:24So let's just, let's acknowledge it finally by at least not putting the names and putting the names
18:32on our buildings and like they did something, like they did something worth honoring. Come on, stop it.
18:38That's insane. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I served on more than half a dozen bases during my 25-year career.
18:55And you know what I think about when I think about those bases? It's not really the names. It's the
19:01people that you served with, the relationships that you built, who you deployed with. Those are the
19:06things that are important about those bases. It's the mission that you all serve together
19:14to accomplish. And this is just a massive distraction for all the reasons that my colleagues on the other
19:22side have talked about. The fact that there was a congressional process, you know, eloquent statements
19:27about the thought that went into thinking about what these base names should be. The great Americans that
19:35they were named after, Ridgeway and Eisenhower. Those are the reasons why this is a massive
19:44distraction. As a member of, as a retired member of the U.S. military, this is just a massive distraction.
19:52It's unnecessary. We like our new base names in Virginia. And I hear from military families and active
19:58duty service members who are facing real challenges like increasing rents and mortgages and VA backlogs
20:04and the strain of high prices at the grocery store. Meanwhile, this administration is focused on
20:09everything but lowering costs for hardworking families. And we should just focus on what the
20:15American people expect of us. With 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
20:31single war, bled and died in every single war. Why not speak up for those Americans? Why not honor that
20:39legacy by saying, hey, this was wrong, which it seems to me in 2025 is insane that I have to actually
20:47say it in this house. But why not speak up? Why not honor those folks who actually built much of this
20:56country for free, were never given any compensation, and then fought in every war and died in every war
21:03and still love this country? How about that? I yield back. The gentleman yields back. Does any other
21:11members wish to speak on the amendment? Seeing none. The question occurs on the amendment offered by Ms.
21:16Strickland. For all those in favor, say aye. Aye. Those opposed, say no. No.
21:22The ayes have it. The recorded vote is requested. The recorded vote will be postponed.
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