Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. PERRY. Mr. Chairman, I thank Mr. Rothfus for the amendment.

Without this amendment, as he said, we will see the transfer of all National Guard Apache helicopters to the Active Component while, just last year, this Congress created the National Commission on the Future of the Army to deliberate this change in force, this restructuring issue.

You say, why should we care? I mean, isn't this a squabble between one big brother and a little brother? And it kind of is.

But we should care because the taxpayers have invested billions and billions of dollars over years to create the infrastructure within the Guard.

But more importantly, this imposes on and weakens our national security because the Guard and the Reserve component is the repository for experience in Apache pilots.

When you get tired of flying the Apache on deployment over and over again on Active Duty but want to continue to serve your country, what do you do? You join the Reserve component. You come to the Guard.

And those pilots have the most experience because they have flown on Active Duty and they have flown in the Guard for years and years and years. So when they deploy, that is who you want to fly with. That is who units want to fly with because they have the experience.

The operational depth is in the Guard.

It is not that Governors need the Apache; it is that the United States needs the Apache. And should we transfer the Apache because the Army wants to pick on its little brother and can? And that is exactly what is happening here.

I have heard the arguments. I have listened to all the arguments. I have spent 34 years in uniform. None of them make any sense, and they can't justify any of them. They talk big around this place in all kinds of acronyms that most people don't understand, but none of it is justified.

I don't understand why we would do this, why we wouldn't wait just till February to get the report from a Commission that we sponsored, that we authorized in this body. Why wouldn't we wait till then?

Why would we transfer the aircraft, and when the Commission comes back and says don't transfer the aircraft, oh, well, sorry, we already did that. Won't we look foolish.

But more importantly, isn't this important for national security to have the experience there when called upon to go fight--and as the gentleman said, make up 50 percent of the force in the fight.

Let's not do this for all the wrong reasons.

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