Pay Our Military Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, this rhetoric is wonderful and I'm enjoying it, but I represent Fort Hood, Texas. Fort Hood has put more human beings in the fight in the last 10 or 11 years than any place on Earth.

Not only soldiers go to war, but wives or husbands or spouses and children stay home. And they have the same human problems that everybody, every one of us have. I would venture to bet that every Member of this Congress when they're away from their spouse at some time has a conversation with their spouse to find out that the water heater went out or the air conditioner isn't working or the kids have a problem in school or some other thing. You know, it weighs on us even when we have this job in this beautiful Chamber. But think about the soldier on the line in Afghanistan, with every waking and sleeping minute he's there, someone is trying to take his life; and yet they talk now freely with their families back home, and that same weight on them is magnified a thousand times.

This bill tonight is about human beings, the fighting warriors of the United States of America and their families. And this bill tries to make sure that, in the outside chance that we ``reasonable people'' in this Chamber and the other Chamber can come to a compromise to keep this government going, and in the outside chance that nobody wants, that this government shuts down for whatever period of time, that the fighting men and women of this Nation and their families at home will have a paycheck.

I think that this is such a small token to put before people who risk their lives, it would be almost a shame to debate any other way. I move that we pass this bill, and I hope, as my colleague said, 100 percent of us vote for it.

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