Mark Takano: “I will, in closing, say that the minority has not raised a substantive argument, a serious argument against the…”

“I will, in closing, say that the minority has not raised a substantive argument, a serious argument against the substance of this bill. This is a good, good piece of legislation, one that is agreed to and supported by numerous veterans service organizations. To the issue of and to the objection raised by the minority over a lack of process and a lack of regular order, this is simply not true. We have had ample opportunity for the minority to have input in numerous hearings related to this topic. And as to the concern over recruitment and retention of our Active- Duty Forces, I will remind my esteemed ranking member, or the esteemed ranking member, for whom I have great admiration for his own service and the service of his family in the military, that we turned to the Guard and Reserve in greater and greater dependence in the post-9/11 era. And because we were able to turn to them, we did not have to have discussions about a draft. We had issues recruiting folks for our military in the early aughts to the numbers that we needed, and we had to turn to the Reserve and the Guard. So we need good incentives and great retention incentives for our Guard units and our Reserve units all across this country because we aren't going to depend on them less. In fact, we are going to depend on them more.…”