Potential Drawdown of Land Forces

Floor Speech

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Mr. RUSSELL. Madam Speaker, I want to thank my brother, combat infantryman, warrior, and colleague from New York (Mr. Gibson) for his leadership in this effort.

Madam Speaker, in 1940, our Nation faced tough decisions. Lawmakers in this Chamber debated over our constitutional requirement to defend our Republic.

Faced with a decade of depression, declining budgets, and enormous domestic needs, President Roosevelt recognized that the Nation was woefully unprepared to defend herself, given the alarming developments in Asia and Europe the previous 2 years.

Congress acted, and, although assured we could stay out of the war, this body passed the unprecedented Selective Service Act of 1940 to increase our defensive posture.

While some would call it prescient or even timely, we were still woefully unprepared for the horrific attacks on our naval, land, and air forces in 1941. When the blow fell, we had for the first time a sizeable forward-deployed force based in the Philippine Islands in December 1941.

That Allied force of 150,000 soldiers fought bravely for 5 months until their medical supplies, food, and, finally, ammunition were exhausted, prompting the largest surrender of U.S. forces in American history.

Tens of thousands of these Allied soldiers died in brutal captivity, all simply because our Nation could not get to them. While we had future capacity, we had forfeited our defensive posture through cost- cutting policies the previous decade and we had exhausted our time.

As unprepared as we were in 1940, it could have been even worse had the President and Congress not acted when they did. But here is something to ponder: our current land forces are actually 30 percent smaller today than they were in 1940 when you compare them to a percentage of our per capita population. If we lived today in an atmosphere of peace, maybe we could take such gambles.

Instead, we see Russians reigniting the cold war, Iranians destabilizing the Middle East, North Koreans firing nuclear missiles with the aim to range the United States, and Islamic jihadist death- cult extremists committing acts of barbarity akin to the Middle Ages. We also see tensions rising with our trading partner, China, and the seeds of potential unrest in the Pacific.

What does the President and this Congress intend to do if we do not act to prepare for this dangerous world? This year it would cut the United States Army by 30,000 more soldiers and our Marines by another 8,000. Instead, our bipartisan answer to these cuts in this Congress is a resounding no.

Whatever savings we might imagine we safeguard, whatever tension we may imagine we could trim, whatever goodwill we deceive ourselves of that would go after, we assuredly would be eroded by an unexpected attack on our Nation as she has voluntarily chained herself down into a weakened condition.

Rather than slacken our posture, we must slacken our chains. We stand together with much work ahead, but this bipartisan effort is a refusal to see our Nation further diminished.

As we pass this measure into law, let's do it with the echo of these sobering words from novelist, historian, and Nobel Laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a survivor of torture and tyranny:

I would like to call upon America to be more careful with its trust and prevent those who because of shortsightedness and still others out of self-interest from falsely using the struggle for peace and for social justice to lead you down a false road. Because they are trying to weaken you. They are trying to disarm your strong and magnificent country in the face of this fearful threat. I call upon you ordinary working men of America. Do not let yourselves become weak.

Pass the POSTURE Act and prevent some horrific blow from berthing in our future.

Madam Speaker, I thank Mr. Gibson for his outstanding leadership on this issue.

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