Chuck Grassley: “during wartime, in an area where there is military conflict between the United States and an opponent, there are…”

“during wartime, in an area where there is military conflict between the United States and an opponent, there are legitimate war bonuses paid to people in the military for serving under more severe conditions, and there are also war bonuses paid to our seafarers for serving under those same conditions. The only problem is that there is a great inequity between what the seafarers get as a bonus and what our regular military gets paid. The purpose of this amendment is to make sure that those bonuses are the same. So my amendment, which is about to be voted on at 10 o'clock, represents common sense. What people don't like about Washington is they see their money being wasted because we don't use commonsense approaches to governing and spending the taxpayers' money--the same commonsense way that the average family and small business has to use to live within their income and balance their budgets. Why should taxpayers be saddled with war bonuses for seafarers, which evidence shows can be 50 times as high as those war bonuses that we give the men and women in the Reserve or the regular military? One Persian Gulf seafarer got a bonus of $15,700 for 2 months. The regular military would get, during that same period of time, a 2-month war bonus of $300--$300 as compared to $15,700. The argument was made last night that the taxpayers don't end up paying these war bonuses. Well, the taxpayers do end up paying.”