National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BRIDENSTINE. I thank the chairman.

Mr. Chair, this defense authorization makes a huge down payment on the readiness of our forces.

As a combat veteran, I have participated in the inter-deployment training cycles that are getting ready to deploy. I have seen the force regeneration process. I have seen it during good times, and I have seen it during bad times.

Personally, as a Navy reservist, most recently, I saw a very steep decline in readiness when my squadron got eliminated. The VAW-77, the Nightwolves, got completely eliminated when I was a Navy reservist. We busted about $2 billion worth of cocaine every year on the high seas. Now that cocaine comes into the country, and $2 billion worth of cash funds transnational criminal organizations in northern Mexico and in Central and South America. That is what happens when we have defense cuts the way we have had recently.

In fact, I will tell you that our remaining forces still face significant shortfalls and disruptions to time-tested training and deployment cycles. The OPTEMPO back home is almost more intense than an overseas deployment, but the resources are simply not available. Pilots are flying the bare minimum flight hours to stay qualified, and our maintainers and our depots can't keep up. As a warfighter, I can attest that this will break our force.

The important thing about this bill, this defense authorization--and, Mr. Chairman, it is why I am so grateful for your leadership and the bipartisan support that we had from the ranking member, Mr. Smith--is it makes a huge down payment on the readiness that is required to make sure that the force we have remaining is not hollow, which is critically important to the national security of this country.

I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source