Brian Mast

I thank my friend for yielding me the time. I am not going to need 2 minutes. You can calculate for that right now. I am just going give a quick warning. With this administration, it is always an example of getting the camel's nose under…

Before Joe Biden was sworn into office, before he was even elected, he made the decision that he would hire based on race, gender, and sexual orientation.

There are no quotas over qualification. We did not need an African American or an Asian or a white sniper or bomb tech or K-9 handler.

Not a single American tax dollar will be voted on by me to continue to fund diversity, equity, and inclusion.

You used the term previously microaggression.

Let me be clear in my beliefs: no part of our government, including the State Department, should look any certain way.

Have you made State Department more diverse?

But if we do not, then State will decide what I am.

I believe that this office has a clever name that uses strong emotional words, diversity, equity, inclusion, but, functionally, does the opposite of what America has always stood for.

I would never vote in favor to allocate a single dollar toward these types of things that I find to be divisive.

It shouldn't matter that I am half Mexican. It shouldn't matter whether I am able-bodied or ambulatory or not ambulatory.

How is DEI job performance criteria, how do you evaluate--and let me ask this maybe a little bit more specifically.

We cannot have it be that first we look for a diverse basket of candidates... the diversity cannot be the No. 1.

To hire or not hire, to promote or not promote, based in any part upon appearance is wrong and un-American.

I thank you, ma'am, for your valuable testimony.

It is a priority for every person that goes in and out of the Capitol.

We want your answers.

Sometimes when you are in a serious situation, you have to do what you can to get through the moment.

But I'm also the only Member of Congress who actually conducted rescues myself of Americans out of Afghanistan, who spent 3 years of my life in Afghanistan, 7 years of my life in Iraq.

Your agency is forcing gender identity on countries and that's neither soft power nor hard power.

What I think needs to happen at BIS is a complete culture shift on the licensing side.

We have decades of evidence to show that that strategy has failed.

Isn't focusing on diversity issues creating reverse discrimination and separating us further rather than uniting us?

I don't have time to go into it, but very much a nonanswer given to a very important question.

I think it is absolutely affecting retention in all of our branches of the military.