More Money for Guard Equipment Now

MORE MONEY FOR GUARD EQUIPMENT NOW -- (House of Representatives - September 29, 2005)

(Mr. DeFAZIO asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 minute.)

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, about 2 years ago, I traveled to Fort Hood, Texas, to see my Guard unit before their deployment to Iraq. I was surprised to see that they were using radios that their families had bought for them at a place called GI Joe's, a good store in Oregon in the Northwest. But the point is they did not have the equipment they needed, they could not train on the equipment they were going to use in Iraq, and now it turns out that that equipment is not available in the United States of America to the National Guard.

Yesterday, Lieutenant General Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau, said he has about 34 percent of what is needed for the National Guard for equipment for homeland security, for emergencies, disasters or terrorist attacks. Thirty-four percent. He has radios, he said, that cannot communicate with the Army radios because they are Korean War vintage radios. This is an embarrassment for this country. This administration must give the Guard the tools it needs. We don't have to talk about a bigger role for the active duty military. We need to give the National Guard, who does not have problems with posse comitatus and other things, who performed admirably in this disaster, the tools they need for future disasters.

More money for Guard equipment now.

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