{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://bacon.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=711", "Bacon Has Long Warned of a Flawed Afghanistan Withdrawal", "2021-08-18", "2021", "2021-08", "Republican", "House", "NE", "Don Bacon", "B001298", "bacon.house.gov", "bacon", "https://bacon.house.gov/news/documentquery.aspx", "scraper", "Points to Poor Execution by Biden and Disregard of Bi-Partisan Concerns in Congress\n\nOmaha, Neb. \u2013 Since 2019, Rep. Don Bacon (NE-02) and other members of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) have expressed concerns regarding a quick withdraw from Afghanistan and negotiations with the Taliban, especially since the Afghanistan government was not a party to these negotiations. In 2020, a bipartisan group of HASC Members decided that legislative guardrails had to be put in place to help prevent the disastrous events we are now watching unfold.\n\nDuring last year\u2019s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) markup, Bacon supported and voted for an amendment offered by Democratic Congressman and fellow veteran Rep. Jason Crow\u2019s (CO-06) placing limits on how far the withdraw could proceed subject to the Administration providing additional certifications and consultations with Congress (See attached roll call vote record). The amendment passed and ultimately was incorporated as Section 1215 of the FY21 NDAA. This provision was later cited by President Trump as a basis of his decision to veto the FY21 defense bill, an action that Congress later overrode by a wide bi-partisan margin.\n\n\u201cWe were so concerned about the path being taken to withdraw our troops that we wrote and passed a law to limit the Executive Branch\u2019s actions,\u201d said Bacon. \u201cThis provision received broad bi-partisan support both in committee and in conference. The narrative that members \u2018did nothing\u2019 or were silent about Trump\u2019s policy is complete nonsense. What I actually did was THE MOST any member of Congress can do which is to pass a LAW to limit executive branch actions.\u201d\n\nSection 1215 prohibited the use of funds to withdraw forces below certain levels until the Administration, either Trump or Biden, could certify the following:\n\nAn assessment that the withdrawal will not impede our counterterrorism mission against ISIS, al-Qaeda, and associated forces, or endanger our national security.\n\nAn assessment of the risk the withdrawal poses to United States personnel in Afghanistan.\n\nAn assessment of the risk that Afghanistan will again become a terrorist safe haven following U.S. withdrawal.\n\nAn assessment of the threat posed by the Taliban and other terrorist organizations in\n\nAfghanistan to U.S. national security interests and to those of U.S. partners and allies.\n\nAn assessment of the effects the withdrawal will have on the NATO-led training mission and the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces\u2019 ability to effectively defend against terrorist attacks and sustain their operations.\n\nIn June 2021, Bacon, and several members of HASC subsequently sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Austin following-up on each of the elements of Section 1215 and clarifying Congressional intent and expectations (attached). Several weeks later, the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy responded with a letter (attached) stating that the Administration had elected to \u201cwaive\u201d the certification and reporting requirements under Section 1215 on \u201cnational security\u201d grounds and was proceeding with the drawdown as announced without providing the required Congressional certifications.\n\n\u201cThe text of the letter is damning in view of all that has transpired over the past month,\u201d said Bacon. \u201cBottom Line \u2013 Congress did everything it could on a bi-partisan basis to prevent this fiasco, but the Biden Administration made the deliberate determination to ignore this consultation because it believed it knew better.\n\n\u201cAside from the multiple layers of the human tragedy we are witnessing, both for our Afghan partners and our own service members and Gold Star families, there is no longer any Government of Afghanistan, our embassy has been evacuated and will soon be ransacked or worse and, most tragic of all, we have lost out counter-terrorism capability in Afghanistan which was the entire reason we fought this war in the first place,\u201d Bacon added.\n\n\u201cThe tragic irony is that days before the twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the Taliban is once again in complete control of Afghanistan, thousands of Americans are now trapped inside the country, Al Qaida operatives roam free, and both are better armed than before,\u201d said Bacon. \u201cThe long-term implications of the staggering incompetence of the Biden Administration\u2019s withdrawal from Afghanistan are difficult to fully comprehend. As the Commander in Chief, President Biden owns this disaster and must be held fully accountable for the catastrophic damage he has inflicted on our national security.\u201d\n\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T20:11:17Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://bacon.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=711"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 2.034425036981702, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}