Jack Kingston: “To continue on this, one of the reasons why we are losing good soldiers right now is that the pay is low and they do…”

“To continue on this, one of the reasons why we are losing good soldiers right now is that the pay is low and they do have to go on food stamps. Last week, I was at the third infantry division while they were deploying to Bosnia. In our area, we have about 2,500 to 3,000 soldiers in Bosnia, as of last week, and I was saying good-bye to them. I asked the colonel how many of these soldiers are married. And he said about 60 percent are married, probably because that is the average right now. What I do not understand is why the Clinton administration has not recognized that the Army today is an army where we have a lot of families. And this deployment situation of permanent peacekeeping by presence, just having our folks there by occupation, gets to be very, very expensive. The gentleman and I were here when we debated Bosnia; we were here when the administration said we will only be there for 1 year. Personally speaking, I voted against getting involved in it because I feared we would be there a long time, and now we are on our 5th year there. Actually, longer than 5 years. As I said good-bye to these young men and women, wondering when they were going to come home, and they are going to come home in 6 months, but who will go after that? In the meantime, how many of them will we lose?”