Bill Nelson: “I want to share another idea, and this has nothing to do with these weighty matters, but it certainly has to do with…”

“I want to share another idea, and this has nothing to do with these weighty matters, but it certainly has to do with some weighty matters about whether the National Guard of this country has the proper equipment. There was a General Accounting Office report from last summer that showed that the National Guard is woefully inadequate in its equipment. It pointed out in that GAO study that my State of Florida had only 53 percent of the equipment that it ought to have. It said the State of New Mexico National Guard had only 33 percent. What is happening is what you would expect: As the National Guard units in America are activated to go over to Iraq and Afghanistan, they take their equipment with them, and so often it is worn out or it has to stay for others to use, and they come back and they do not have the equipment; or it is like the 11 helicopters of the National Guard in Florida--a year from now, they are planning to take those helicopters from the Florida Guard and send them over to the Middle East. Can you imagine if that occurs and the Florida National Guard is faced with a major hurricane and they do not have any helicopters? Hurricanes are indiscriminate in the way they come in and tear up everything over a large swath of property, so that in a big one you cannot traverse the roads because everything is suddenly on top of them. So often you have to have helicopters to get supplies and personnel in to people who are hurting. That is one example.…”