00:00Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to echo the Chairman's comments, thanking the Rules Committee.
00:08They've always been a great partner in this process. I don't know exactly how many amendments
00:11have been submitted, but I think it's north of 1,200 at this point. Really appreciate your
00:16working so closely with our staff on that process. And I also want to thank the Chairman
00:21for his leadership of the committee. He's absolutely right. We work in a very bipartisan
00:25fashion. We produce a bipartisan product out of committee. I vote, I think, 57 to 2,
00:3156 to 2, something like that. And it is a really good product that we should be proud of. And the
00:37Chairman highlighted the number one most important thing in it this year, and that is acquisition
00:41reform. Now, we have made sort of incremental progress on some aspects of acquisition reform
00:47before, but Chairman Rogers and the committee really committed this cycle to doing a deep dive
00:53on what's wrong and how to fix it. We had a hearing out in Silicon Valley. We had hearings
00:58down in Austin, Texas. We met with industry reps and a whole lot of other people to figure out
01:02how can we make this work better. And the result is the SPEED Act that the Chairman has put together
01:07that I think is going to make a huge difference. And just to understand why it's important,
01:11innovation is absolutely crucial to national security right now. We have to be able to acquire
01:18the most innovative, up-to-date systems quickly. The Pentagon moves too slowly, and when you're
01:23looking at technologies like drones and AI and all mannered from other systems, we need to buy those
01:29more quickly. This bill, I think, really gives us a good chance to get there, and I appreciate that
01:33effort. Also, as the Chairman referenced, we continue the efforts from the previous cycle
01:38when we focused on quality of life issues. We did a quality of life task force that gave us a series of
01:43recommendations, which we can all be proud, were implemented in the last year's bill, and that we
01:47build on that in the way the Chairman said. The other area that I want to emphasize is there is strong
01:53support for Ukraine in this bill and strong support for Eastern Europe. We have $400 million in USAI for
02:00Ukraine specifically, and also we reinforce the support for the Baltic nations with the Baltic Defense
02:06Initiative by putting money in there specifically for that. I think it is an enormous mistake by the Trump
02:12administration to signal that they are going to cut those funds and to have raised so many questions
02:18about our continuing support to Ukraine. Showing weakness to Vladimir Putin is not the way to end
02:25this war. We need to support Ukraine. That is what will force Putin to the bargaining table and end this
02:30war, and I think this bill reflects those priorities. Two broad areas of concern that I think this bill should
02:37do a better job of on oversight. The President has used the United States military to an unprecedented
02:45level both for domestic law enforcement and for border security. Now both of those things are very
02:51important, do not get me wrong, but the United States military has a very specific mission to defend
02:56ourselves against our foreign adversaries. The billions and billions of dollars that are being spent on the
03:02border, a border that I must emphasize that the President says is secure right now, and I happen to
03:09agree with him on that point. So why are we spending billions and billions of more dollars both on
03:14military construction and on the use of our troops' time in that mission while undermining our mission to
03:20deter ourselves against adversaries like Russia, Iran, and North Korea, and competitors like China? I think that is
03:28misplaced. I think we need to place more emphasis on that. And also the President's use of the military
03:33for domestic law enforcement is shocking and alarming. It should be shocking and alarming to everybody in
03:39Congress. The posse comitatus law is there for a reason. This is being violated. And then when it comes
03:45to expanding the authority of DOD, the President has apparently unilaterally declared war on every drug cartel
03:53in the world. What is that going to drag us into? What is the justification for the attack that happened
03:59in the Caribbean just last week? We have not heard it yet. I think this is a dangerous expansion that
04:04undermines Congress but also places the country at jeopardy. Other area of concern is on the culture war
04:12issue. We have fought through this with culture wars on the left that I didn't agree with and a culture war on the
04:18right now that I don't agree with. Efforts to rename the bases back to the names for Confederate generals.
04:25The purging of some 24,000 images that showed diversity, equity, inclusion, which I love the example that they
04:35actually purged briefly pictures of the Enola Gay because they were trying to ban the word gay. First of all, it's kind of
04:41stupid because, you know, it's the Enola Gay. It means something different. But second of all, why are we wasting time trying to get
04:47word of the word gay in the first place even based on the other meaning? That does not advance the
04:53interests of the warfighter or get us to the point where we're going to meet our national security needs.
04:58I also think we need to exercise oversight over the DOGE process and the reform efforts. Too much of that
05:05seemed to be focused primarily on breaking the government, making it not work, and also on making sure that
05:12personal loyalty to President Trump was the only thing that mattered. We fired all of the inspector
05:18generals, all of the judge advocate generals, all of the people who are supposed to exercise
05:22independent oversight, not to mention the dozen or so generals who were fired based on apparently the
05:28whims of Laura Loomer. That does not build a strong national security defense. And one item that I hope people
05:35will consider, if you want to consider everything I just said as being unduly partisan, when DOGE came
05:41in and gave everyone the offer to take early retirement and leave, a lot of them did. And we
05:46lost some 75% of our cyber experts in DOD because we spent all this money training them. They had this
05:52highly marketable expertise. And then they came along and said, hey, we'll pay you to leave. And they said,
05:58okay, we'll take your money. We'll go make more money on the outside. And now we don't have the cyber
06:02intelligence we need, just because the focus was on purging the federal workforce, not on making it
06:08more efficient and more effective. And the last thing that I hope this committee will consider,
06:13Mr. McGovern referenced this, in the rules process last year, the committee wound up ruling in order
06:19all manner of different extreme right wing amendments that fundamentally broke the bipartisan nature of the
06:25bill. And I hope we don't do that again. And just again, note of bipartisanship. I remember the first
06:30year when I was chairman, 2019, we kind of did the same thing. It was complicated. We took a big swing.
06:36It was our first time in charge in eight years. And we made a bill that ultimately Republicans didn't
06:40vote for. So that's one year. The next year, we put together a very bipartisan bill that got a
06:45bipartisan vote on the committee. I'm very hopeful that the rules committee will look at that as well.
06:50Put aside the culture war, put aside the partisan issues, rule and order the amendments that are going to
06:55put us in a position to maintain a bipartisan bill and hopefully get the vote that this bill deserves.
07:00Again, because of all of the bipartisan work that Mr. Rogers has done, the committee has done, and
07:05crucially, our HASC staff has done. We got a great product. Let's keep it great and get it passed
07:12out of the committee and off the floor. Thank you. I yield back.
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