Adam Smith
Representative for Washington · Democratic · United States
“They are taking us down roads that I think are incredibly dangerous and make it very hard to maintain that bipartisan spirit. Mr. Chair, I want you to know that I am an incredibly reasonable person. I will work with absolutely anybody.”
House of Representatives22 July 2026Source ↗
“It also supports our troops and our families, including pay raises, general benefits across the board, and a real focus on making sure that our servicemembers are taken care of. I don't like that the SAVE America Act is going to be attached to this. I don't like the gratuitous anti-trans amendments that were added to the bill.”
House of Representatives22 July 2026Source ↗
“During President Trump's first term, when I was chair of the committee, I worked with the Trump administration. We got a good bill done. The second time, the President threw a little wrench in at the end. In a bipartisan way, we actually overrode the President's veto to make sure that the NDAA got done.”
House of Representatives22 July 2026Source ↗
“Mr. Chair, if we just stick at it long enough, we will be done. There is no plan. There is no plan to bomb a target that is going to make Iran change their mind. We have to stand up and say, no, we can't do those things, and I say all of that again.”
House of Representatives22 July 2026Source ↗
“Mr. Chair, first of all, I thank everyone involved in the process. We do this every year, but I think it is really important that we recognize the people who did all of the work to make this bill possible--certainly, the HASC staff, my able team behind me and the team that serves Mr. Rogers and serves the full committee.”
House of Representatives22 July 2026Source ↗
“The strongest alliance, NATO, in the history of this country is regularly denigrated by our President. Now, I know that people want to kid themselves and say, ``Look, he is just doing it so that our NATO partners step up. That is all we want to do,'' but that is not why he is just doing it. I will give you a great example: Hungary.”
House of Representatives22 July 2026Source ↗
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“Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays. The yeas and nays were ordered.”
House of Representatives22 July 2026Source ↗
“It is insane, and we need to rein it in. We in Congress need to stand up and say: No, we are going to begin to get some of this under control. At a minimum, let's have a sensible budget. Let's stop the war in Iran. I can't support this bill. It profoundly hurts me because I believe in this process. It is the last thing I will say. I will continue to want to work with any reasonable person who shows up in the Trump administration. I don't want to shun them because this body has to work. If we don't pass legislation, then the President has even more power. If the legislative branch shuts down, that simply consolidates more power in the executive branch. We have to find a way through this, but it is not going to be easy.”
House of Representatives22 July 2026Source ↗
“Mr. Chair, if we just stick at it long enough, we will be done. There is no plan. There is no plan to bomb a target that is going to make Iran change their mind. We have to stand up and say, no, we can't do those things, and I say all of that again. I want to get us back to a reasonable place where we can have a bipartisan agreement, and I hope in the next couple of months we will get there. I really want people to understand how unprecedented this moment is that we are in. The President is taking us down a bitterly partisan and divisive road and pushing policies--I didn't even talk about the tariffs that he slaps on our allies at a whim. Look at Canada. Apparently, there are fires up in Canada, and the wind is blowing south, so it is Canada's fault, and we have to slap a 50 percent tariff on them. This is the way we govern?”
House of Representatives22 July 2026Source ↗
“{time} 1240 The President talks about erasing the Iranian civilization. He talks about bombing civilian targets. Never would the United States of America have done any of those things. We are in an incredibly, incredibly dangerous time. I wish to maintain the bipartisan nature of this bill--I do, and I know that the chairman does. But if we are going to do this, we are going to need some Republicans to stand up to the President of the United States and say, no. No, we are not going to get you $1.6 trillion. No, we are not just going to give you a blank check for a war that is totally out of control, not going anywhere, and with no end in sight. I keep hearing people say: Well, we just have to finish the job, like we are cleaning out the garage, and if we just stick at it long enough--”
House of Representatives22 July 2026Source ↗
“He gives a speech talking about election interference, leaving us all to wonder is he going to honor the outcome of this election. What is our obligation to make sure that he does? We are not in normal times. I am also deeply concerned about Secretary Hegseth and the way he is running the Department of Defense. He, too, has no idea what is happening in Iran, or how we are ever going to get out of that war, but he has also talked about giving no quarter to our enemies. We accidentally bombed a girl's school and killed 145 civilians. I don't know how long ago now, 3 or 4 months ago. It is obvious we did it. We won't take responsibility for it. Then, the Secretary of Defense comes out and says publicly: No quarter for our enemy. He has served in the military. He knows what that means--no survivors.”
