Jim Saxton: “I very much understand and appreciate the goals that she has in bringing this legislation forward, but, at the same…”

“I very much understand and appreciate the goals that she has in bringing this legislation forward, but, at the same time, I think there are some realities that we have to face relative to the subject that the bill addresses. The problem here is twofold. Number one, there is the issue of command flexibility. As Mr. Hunter pointed out just a few minutes ago, we learned in previous wars that making decisions on tactical activities in a war should not probably be made at the White House and probably should even less likely be made here by 435 Members of Congress. So while I very much appreciate and agree with the goal of making sure that every soldier and Marine and every member of the four services gets time to recharge their batteries between deployments, having a law which stipulates how precisely that is to be done is a very unwise thing to do. Secondly, let me say that this problem involves the total number of people that we have in the service.”