On the recordJuly 11, 2019
Let me start off by being very clear on this issue: Our military forces aim for zero civilian casualties--zero--and one civilian casualty during a military operation is one too many. No one understands this better than our men and women in uniform who go through extreme efforts to continually avoid civilian casualties, and no committee understands this better than the House Armed Services Committee. So this amendment that we are discussing now is one of several that we have seen this year that unnecessarily expand and increase reporting on civilian casualties and allegations of civilian casualties caused by our men and women in uniform. I am disappointed that, once again, the majority chose to give up Defense Committee jurisdiction to another outside committee. So this amendment would, in effect, give an outside committee additional reporting on what amounts to ongoing and current military operations. To date, this has been the exclusive jurisdiction of the Defense Committee's. In fact, the civilian casualty frameworks that we are discussing today were put in place in previous NDAAs under the previous Republican majority on a bipartisan basis. We tried to work in additional edits to this amendment, given the importance of this issue, but those edits were refused by the majority, which is why we are debating this today. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
