John Warner National Defense Authorization Act For Fiscal Year 2007
JOHN WARNER NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2007 -- (House of Representatives - September 29, 2006)
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Mr. McHUGH. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. HEFLEY. I yield to the gentleman from New York.
Mr. McHUGH. Mr. Hefley, I am sure the chairman will yield you some more time.
Let me start off by associating myself, as I know all of us do, with the comments of the esteemed chairman.
But, Mr. Chairman, I know you would agree with me that it is appropriate to recognize that, after so many years of loyal and dedicated service to the House Armed Services Committee, this is Subcommittee Chairman HEFLEY's final authorization bill.
He has been a lion in defense of the men and women in uniform. He has a been a guiding light to more junior 14-year Members such as myself. I just wanted to let the record show how much we are going to miss him and how much we all appreciate the great service he has provided to this committee, to the people of this country, and, most importantly, to the men and women in uniform of the United States of America. Thank you, JOEL.
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Mr. McHUGH. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, this is a great bill and it is a great bill given the times we live in, the challenges that our men and women in uniform and their families face in, frankly, the economic environment in which we find ourselves.
I know my ranking member Vic Snyder with whom I worked so closely, he and I both feel a great deal of pride year after year that when a majority of Members of this House will speak kindly about this bill, which they will, they will refer to many of the provisions in the personnel mark.
We owe thanks to the chairman, DUNCAN HUNTER, and to the ranking member for allowing us to have the opportunity to try to do better by the most important part of a great military, the most important part of the greatest military the world has ever seen, that of the United States of America; and I know, Mr. Speaker, many that have gone before and others that will follow have talked about the terrific things in this bill, the 2.2 percent pay increase that diminishes that gap between military and pay that had existed down to 4 percent from a high of about 14 percent.
We increase end strength, adding tens of thousands of soldiers into the Army and the Marine Corps to lessen the pace of deployments and the operations tempo.
Most importantly, in my judgment, at a time of war, when our men and women in uniform are sacrificing, when we have made commitments to our veterans, we rejected to the tune of $486 million, that the conferees had to find the increases proposed by the Department of Defense to the military health care system in both the TRICARE program, as well as the pharmacy program. None of those increases will occur.
I also want to add my words of thanks, indeed, to the gentlewoman from Virginia (Mrs. Drake) and to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Davis) for their work in ending the scourge of predatory payday lenders who get rich on the backs of the men and women in uniform and their families.
This is a terrific mark from top to bottom; but we are particularly proud of the personnel marks, and I would hope all of our colleagues would vote in support of this legislation.
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