Rep. Chip Roy (TX-21) issued the following statement after voting against the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA):
Today, I voted against the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 22.
While I support our military proudly and unequivocally, and while we need a strong commitment to national defense with threats from China, Russia, Iran, and throughout the globe on the rise, this bill contains and extends far too many troubling provisions that advance wokeism at the expense of military excellence.
I am extremely grateful to the hard work of my Republican colleagues to dramatically improve this bill. In particular, I am grateful that the provisions that would draft my daughter along with other young women across the country were removed from the legislation. This is a drastic improvement and I want to thank Senators Hawley, Lee, & Cotton, Leader McCarthy and Ranking Member Rogers, and a number of my other colleagues, particularly those in the House Freedom Caucus who are always willing to do the hard work of fighting for the people while some others often just talk about it.
Credit is also due to those who worked to remove the so-called “office of extremism,” as well as gun-grabbing “red flag” laws that would trample upon our service members’ Second Amendment rights. A nation founded on certain unalienable rights should never seek to infringe those rights.
However, while these egregious provisions were rightfully stripped, I still could not support the final version of the bill.
Rather than focusing solely on its core purpose to strengthen our national security, this NDAA fails to hold the Pentagon accountable in any meaningful way for the disaster in Afghanistan and thirteen killed marines, advances SOGI and gender identity policies and programs while continuing to fund CRT and diversity officers, and continues to fund and advance climate literacy trainings.
Importantly, while I am grateful to the work of my friend Mark Green, Ranking Member Rogers and others to add a provision eliminating “dishonorable discharge,” this legislation would continue to allow the termination of service members’ careers over what should be a private medical decision not to take the over-politicized COVID-19 vaccine.
Finally, among other issues, this bill fails to repeal the outdated 1991 and 2002 AUMF and thereby continues to defer to the executive branch decisions about when to send out our men and women into harm’s way.
As the representative of thousands of military families, Joint Base San Antonio, Fort Sam Houston, and Army Futures Command, I am proud to support the fundamental purpose of the NDAA to ensure we have a well-trained military ready to defend our nation’s national security. However, I cannot and will not in good conscience rubber stamp an NDAA that is 2100 pages long, that I’ve had less than a day to review, and that contains so many provisions unrelated, or even contrary, to our national defense. Our service members deserve better, and so does the republic they defend.
DonnyFerguson.com 