Camden News - Cotton Visits Highland Park, Speaks About his Plans

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By: Amy Ulmer

U.S. Rep. Tom Cotton, representing Arkansas' fourth district, toured the Highland Industrial Park in East Camden on Tuesday. Representatives from the park's facilities, local business owners, chamber of commerce members and others met at the park's guest house for lunch and to hear the congressman give a brief talk about his goals for foreign policy and national security.

A native of Dardanelle, Cotton - a Republican - graduated from Harvard and Harvard Law School. He clerked for the U.S. Court of Appeals and practiced law before joining the United States Army as an infantry officer, according to his website. He spent nearly five years on active duty, deploying to both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Cotton's military decorations include the Bronze Star Medal, Combat Infantryman Badge, and Ranger tab, according to information found on the website. Most recently, Cotton worked as a management consultant for McKinsey & Co., the website states. He began his first term in Congress in January 2013, and currently sits on the Financial Services and Foreign Affairs Committees.

Cotton began his speech on Tuesday by thanking the individuals present for what they do and commending the local workforce and armed forces.

"I know a lot of you think about your customers in terms of the Department of Defense," Cotton said. "You know and I know that your customer is ultimately that soldier or Marine, that airman or sailor, who is counting on you to provide the top quality products in the world that he can use proficiently out on the front lines and to give our country the means to keep America safe and free. I know y'all are focused on that goal, and I know that the armed forces here are both highly trained and highly dedicated."

Cotton also expressed frustration with the state of the military, and the military budget specifically. He stated that the budget has been cut radically over the past four and a half years and expressed frustration with the way the administration of President Barack Obama has managed foreign policy.

"The budget that we proposed in the House would propose to restore a lot of that spending," said Cotton. "In my opinion, it still needs to be more, because as important as those other programs are, what is more important than a military that is the best equipped and the best financed in the world? Not just so we can fight our wars overseas, but so we can deter those wars from happening in the first place."

Cotton also stressed the need to maintain current defense postures in the state. He said, "A lot of you make systems that may be facing cuts, or that maybe weren't part of the build up for places like Afghanistan and Iraq. But that doesn't mean that there aren't systems and capabilities that we need to maintain - maintaining your industrial base, maintaining your defense posture and all four of your services is about deterrence as much as it is about fighting today's wars."

The Representative said that failing to maintain these defense capabilities would result in enemies recognizing the nation's weaknesses and exploiting them to their advantage. He harkened back to the Reagan era to propose a different way of handling foreign policy.

Cotton stated: "So one thing I try to do besides just restoring the funding that I think has been cut imprudently is also to make the case for a robust, Reaganesque foreign policy around the world, and a core part, obviously, of Reagan's foreign policy was a strong military that was ready to fight and win the country's wars.

He also stated that restoring funding and building the strength of the military would help bring troops home in victory after years of war.

"There are some people in Washington who don't think that we need that type of capability - who think that we need to come home after 11 years of war since the 9/11 attacks," Cotton said. "I would love to see all of our troops come home as much as anyone. I've been one of them, having fought and trained beside men who were killed in combat. But I want to see them come home in victory, because wars don't end. Wars are won or lost."

The key decisive factor to winning a war is the will. The will to continue to fight it out, the will to continue to fund it, the will to maintain all of our capabilities over the long run."

Concluding his talk, Cotton said he hopes to influence Congress and the public to support increased military spending.

"We still have a large bipartisan majority who sees the world that way, but we always have to be ready to make the case," said Cotton. "That's why you occasionally see me on TV talking about foreign policy and national security because I do think it's one area in which I can help influence the debate in Washington, and therefore, the country, to maintain public support for robust national security and for robust defense posture."

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