National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017
Floor Speech
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Mr. WITTMAN. Mr. Chairman, I want to reiterate the importance of making sure that we are funding defense at the President's request. The FY 2017 request, I think, is minimally adequate, but it is not just me. The administration's own Secretary of the Army Murphy stated that this budget request is minimally adequate and that we are taking a high risk as an Army and as a Nation when the Army is funded at this level. So there is still risk there with this level of funding.
As the chairman pointed out, we live in a more dangerous world today, but we see our Marine Corps and Air Force having to go to aircraft that are museum exhibits to cannibalize parts to bring them in to have a minimally operational cadre of aircraft.
We see this, too, when we talk about only 9 of the 20 B-1 bombers are available today because they are lacking parts and when we have 30 percent or less of our Marine Corps helicopters available because they are lacking parts. We see that, in a squadron of 14 jets, only 3 in the Marine Corps are available because they are lacking parts.
It is irresponsible not to provide to the brave men and women that serve this Nation the things that they need. We are asking them to go into harm's way. We are asking them to do tremendously difficult jobs. We are asking them to maintain safety. Yet we are not providing them the resources necessary.
This amendment would do even more to take away what is already a challenging situation for those brave men and women that are doing a tremendous job and that, as their leaders have said, are being stressed to the breaking point because they do not have the basic resources to keep those aircraft flying, to keep those ships on the water, to keep those systems necessary to be able to perform the job that we have asked them to do.
We have an obligation as a Nation that, when we ask those brave men and women to go into harm's way, to support them. It is unconscionable when we don't do that, when we have situations like 84 percent of our Marine Corps aircraft are in a nonready status, based on a 10-year average.
So when we talk about taking dollars away, what signal does that send to the brave men and women serving in the military? I think this amendment cuts to the heart of what we must do as a Nation, and that is to rebuild readiness, not degrade readiness.
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