María Elvira Salazar: “I rise today in support of and as a cosponsor of amendment No. 2012. I salute Senator Webb and my colleagues who joined…”

“I rise today in support of and as a cosponsor of amendment No. 2012. I salute Senator Webb and my colleagues who joined in this effort which would set a standard for how much time our troops get at home between deployments. We owe it to our troops and to our families to have a rational and reasonable troop rotation policy that allows our fighting forces to be at their best. The ever-quickening operational tempo over the last 4 years of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan has stretched our military beyond reason and endangered our national security. Continuing to shorten the time our troops are able to spend at home while extending deployments is simply not a sustainable policy. It is bad for operational readiness, it is bad for retention, it is bad for morale, and it is bad for the health of our military members and their families. We must do better to protect our national security, and this amendment moves us in the right direction. In the time I have spent with our servicemembers in Iraq and Afghanistan, at Fort Carson and at the many military installations around Colorado, I have always found our servicemembers to be serving proudly and honorably. They rarely look at you and talk about the sacrifices they are being asked to make or of the effects that failed policies are having on them and on their families. But you can still see in their eyes the evidence of the strain that the operational tempo is placing on them and on their families.”