Duncan Hunter National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2009

Floor Speech

DUNCAN HUNTER NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2009 -- (House of Representatives - September 24, 2008)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mrs. DAVIS of California. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2009.

I want to recognize the ranking member of the Military Personnel Subcommittee, Mr. McHugh, for his contributions to this bill. It provides significant personnel benefits and policies that are important to our men and women in uniform and their families, and I believe it merits full support.

Some of the highlights of the military personnel area include the following: A 3.9 percent pay raise, an increase of .5 percent above the President's request; prohibition on increases in TRICARE copays and deductibles; preventing TRICARE pharmacy copay increases for a year; establishing a tuition assistance program for eligible military spouses; growing the end strength for the Army and the Marine Corps; increasing full-time manning for the Army National Guard.

We also provided over $50 million for Impact Aid to local educational agencies; increased the use of preventive care services by TRICARE beneficiaries, including waiving copayments for preventive services and creating smoking cessation programs.

Finally, this bill creates a Department of Defense task force on the prevention of suicide.

Our Nation has been at war for 7 years. Repeated deployments continue to take a hard toll on our servicemembers and their families, and the bill before us recognizes their sacrifices and addresses the increasing support that they and their families need to be trained and equipped before, during and following a deployment.

Mr. Speaker, we would not be here today without the leadership of Chairman Skelton and Ranking Member Hunter, and I want to wish my colleague from San Diego well as he leaves the Congress. Chairman Skelton and Ranking Member Hunter have gone through extraordinary lengths to ensure that this Congress will have a defense authorization bill. I also want to thank my subcommittee staff for all of their hard work over the past year.

I urge my colleagues to support the bill.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source