Joel Hefley: “just to respond to a few of the comments that have been made, they talk about why do the Germans not do more. We are…”

“just to respond to a few of the comments that have been made, they talk about why do the Germans not do more. We are talking about $5 million that they are willing to put into these projects. Now that is burden sharing. One of the speakers mentioned, well, they can rent apartments for $700 a month. How many enlisted people that these are going to benefit, the lower ranked enlisted people, can afford $700 a month to live on the economy? That might be nice, but who can afford that kind of thing? Yes, there are many projects we could do in America, and we are doing many projects across this country to try to improve quality of life across the country. But realize these are Americans that are in Bosnia now, and their permanent duty station is Germany. So when they come out of Bosnia, they go back to Germany. What kind of living conditions do we want them go come back to when they come back to Germany? Mr. Chairman, as for it not being in the budget plan, as has been indicated by the previous speaker, it was a priority. When we asked the military about the priority, this was one of their priorities. As for the $900 million over the President's request, that is making the assumption that the President was correct with his request. Many of us do not think that he was correct, that he cuts too deep and he cuts too fast and particularly when we are talking about quality-of-life projects.”