On the recordApril 18, 2016
I thank Mr. Gibson for taking a leadership role in making sure that the military has a voice, and that is exactly what he has done in his tenure here in Congress. I rise in support of H.R. 4534. The POSTURE Act is not just something that we are asking for. It is basically the bare necessities. We are getting down to the limits. I can say, just on personal experience, when I enlisted in 1985 as a young person graduating high school and enlisting into the Army, I expected that we had such a great military and we had all of these things that were going to help me in my endeavors. As I went to Germany, my job was if something happened, if the Russians were going to come over, we were supposed to guard what was known as the Fulda Gap. I know that anyone who has ever served in the Army in the '80s knows what the Fulda Gap is. It was basically that line where we were going to stop the Russian Army. Unfortunately, they told us that we were going to be outrun about 11 to 1 at that time from the Russian Army. That is not something that an 18-year-old wants to know, is that the very first assignment that might happen in the cold war is you are going to go to a spot and you are going to be up against an 11-to-1 army. At that time, we had about 781,000 active Army folks. If we fast forward to today, we are sending people in rotations every 12 months or every 18 months.…
