Department Of Defense Appropriations Act, 2010

Floor Speech

Department Of Defense Appropriations Act, 2010

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Mr. HINCHEY. Mr. Chairman, I just want to make it clear that we're dealing with a situation here which is critically important to military personnel both here in the United States and in many places around the world.

I'm sure that the sponsor of this amendment doesn't realize what it's like not to have a roof over your head, but if you're in the military and you're stationed out in places that are difficult and hazardous to deal with, it's important to have these tents.

The particular entity with which we are focusing attention on in this particular earmark to provide these tents is a company that has done so over and over again in the context of bidding--and bidding successfully--for it. The Army and Marine Corps, just as an example, currently have unmet needs for shelters, and those unmet needs are growing.

This year, the tent and shelter industry was informed by the Marine Corps--just by the Marine Corps--of a need of 9,000 tents. Unfortunately, those real priorities are not resulting in production orders. And the main reason they're not resulting in production orders is due to the way in which the Department of Defense has focused on other things and not dealing with this particular aspect of the needs of military personnel in a number of places, here and in a lot of other places which are dangerous around the world, Iraq, Afghanistan, places like that, for example. So without this stop-gap funding for these shelter programs, our troops could literally be without that roof over their head.

The Defense Logistics Agency had stated that the tent and shelter industry is a critical part of the U.S. defense industrial base, and they did that in the context of a report to the Congress. So supporting this amendment by Mr. Campbell will leave the United States military with a smaller, less competitive, and potentially foreign source of this essential material which is needed by our military personnel.

You're dealing with something that is fundamentally essentially important. And in the context of this particular situation, if we didn't deal with it in this particular way, perhaps these manufacturing operations would come from places outside the United States. There are a lot of people here, apparently, who are opposed to many of the things that we're doing, who are not opposed to having manufacturing activities in other parts of the world and not here.

So this is what we are intending to do, to make sure that the military gets the security, the safety that they need and, at the same time, to ensure in every way that we can that the manufacturing process is done here in the United States so that these jobs are going to be an important part of our dealing with this economic recession, which was put forward over the course of the previous 8 years and is now something that we are dealing with effectively.

So if you're opposed to this earmark, it really doesn't make any sense. If you're opposed to the amendment, that makes perfect sense. And that is exactly what we're doing, for all of the good reasons that I have stipulated, and that's why this amendment should remain as an important part of this absolutely essential piece of legislation.

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