ms. speier. the chair: the gentlelady is recognized. ms. speier: i thank the gentleman for yielding and for his outstanding leadership and candor on our committee. i want to give a special shoutout to our chairman, mr. thornberry, who shaved an hour and a half off our deliberations a couple weeks ago by bringing us into the 21st century and laptops to look at our amendments. a great improvement. i also want to thank my chair, chairman mike hoffman -- huffman, for his leadership. we've worked well together. i look forward to continuing that relate. and also to a top notch staff. this bill includes provisions that will provide the military services flexibility to recruit and retain members of our armed services, and continues our commitment to taking care of our military families. the ndaa continues funding for d.o.d. impact aid for schools with large numbers of military connected families. and authorizes reimbursement up to $500 for military spouses' expenses related to obtaining professional license or certification when moving to a new stat

ms. speier. the chair: the gentlelady is recognized. ms. speier: i am truly impressed with my colleague, mr. rooney, on any number of issues. this is not one of them. this is absurd. absolutely absurd. we have military academies to train the next leaders of this country. we are not running a training camp for the national football league. if you want to serve as a leader of the military, then you go to one of the military academies. if you decide you want to have a pro football career, then pay back the money, the $500,000 that the taxpayers of this country have paid for each and every one of these students. now, mr. rooney said yesterday in rules committee, he listed three names of examples of academy graduates continuing in professional sports after graduation. all of the names he mentioned, roger staubach, david robertson and alejandro villanueva served on active duty for at least two years. the model for how this should work is villanueva who served his five-year commitment, deployed three times to afghanistan, received a bronze star for

ms. speier. the chair: the gentlelady is recognized. ms. speier: i thank the gentleman for yielding and for his outstanding leadership and candor on our committee. i want to give a special shoutout to our chairman, mr. thornberry, who shaved an hour and a half off our deliberations a couple weeks ago by bringing us into the 21st century and laptops to look at our amendments. a great improvement. i also want to thank my chair, chairman mike hoffman -- huffman, for his leadership. we've worked well together. i look forward to continuing that relate. and also to a top notch staff. this bill includes provisions that will provide the military services flexibility to recruit and retain members of our armed services, and continues our commitment to taking care of our military families. the ndaa continues funding for d.o.d. impact aid for schools with large numbers of military connected families. and authorizes reimbursement up to $500 for military spouses' expenses related to obtaining professional license or certification when moving to a new stat

ms. speier. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlewoman from california. ms. speier: thank you, mr. chairman. thank you to the ranking member. i voted for this bill in committee because we have brave service members in harm's way that depend on it. but i want to make cheer that -- clear that i don't believe we've done our job to address the unbridled waste in this bill. billions of dollars. the sheer amount of waste in this bill, billions upon billions of dollars. and even worse, the bill as currently written sets us up to throw away billions more for years to come. i know it can be political suicide to take on defense contractors. but we owe the taxpayers a level of accountability and discipline. it's the same thing every single year. like the greatest hits of defense waste. literal combat ship. a combat ship that can't even survive combat. a ship on perpetual port call because the always in need of repair. a ship the navy said it only needed one of but apparently the white house knows better, because they've forces -- forced the navy to ask for another one. even that wasn't enough

ms. speier of california. the chair: pursuant to house resolution 478, the gentlewoman from california, ms. speier, and a member opposed will have five minutes. the chair recognizes the gentlelady from california. ms. speier: mr. chairman, thank you. the american people are becoming more and more aware of the disease known as chronic traumatic ensolve lop think known as c.t.e. due to the crisis in the nfl. the nfl of course has been trying to sweep this under the rug. very recently the journal of american medical association, a premier journal that is peer reviewed, provided a study that found severe neurological damage in the vast majority of former football players' brains that were donate for research after they developed mental symptoms during life. 87% of all football players' brains showed c.t.e. a truly horrible figure, 99% of the brains of nfl players showed c.t.e. however, the dangers of c.t.e. are not confined to football. our service men and women are subject to similar or oftentimes even worse dang

ms. speier and her staff and support in this process. we are joined by an active and informed and dedicated group of subcommittee members. their recommendations and priorities are reflected in the national defense authorization act in 2018 and i appreciate the dedication a and hard work of the subcommittee staff. i urge my colleagues to support this. and i yield back. the chair: the gentleman from texas reserves. the gentleman from washington. mr. smith: i yield two minutes the gentlelady from california. recognize our subcommittee chairs and members in bringing this bill to the floor. as has been stated, the budget numbers we are talking about contained in the bill are aspirational. we have not passed a budget resolution and the budget control act is the law of the land. while it was a failing and pointing fingers does not solve the problem. we are on an uncertain and dangerous path, where we have not been honest with ourselves and where we continue to play games with our men and women serving in the military. we must recognize the only