On the recordJuly 11, 2019
I am pleased to offer this amendment with Representatives Khanna, DeFazio, Omar, and Pressley. What this amendment would do is freeze fiscal year 2020 defense spending in the NDAA to 2019 levels by reducing the overseas contingency operations account by $16.8 billion. Now, by restoring defense spending to the levels authorized in last year's NDAA, this increase would be even more modest than the $700 billion top-line figure publicly embraced by the President just 9 months ago before he reversed course and requested an outrageous $750 billion. Mr. Chair, just last year, the Department of Defense failed its first ever agencywide audit, something that I have long called for, along with my colleague Representative Burgess. I want to thank Chairman Smith for including our bipartisan language on audit readiness to ensure that the DOD is acting to address waste, fraud, and abuse at the Pentagon and ensure that it has a plan in place so it can pass an unqualified audit. If the Department of Defense cannot even keep track of its current funding, it is truly outrageous that Congress would reward the Pentagon with a massive spending increase. This amendment is simply about reining in the bloated Pentagon budget. At the minute-by-minute level, American taxpayers are already spending nearly $2 billion a day at the fiscal 2019 NDAA enacted levels this amendment seeks to cut funding to.…