House of Representatives22 July 2026Source ↗
“The strongest alliance, NATO, in the history of this country is regularly denigrated by our President. Now, I know that people want to kid themselves and say, ``Look, he is just doing it so that our NATO partners step up. That is all we want to do,'' but that is not why he is just doing it. I will give you a great example: Hungary. I was talking with a Department of Defense official the other day. He said our plan in Europe is actually working because NATO is stepping up, and, crucial to that, was that Orban lost so that Hungary supported the support for Ukraine, but our President and Vice President were supporting keeping the dictator in charge of Hungary so that never would have happened. We are in incredibly dangerous times, and then, we have the President's use of our military domestically, which he has done.”
House of Representatives22 July 2026Source ↗
“We are in an incredibly serious business, and the President is talking about this like it is some sort of bad fiction novel. We have to hold them accountable for that, and it is not just the war in Iran. We are engaged in a major conflict in Latin America right now, which people don't know about. We are fighting narcoterrorists. We are still blowing up boats. We are partnering with various different countries and killing people down there, all with no transparency. Then, we have what is going on in Europe. We periodically threaten to pull troops out of Europe. The President and the Vice President and others talk about Europe facing civilizational erasure and really focused on that issue of pulling back from supporting them in any way because--what?--we are not allies and partners.”
House of Representatives22 July 2026Source ↗
“We keep hearing about how the Iranian military is completely obliterated. It is gone. They are defeated, yet the missiles and the drones keep coming. People in the region keep dying, and our service members keep dying. That is not just a mistake. That is living in an alternative universe. That is not living in the world that we are actually in, and the war continues. As we support anything in the defense area, we are de facto supporting this war with no end in sight. The way the President talks about it: Oh, we are going to take Kharg Island. We can take Kharg Island. It won't be a problem. That is insane if you actually follow the military plans. Maybe you can take it, but you have to hold it. They are going to be lobbing missiles at you.”
House of Representatives22 July 2026Source ↗
“Mr. Chair, we stumbled into a conflict in the dumbest way imaginable. In the history of the United States of America, we have made some mistakes in wars. This was about as idiotic a thing as I have ever seen, and the cost is to the global economy, our reputation, instability in the Middle East, the loss of service members, and thousands of people wounded. I know a lot of people say, well, it is terrible because Trump never had a plan. It is actually a hell of a lot worse than that. He had a plan. His plan was that he was going to bomb Iran for 4 weeks, and they were going to give up. That was literally his plan. People told him in his own administration that was idiotic. It wasn't going to happen, but he did it anyway. Then, when it didn't work, he just thinks if we drop a few more bombs--here we are.”
House of Representatives22 July 2026Source ↗
“Mr. Chair, I move to strike the last word again. I have, actually, eight of them if I want to use them.”
House of Representatives22 July 2026Source ↗
“Again, the White House and Department of Defense take an unbelievably partisan approach. They have no interest in talking to us. They are giving briefings just to Republicans on crucial issues. That has never happened before. Through Democrat or Republican, I have never seen anything like this. The unbelievable partisanship is undermining our ability to get to a bipartisan bill, and it starts with the budget. There are many other issues, like the war in Iran. We are in an incredibly dangerous situation. The costs continue to escalate. We have lost more servicemembers.”
House of Representatives22 July 2026Source ↗
“During President Trump's first term, when I was chair of the committee, I worked with the Trump administration. We got a good bill done. The second time, the President threw a little wrench in at the end. In a bipartisan way, we actually overrode the President's veto to make sure that the NDAA got done. This year, we have issues that have risen above the normal flow of partisan divide. First of all, we have the budget number. When we add it all up--and I know this bill only has $1.15 trillion in it, but baked into the defense budget is another $350 billion in reconciliation. I forget where the supplemental is at these days. I think it is around $90 billion, but you add it all up, and they are asking for $1.6 trillion in the defense budget. That is a 60 percent increase at a time when we are running a nearly $2 trillion deficit.”
