00:00With that, the distinguished gentleman from South Carolina, Mr. Clyburn, is recognized for remarks on the bill.
00:06Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for yielding the time, which I am pleased to yield to Leader Hoyer.
00:12I thank the gentleman for yielding.
00:16Mr. Alford is one of my better friends on the Republican side.
00:22I respect him. I respect his remarks.
00:25And we are pleased, as the gentleman observed, that PEPFAR has been saved.
00:33It was saved from Doge. It was saved from the Trump administration.
00:39And yes, we support that effort.
00:41And we applaud the chairman of the subcommittee for doing that.
00:47However, when the gentleman talks about limited resources, there are limited resources.
00:53And I care a great deal about the debt.
00:55We need to deal with $37 trillion of debt, or my great-grandchildren are going to be in real trouble.
01:01My grandchildren are going to be in trouble.
01:04Maybe my children won't be in so much trouble.
01:09But we need to deal with that debt.
01:11But a Republican former vice president who was governor of our state once said,
01:17the cost of failure far exceeds the price of progress.
01:20That was Spiro Agnew.
01:22The cost of failure exceeds the price of progress.
01:26On your side, you made a determination.
01:30You were going to raise our debt by $5 trillion.
01:32Some people who had never voted to raise debt before voted to raise the debt by $5 trillion.
01:40And then you spent that additional debt, giving $3.4 trillion to some of the wealthiest people in America.
01:49Now, there were some who were not so wealthy, also got some small relief.
01:54So, yes, this bill does some good things.
02:01But it is silent on, I think, one of the biggest challenges to which John Kennedy was speaking.
02:08That we will pay any price, bear any burden to defend freedom here and around the world.
02:13And we have a dictator, despot, anti-Democrat with a small d, attacking a Democratic country, an ally of ours.
02:30We have had 12 votes on supporting Ukraine.
02:35There's not a single Democrat voted against Ukraine in those.
02:39And the overwhelming majority of Republicans voted for these 12 votes.
02:46An average of 79% of us in the Congress of the United States supported defending and helping Ukraine defend itself.
02:57Yet, as I understand it, there's not a single word in this national security bill about Ukraine.
03:03I think the gentleman from Illinois has an amendment that may deal tangentially with Ukraine.
03:14But this bill is essentially silent.
03:17That's what I mean about sounding retreat.
03:22Now, we won't know the full scope of the damage of this bill for a long time to come.
03:28I hope it's a long time and may be sooner.
03:30We talk about China.
03:33We talk about Taiwan and supporting that.
03:35500 million.
03:37I guarantee you, the message we send to China if Ukraine loses will be louder than anything this bill says.
03:45Many of those forced out of state were intelligent analysts, specializing in Russia and China.
03:57Others focused on counterterrorism and stopping drug trafficking.
04:01Some were tasked with ensuring America's energy dominance, maintaining America's security and influence around the world.
04:08It's not a partisan issue.
04:10It has not been, for me, a single day I've been in this institution.
04:14I supported almost all of Ronald Reagan's buildup.
04:19And I think it led directly to the ability of Gorbachev to look his industrial complex in the eye and say, we can't compete with America.
04:27We ought to put this legislation aside and act on the bipartisan consensus that I believe still exists on these priorities.
04:38I pray it still exists.
04:39If America retreats, our adversaries will inevitably advance.
04:50Are there some good things in this bill?
04:52There are.
04:55But they are woefully inadequate in so many other ways.
04:59I urge the defeat of this bill and yield back the balance of my time.
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