Washington, DC— Congressman Mo Brooks announced he voted “Yes” today on final House passage of the Fiscal Year 2022 National Defense Authorization Act.

Congressman Brooks said, “I took a lot of heat from ill-informed or politically opportunistic “naysayers” by joining 112 of my House colleagues and voting “No” on the NDAA in September. That “No” vote has paid off! As a result of September’s 113 “No” votes, and even more expected “No” votes on final passage if constructive changes were not made, Republican House and Senate NDAA Conferees were empowered to strip extraordinarily bad policy positions from the September version of the NDAA.”

Congressman Brooks continued, “After seeing 113 “No” votes in September, and hearing the views of so many fellow Republicans, Alabama Congressman Mike Rogers and other Republican conference negotiators were empowered to demand, and successfully strip, from the final NDAA provisions that previously:

• required teenage girls to register for the draft,
• attacked the Second Amendment via Red Flag laws,
• promoted unionization in the national defense industry,
• created a George Orwell “1984” style “Office of Extremism” that would likely target conservatives for their legitimately-held political beliefs, and
• many other onerous provisions.

On the whole, the Conference Committee’s NDAA version strengthens national security by modernizing the resources our warfighters need to be successful when duty calls while minimizing the policy damage Socialist Democrats hoped to insert into the “must pass” NDAA. As a result of these improvements, that I helped bring about despite severe criticism by those who were all too willing to surrender to Socialist Democrats, I voted “Yes” on final passage of the NDAA.”

Congressman Brooks concluded, “My only hesitancy about voting “Yes” today is that, once again, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi forced a vote on a major piece of legislation that has thousands of pages of complex language, and gave Congressmen inadequate time to read and fully understand the NDAA’s impact. Perhaps even worse, Speaker Pelosi denied the American people the opportunity to read the NDAA and communicate with their representatives about how they should vote. Speaker Pelosi’s dictates are a poor substitute for good governance. I don’t like such a poor process for doing the people’s business, but the American people put Speaker Pelosi and her ilk in charge and I have no choice but to vote on legislation when Speaker Pelosi puts it on the House Floor for a vote. Such is the power of the Speaker’s gavel.”

Background:

This year’s NDAA authorizes $768 billion in total defense spending. With America’s geo-political foes, especially China, investing heavily in their military capabilities, it’s imperative that America keep pace. The lesson of World War II is that America’s enemies must never be allowed to mistakenly believe they can overpower America. By maintaining robust defenses, America maintains peace.

The FY22 NDAA strengthens national security by:

• Providing troops a 2.7% pay raise;
• Extends military recruitment and retention bonuses and special pay authorities;
• Provides nearly $1.5 billion to improve servicemember family housing;
• Continues funding for the deployment of National Guard to the border;
• Reauthorizes authority for DoD to support U.S. law enforcement counter-narcotic and counter-transnational crime efforts;
• Requires an assessment of the impact on military readiness of forcing DoD to transport illegal immigrants;
• Reverses President Biden’s dangerous cuts to the procurement of new aircraft, combat vehicles, autonomous systems, missiles, and ammunition;
• Focuses investment on new and emerging weapon systems capable of penetrating denied operating environments such as China;
• Authorizes over $1.1 billion in new aircraft, equipment, and weapon systems for the National Guard and Reserve.

The FY22 NDAA eliminates Socialist Democrat attempts to dishonorably discharge military personnel who refuse the COVID-19 vaccine. Further, this NDAA version does not Congressionally ratify whatever decision President Biden, as Commander-in-Chief, may make regarding those military personnel who refuse the COVID-19 vaccine. At worst, military personnel may only be “honorably discharged” or “generally discharged under honorable conditions”.

Further, the revised NDAA requires the Department of Defense to establish uniform standards under which servicemembers may be exempted from receiving the COVID-19 vaccine for administrative, medical, or religious reasons. The DoD must consider the effects of natural immunity in setting medical standards, as well as whether the servicemember is approaching retirement when setting the administrative exemption standards.

Socialist Democrats were also blocked from creating an Office of Extremism at the Pentagon that would have distracted personnel from the armed services’ primary mission of defending America.

Each year the Redstone Arsenal military and contractor support community submits requests to my office concerning America’s national security needs. This year, my office (working with allies) successfully helped insert more than 3 dozen Redstone Arsenal community requests into the NDAA. 

My office’s (in conjunction with Congressional allies) NDAA inclusions include, but are not limited to:

• Funding for a newly created system integration lab at Redstone Arsenal to support Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA) testing. MOSA will drastically cut production and sustainment costs while enabling integration of innovative technologies. This provision puts Redstone Arsenal at the center of the Army’s primary modernization priority;
• Increased funding for the projected increase in procurement of the Navy’s Standard Missile-6 and Standard Missile 3 Block 2A, which are assembled at Redstone Arsenal;
• Increased funding for 2 additional Missile Defense Agency developed THAAD interceptors;
• Increased funding for the Improved Turbine Engine Program (ITEP), a new helicopter engine that will go into the existing Apache and Black Hawk fleets, as well as the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft;
• Authorization for the U.S. Airforce to establish a Service Acquisition Executive (SAE) for Space Systems and Programs before October 1, 2022;
• Increased funding for a Missile Defense System (MDS) Architecture Integration and Analysis Center (IAC) in Huntsville, AL, which adds contact personnel to focus on end-to-end analysis of integrated ballistic, hypersonic and cruise missile architectures as well as missile defeat technologies;
• Increased funding for development of the Missile Effects Artificial Intelligence Decision Engine (AIDE) prototype capability which enables warfighters to rapidly explore missile planning options to select and synchronize the most cost-effective combination of missiles to use against a target;
• Increased funding for the development of the Missile Mission Engineering Toolkits with Operational Rigor (Missile MENTOR) capability, giving the military digital engineering tools that will eliminate the need for expensive and redundant physical prototyping.

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Issues:  Army Aviation, Budget and Debt, Defense and National Security, NASA, Veterans

Original source can be found here.