Martha Roby: “Let's talk about one other thing, and I'm sorry to open another door, but I think it's important because of what you…”

“Let's talk about one other thing, and I'm sorry to open another door, but I think it's important because of what you heard on airplanes today, about the sequester and what's going on in defense spending. Can we talk just a minute about our military families? You're talking about making life work. The people that we have a direct charge to make life work for are those who sacrifice on behalf of all of our freedoms and their families--our military men and women. I'm going to circle back to the bill, the Working Families Flexibility Act of 2013. Think about that military mom or dad that's getting ready to deploy and they're an hourly wage employee, and they don't have, under the current law, the option to exercise compensatory time. Yet their spouse is about to leave for a 1-year deployment to Afghanistan, and they've got to get their house in order. They've got to have flexibility to handle life outside of their job, whether it's their children or their aging parents, while their spouse is deployed. Let's talk about making sure that those men and women, as they're deployed, have everything that they need to accomplish the mission that we've given them. And yet through the sequester we know that we are going to have a smaller force. And our commanders say not less capable but we're going to have to make some really tough decisions about where we are in the world and what we can do with our capabilities.…”