House of Representatives22 July 2026Source ↗
“They are taking us down roads that I think are incredibly dangerous and make it very hard to maintain that bipartisan spirit. Mr. Chair, I want you to know that I am an incredibly reasonable person. I will work with absolutely anybody. Some people will say I am too willing to work with people, but that is the nature of the democratic process. I don't identify the people I like and don't like, and say if I don't like you, I am not going to work with you. For representative democracy to work, we have to work with people that we disagree with--many times passionately, strongly--on incredibly important issues. We have done that throughout my entire time on this committee through a fair number of chairs and ranking members. For 65 years--I haven't been on the committee for 65 years, but we have passed the National Defense Authorization Act.”
House of Representatives22 July 2026Source ↗
“It also supports our troops and our families, including pay raises, general benefits across the board, and a real focus on making sure that our servicemembers are taken care of. I don't like that the SAVE America Act is going to be attached to this. I don't like the gratuitous anti-trans amendments that were added to the bill. There are other aspects of it that I am troubled by, but overall, I respect the process. The big point I will make today is, I really think we are at a crossroads in this Congress, in the appropriations process, as well, but in the NDAA. We are trying to work in a bipartisan way, and I will say that Mr. Rogers does it. I think Senator Wicker in the Senate does it, but we have to do that against the backdrop of an unbelievably partisan and, in many ways, out-of-control administration and Department of Defense.”
House of Representatives22 July 2026Source ↗
“I think that is incredibly important. Mr. Chair, I also thank the Rules Committee for their hard work. They have to sort through over a thousand amendments, as well. Of course, the floor staff that has to work through this entire process every year does an outstanding and amazing job. They are dedicated public servants who deserve our very high praise. In the bill itself, there are things I like and things I don't like. I think it reflects the process overall. I think it does a very good job of doing oversight of getting to acquisition reform, of continuing along the path of how we innovate faster at scale. The chairman has done an excellent job of pointing out the need for that. We need innovative technologies. We need them in a more cost- effective way. This bill reflects those priorities.”
House of Representatives22 July 2026Source ↗
“Mr. Chair, first of all, I thank everyone involved in the process. We do this every year, but I think it is really important that we recognize the people who did all of the work to make this bill possible--certainly, the HASC staff, my able team behind me and the team that serves Mr. Rogers and serves the full committee. We worked in a bipartisan way through well over a thousand amendments and two or three times that many ideas to craft together a very large piece of incredibly important legislation. That work should not go unrecognized. The members of the committee also go out of their way to work in an incredibly bipartisan way, and that is a credit to Chairman Rogers. He makes a real effort to make sure that Democrats are included, that we have a fair conversation, and that we try to get to the best result possible.”
House of Representatives22 July 2026Source ↗
“Mr. Chair, I move to strike the last word for the purpose of doing closing debate on the NDAA. I assume Mr. Rogers intends to close, as well.”
House of Representatives22 July 2026Source ↗
“Mr. Chair, I, too, urge support of the en bloc, and I yield back the balance of my time.”
House of Representatives22 July 2026Source ↗
“Mr. Chair, I urge adoption of the en bloc package, and I yield back the balance of my time.”
House of Representatives22 July 2026Source ↗
“Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time. Amendment No. 19 Offered by Ms. Mace”
House of Representatives21 July 2026Source ↗
“Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. Once again, I thank the chairman for the process that we went through here. I have made the arguments. I don't want to restate them and belabor them, but we are deeply concerned about the ongoing war in Iran. There is no plan, no direction, continually rising costs. We are also concerned about the amount of money that is being poured into defense, at the same time that we are seeing cuts in Medicaid, cuts in food stamps, cuts in a variety of programs that are enormously important, and tax cuts that continue as the deficit and the debt get ever higher. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.”
House of Representatives21 July 2026Source ↗
“Mr. Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Houlahan), the ranking member of the House Subcommittee on Military Personnel.”
House of Representatives21 July 2026Source ↗
“You can't vote to increase the debt and then say, oh, my gosh, we need a balanced budget amendment. The lack of fiscal reality is one of the two biggest problems with this bill. The other one is the continued support for the war in Iran that is implicitly included in it. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.”
