Cliff Stearns: “Mr. Speaker, in my home congressional district, I have the headquarters for the National Guard at Camp Blanding in North…”

“Mr. Speaker, in my home congressional district, I have the headquarters for the National Guard at Camp Blanding in North Central Florida; so I am well aware of the sacrifices these folks make when they go off to war. Interestingly enough, a lot of Americans do not realize this, so I think it is altogether appropriate today that we recognize the businesses and National Guard, because prior to this we had the resolution honoring the military who participated over in the war in Iraq, and we mentioned the National Guard. But, of course, this resolution is concentrating on the businesses. There are 216,931 members of the Reserve components of the Armed Forces. When you think about each one of these people leaving their families and jobs in service to their country to go off to the war in Iraq, of course they leave behind employment. We are talking about hundreds of thousands of employers that had these people employed. It might be a small business of five people, and it might be a business of 5,000 or 6,000 employees. But if you take a small business and you have one individual that leaves it, he represents 20 percent of the employees of the business. That is a major sacrifice. So I think it is altogether fitting this afternoon that we take this time to recognize these businesses for their exceptional accommodation for these men and women and to honor them for what they are trying to do.”