National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017
Floor Speech
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Mr. FLEMING. Mr. Chairman, my amendment prevents scarce dollars from being wasted to fund two of President Obama's executive orders regarding climate change and green energy. These are dollars that should go to the readiness of our Armed Forces.
A similar amendment has already been adopted by voice vote for the past 2 years during House floor consideration of the Defense appropriations bills.
My amendment is supported by 28 outside organizations, including the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Americans for Prosperity, Council for Citizens Against Government Waste, and many others.
These executive orders require the Department of Defense to squander--squander--precious defense dollars by incorporating climate change bureaucracies into its acquisition and military operations and to waste money on green energy projects. EPA bureaucrats and other political appointees are directing our military commanders on how to run their installations and procure green weapons, which undermines ongoing acquisition reforms in the NDAA. These activities are simply not the mission of the U.S. military.
Regarding DOD's energy policy, decisions by installation commanders and DOD personnel need to be driven by requirements for actual cost- effectiveness, readiness, not arbitrary and inflexible green energy quotas and CO
Take, for example, the Naval Station Norfolk, where the solar array cost the Navy $21 million but only provided 2 percent of the base's electricity. According to the Inspector General's Office, it will take 447 years for the savings to pay the cost of the project. However, solar panels usually only last about 25 years.
These mandates are diverting limited military resources to Solyndra- style boondoggles while sacrificing our military's readiness, modernization, and end strength. In a time of declining defense budgets, we need to ensure that every dollar spent goes directly to support the lethality of our Armed Forces.
Again, my amendment is similar to repeated efforts by the House to prevent national security dollars from being wasted to advance the President's onerous green energy and climate change requirements. So I ask that the House continue that opposition to this nondefense agenda by supporting my amendment.
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Mr. FLEMING. Mr. Chairman, how much time do I have remaining?
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Mr. FLEMING. Mr. Chairman, I would respond, first of all, by saying I think we all see the reports. If you are on Armed Services, you hear our generals talk about how our readiness is in dire straits, that we can't respond to the challenges around the world.
At a time like this, why would we want to pay 5 or 10 times the nominal amount for fuel? It makes no sense.
To my colleague who wants to argue climate change: fine, we can argue that. But this is not the place to debate that.
You see, my amendment allows for the Department of Defense to do whatever is best for our Armed Forces. Whether you agree with climate change or not, it doesn't matter. All we say is let's free up the DOD, our Armed Forces, and our generals to do the right thing.
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Mr. FLEMING. Mr. Chairman, again, my amendment is not a debate about climate change, regardless of where you fall on that issue. All this does is free up DOD to make the vital important decisions on that, instead of handcuffing it.
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Mr. FLEMING. Mr. Chairman, how much time do I have remaining?
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Mr. FLEMING. Mr. Chairman, with all due respect to the ranking member, all my amendment does is holds the status quo before these two executive orders; and that is, the commanders in the field and the generals at the Pentagon can do whatever is best for the military, whether or not it has to do with saving money or spending more money on alternative forms of energy.
My amendment frees them up. It does not restrict them in any way.
I urge adoption of this amendment.
I yield back the balance of my time.
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