Mike Thompson: “I thank Mr. Ruppersberger for yielding, and I thank Mr. Ruppersberger and Mr. Rogers for their good work in the…”

“I thank Mr. Ruppersberger for yielding, and I thank Mr. Ruppersberger and Mr. Rogers for their good work in the committee. As ranking member of the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Human Intelligence, Analysis, and Counterintelligence, I'm pleased that we were able to work through our differences to bring a stronger and now bipartisan Intelligence authorization bill to the floor today. H.R. 754 will support critical U.S. intelligence capabilities by increasing resources for our country's counterterrorism efforts while also providing needed flexibility to the Central Intelligence Agency to hire the analysts that it needs. Last year, under the leadership of then-Speaker Pelosi and Chairman Reyes, President Obama signed the first Intelligence Authorization Act in 6 years. That bill included a number of long overdue provisions that supported critical U.S. intelligence capabilities, significantly enhanced congressional oversight, and improved accountability across the entire intelligence community. Today's bill builds on that effort and represents an important step forward towards enacting an Intelligence authorization bill for the second year in a row. Unfortunately, the process used to produce this bill was badly flawed and there weren't proper hearings to get to where we are now. And that's evidenced by the amendments that we are able to get into this bill to bring it up to the position that it's in.…”