Martha Roby: “I stand before you today to urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this amendment, very respectfully, from the gentleman…”

“I stand before you today to urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this amendment, very respectfully, from the gentleman from Ohio. I would like to thank Chairman McKeon and his staff for agreeing to allow me and others the opportunity to debate this specific amendment. The Air Force recently made a decision to combine two programs that fall under the Air Force Program Executive Office. EIS, currently located at Gunter Annex, Alabama, and ELS, located at Wright-Paterson Air Force Base, would be consolidated at Gunter. Basically, the job of EIS is to design, acquire, install, and maintain operation support systems for the Air Force and the Department of Defense. And the job of the ELS is to empower the warfighter to leverage information as an effective weapon. It makes good common sense for the management of these functions to be consolidated. Additionally, Air Force Materiel Command has approved this decision, and Congress should allow this decision to move forward. My understanding is that no jobs from Wright-Paterson would be transferred, only the management of Air Force Logistics Systems would be removed from Wright-Paterson, where it has been for only 2 years. This management role of acquiring and sustaining enterprise-wide logistics systems would return to Gunter, where it had been located for more than 20 years.…”