Hoyer: Underfunding the Civilians Who are So Critically Important to our Defense Effort is a Big Mistake

WASHINGTON, DC - Today, Congressman Steny H. Hoyer (MD-05) delivered opening remarks at the House Appropriations Full Committee Markup of the FY 2027 Defense bill. Below are a video and transcript of his remarks:

Click here to watch a video of his remarks.

"Mr. Chairman, I rise in concern about this bill. And yes, I will oppose the bill as it's currently written. I listened to my dear friend Mr. Ellzey. Mr. Ellzey and I have become dear friends. I have extraordinary respect for him, and I agreed with what he had to say up to a point. First of all, let me associate myself with the remarks of our Ranking Member about process. There is no 302(b). This bill could be any figure. I could offer $1 trillion in addition to this bill, and nobody could respond, the Chairman couldn't respond, 'Oh, this is beyond the 302(b).' There is no 302(b). There is no budget, there is no concept of what the tradeoffs are in this bill. That is its procedural weakness. There is no 'pay for' for this bill because there is no 302(b), so we don't know how much will need to be paid for [it]. So, that we are all speaking about a $1 trillion bill, and who's going to pay for it? My children, your children, our grandchildren.

"But we say this is critically important to put on the table to make our country secure. I think there's nobody, probably, other than Hal Rogers in this committee who served longer and supported more defense bills than I have. I was a very strong supporter of the Reagan bill, though. The MX missile approval and the deployment of the Pershing missiles that the Russians thought we couldn't get done politically in Europe, that accomplishment, in my opinion, led to Gorbachev's being able to convince his military industrial complex, 'You need to go Glasnost and Perestroika, because we cannot compete with the Americans.' So, I believe that investing in our defense is important. But I think even more important than that is our performance with respect to defense. It is my belief - and I will discuss this further when the amendment on Ukraine is offered - that our failure of the West in 2014 to respond to the Russian stealing of Crimea is the mother of this war that we now have in Ukraine, because it said to Putin, 'We're not going to respond to your criminal act.' Now, a President that I supported was President of the United States at that point in time. The Congress nor the President responded in a vigorous way that would say, 'No, sir, you cannot do that.'

"Today, we have a bill that has $1 trillion plus in it. We have spent, apparently, somewhere in the neighborhood of $79 billion over the last four months for an effort in Iran. The failure to respond effectively to Crimea's theft and the extraordinary chaos and ineffective action that we've taken - which I call, 'The art of the sellout.' There's no deal. A deal implies both sides are going to do something. But very frankly, I would call your attention to an article in The Washington Post by Max Boot [from] three days ago on the extraordinary failure of this Administration, and of the Secretary of Defense, and the DNI and, frankly, the Secretary of State, who seems to be like Pontius Pilate, washing his hands of this effort in Iran because he thinks it is so abysmally a failure. We remove a naval blockade, we waive export Iran's crude oil sanctions, we release $24 billion in frozen funds, we facilitate $300 billion for [reconstructing] economic development in the Islamic Republic of Iran, we terminate all types of sanctions, and we allow - after 60 days - for Iran to charge fees in international waters for passage. What kind of message does that send to Russia? What kind of message does that send to China? What kind of message does that send to Iran? Iran thinks, probably, at this point in time, they've won. And yet we are about to invest in that leadership $1 trillion plus. A failed leadership. This Secretary of Defense calls 800 of the top-ranking officers - flag officers in the world to come to the Pentagon for a meeting. Does he have anything substantively to say? He did not.

"Mr. Chairman, I'm going to vote against this bill, but I'm going to argue that we certainly need to spend money. We need to spend money on industrialization, we need to spend money on acquisition, and we need to spend money on personnel. But I would add - and thank you for your time - I would add that underfunding the civilians who are so critically important to our defense effort in the Pentagon and in other agencies and government is a very bad mistake, which we have avoided in the past by having some degree of equality between civilians and the military; both critically important to our national security. I yield back the balance of my time. I'll have more to say later."