Michael Castle: “Today, all members of the Armed Forces, including those serving in the Guard and Reserves, receive two-and-a-half days…”

“Today, all members of the Armed Forces, including those serving in the Guard and Reserves, receive two-and-a-half days of leave time per month, regardless of whether they're deployed in Iraq or back in the U.S. or at their home base. My amendment would simply credit soldiers one additional day of leave time for every month that they are deployed in a combat zone, and this could be used when they return Stateside. We learned this from speaking to a soldier in particular by e-mail and to soldiers more specifically about it, and realized that with some of the mental health problems which are going on, the extra leave time, not time on standby but actual leave time, would be good as far as our soldiers are concerned, and so decided we wanted to push it.”