House of Representatives21 July 2026Source ↗
“It will continue to support the Department of Defense which the President is using to wage this war, this incredibly disastrous, terrible decision of a war. That makes it very difficult to support this. We need to get peace now, and that would help. Second, the amount of money. You add it up, this is $1.15 billion. They want $350 billion for a reconciliation package, and they want another $90 billion in a supplemental package. That puts them at $1.6 trillion. Could we effectively spend $1.6 trillion in the Department of Defense? Maybe. I question whether or not they could spend that much money that quickly, that effectively. Sure, there are a lot more missiles, drones, ships, and planes we could buy. We have a $40 trillion debt. We are making cuts in Medicaid and other healthcare programs in order to fund this $1.6 trillion.”
House of Representatives21 July 2026Source ↗
“The degree to which the President is not living in reality on the war in Iran is unbelievably alarming. Why do we let this continue? Why doesn't the Republican Party Speaker say: Yes, it would be great if we could drop a certain number of bombs on Iran and they would quit, and they would give up, and they would abandon their nuclear program. They would abandon their support for terrorism. They would get rid of their ballistic missile program. They would open up the Strait of Hormuz. There is no plan to make that happen, and yet the President keeps going forward, keeps dropping more bombs deplenishing our stockpile, placing us at greater risk, and creating greater global chaos. {time} 1640 Whatever else may be said about the NDAA, there are a lot of positive aspects to it.”
House of Representatives21 July 2026Source ↗
“Those debates are incredibly important because there are a lot of concerns we have, not so much with this bill as with the Department of Defense as it is currently being run, and as the President is currently exercising national security defense policy in this country. I will mention just two: number one, the war in Iran. We are all sort of, I guess, in collective denial about what an utter disaster this has been and how it is getting worse every day. We lost four more servicemembers over the weekend. This is after we have been told over and over and over again that Iran is completely obliterated, they have no military capacity whatsoever. Yet, they are still launching missiles. They are still launching drones. They are still wounding and killing American servicemembers and threatening shipping throughout in the Strait of Hormuz.”
House of Representatives21 July 2026Source ↗
“There are a number of issues on the size of the budget, the number of oversight issues concerns, and concerns we have about the war in Iran. None of those amendments were ruled in order. I just don't think that is the way this process should work. They should be ruled in order. If they want to vote them down, then vote them down, but they have completely blocked any of those Democratic amendments. Of the amendments that are up for debate, I believe that only one is a Democratic amendment. There is a lot of mutually agreed upon stuff that is en bloc, but on the truly controversially important amendments, they don't give us a chance to even have the debate.”
House of Representatives21 July 2026Source ↗
“The chairman didn't mention this, but we have had a lot of frustrations with this particular Pentagon in terms of their not providing information in a timely manner to us and to the American public. We have a number of provisions in this bill that require that or fence funding for aspects of the Pentagon to get them there. I will say also a couple of Democratic amendments did pass in the process. We got collective bargaining for all defense employees back in on a bipartisan vote. We also changed back to the base names that the commission put in place, which I think is a very positive step. There are a lot of good things about this bill and certainly about the process as it came out of committee. There are just three problems from the Democratic perspective. First of all, the rule is incredibly partisan.”
House of Representatives21 July 2026Source ↗
“The chairman did a great job of describing why that is so important and the progress we have made and why this committee has played such a crucial role in helping to make that happen. I think we should be proud of that. I think the bill also reflects support for the troops, as the chairman mentioned: a pay raise, but more than that, just genuinely making sure that they and their families have the support that they need. This builds off of the Quality of Life task force that we had 2 years ago to continue to show strong support for our troops, and, yes, crucially the oversight component. We are really focused on trying to get the Pentagon to a place where they can pass an audit, where we can be more confident that the money that they are spending is being effectively spent, and I think this bill reflects that.”
House of Representatives21 July 2026Source ↗
“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. First of all, I want to thank Chairman Rogers for the process that he put together on this bill. In committee, I think we had a very fair and open process, certainly the way the bill was put together originally. The chairman did a lot of work in the last couple of years on acquisition reform, and we did that in a bipartisan way. It is reflected in the substance that was in the bill. Then we had a very good debate. A lot of amendments were offered, and I think it was handled in a very bipartisan way. So the product has a lot of good aspects to it, and the chairman mentioned most of them. The continuation down the road of acquisition reform can best be summed up as we need to innovate faster at scale.”
House of Representatives21 July 2026Source ↗