Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act, 2017

Floor Speech

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Mr. COFFMAN. Mr. Chair, I rise in support of the DeFazio amendment, and I am a proud cosponsor of the amendment.

As the gentleman from Oregon mentioned, the draft ended in 1973. Conscription ended. Then the Selective Service System was put on the shelf, inactivated, and was only activated when, in a show of resolve, President Jimmy Carter, in the aftermath of the December 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, reinstituted conscription. He reinstituted signing up for the Selective Service System. I think he suspended wheat sales to the Soviet Union as well as our participation in the Olympic Games, which were scheduled to be in Moscow.

It has never been used. During the height of Iraq and Afghanistan, there has never even been a discussion within the Department of Defense, even with personnel shortages, about using the draft.

In a recent study by the Army Recruiting Command, it determined that something like 75 percent of young people--military-aged people--are ineligible to serve in the United States Army. Either they are overweight; they don't have high school or have high school but don't have a high enough score on the Armed Forces Entrance Exam; they have had altercations with the law; or they have drug and alcohol issues.

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Mr. COFFMAN. We have extremely high standards today. I think, in my having served in the United States Army when there was a draft, that having conscription--having people being forced to serve--compromises the extraordinary, I think, capability of our military. This is about putting it back on the shelf, as it was in 1973, and if the President, as Commander in Chief, ever felt it needed to come off the shelf, he or she could do so.

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