Washington, D.C. – Representative David Price (NC-04) gave the following statement for the record this evening as the House of Representatives considered H.R. 1540, the Fiscal Year 2012 Defense Authorization Act. Rep. Price voted against the measure, which usually passes with broad bipartisan support, because of provisions—included by Congressional Republicans—that tie the President's hands in the war on terror and give the military a role in the detention of terror suspects it has not sought.

MR. SPEAKER, this Congress has enacted a defense authorization bill every year for the last half-century, generally with broad bipartisan support. The reason for this broad support is simple: under Republican and Democratic leadership alike, we have recognized that support for our nation's men and women in uniform should remain above the partisan fray, unencumbered by controversial policy debates that are only tangentially related to the mission of our Armed Forces.

Throughout my service in Congress, I have almost always supported this annual measure, which authorizes funding for a wide range of programs upon which our military depends, from salaries and benefits to military health care to critical equipment and readiness accounts. I thus find it deeply unfortunate that the House Republican leadership chose to use this year's bill as a vehicle for advancing ill-advised policies that seek to tie the President's hands in the war on terror and expand the military's role in the detention and disposition of terror suspects, at the expense of our civilian justice system and our civil liberties.

To be sure, the original House version of this bill, which I opposed, was much worse. It would not only have indefinitely extended the Authorization for the Use of Military Force that was enacted in the wake of September 11, but would also have required suspects detained pursuant to that authorization to be prosecuted in military tribunals. My Republican colleagues' inexplicable insistence on forcing terror trials into military commissions instead of civilian courts flies in the face of the facts; our court system has a strong record of trying and convicting terrorism suspects, while the record of military commissions has been spotty at best. It is no wonder that the Obama Administration threatened to veto this bill—as any administration, Democrat or Republican, would almost certainly have done.

To their credit, our Democratic conferees succeeded in averting the worst aspects of the House bill in the conference report before us today. But they didn't go far enough. The measure would still require all foreign suspects detained in the war on terror to be kept in military custody, potentially disrupting critical anti-terrorism operations and muddying the waters of a process that should be crystal clear. As FBI Director Robert Mueller reiterated today, this provision would unnecessarily complicate interrogation and intelligence collection—the very capabilities that the provision's supporters claim they are trying to enhance. The conference report would also needlessly reaffirm our ability to detain terror suspects indefinitely, upholding an ambiguity in current law that should be resolved by the courts. And it would impose new consultation requirements that further restrain the discretion of the Attorney General to determine how to prosecute terror cases.

For these reasons, I intend to oppose the measure before us today, despite my strong support for the majority of its provisions. In the future, rather than using the defense authorization bill to advance their partisan agenda, I urge the Republican leadership to return to the past practice of leaving controversial policy debates for another time and place. Our men and women in uniform deserve nothing less.

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