Saxby Chambliss: “When we took over control of the House of Representatives and the Senate in 1995, we had about 12,000 members of the…”

“When we took over control of the House of Representatives and the Senate in 1995, we had about 12,000 members of the Armed Forces who were receiving food stamps. Nobody in this House, I do not think, realized that. It came to our attention late in the process in the Committee on Armed Services. And when we discovered that, obviously everybody was appalled at that, and we began working on it. Over the last 6 years, we have reduced that figure from 12,000 to a little bit in excess of 3,000. It is somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000. I am not sure of the exact number, but we have cut it every single year. Again, we have cut it in spite of the fact the administration has not called for significant increases in defense spending that would allow us to give pay raises to those young men and women who are having to draw food stamps to feed their kids, instead of having the security and the peace of mind and knowing that their children are going to be fed and they can look after the business of trying to defend this country. So we have cut that list, and we are going to continue to work on it until we get all of those folks off of food stamps, because it is just not right. It is just not right. It is immoral, it is un-American, and it should not be the case. We have to continue to work on that.”