Steven Holt: “the House is taking action today to bring some sanity back to our military deployment and rotation policies. I intend to…”

“the House is taking action today to bring some sanity back to our military deployment and rotation policies. I intend to vote for this bill. We all know that because of these repeated deployments, the divorce rates of military families are up, and the financial burdens faced by our Guard and Reserve families have been enormous. While this bill cannot address all of the deployment-related problems confronting our military families, it would address one of the most glaring: insufficient down time and retraining between deployments. If this bill becomes law, it would mandate dedicated periods of time between deployments for all servicemembers. For active duty personnel, the intervals between deployments would have to be at least as long as the last deployment itself. For our Guard and Reserve forces, the interval between deployments would have to be at least three times the length of a servicemember's last tour. Every Member of this House can tell multiple stories they've heard from servicemembers or their family members about the toll that these multiple, sometimes back-to-back deployments take on our military families.”