Political Quotes

“Let me give the gentleman the numbers that come right from the Personnel Subcommittee chairman, the gentleman from California, Robert Dornan, who issued this statement today of active duty end strength. It has gone from, the gentleman is right, from an excess of 2 million personnel to about 1,400,000. So it has been cut not quite in half but not too far away. Now, let me just read what the gentleman from California [Mr. Dornan] has said: ``End strength reductions for this year are slightly accelerated over what DOD projected in last year's budget submission. DOD will end fiscal year 1995 about 2,300 below the end strength authorized by the fiscal year 1995 DOD Authorization Act.'' That means that this glidepath that the President has us on that is going to end up going from 18 Army divisions to 10, from 24 air wings to 13, that we are on that glidepath, we are cutting sharply, but this year's reductions cut even more sharply, 2,300 personnel, more sharply than what we have projected last year. It says that the fiscal year 1996 DOD request projects an end strength loss of 40,790 from fiscal year authorized levels, so that is how fast we are going down. We are going to have 40,000 less people this year than we had last year. That means that we are losing people at a very high rate, at about 1,700 young people a week are being cashiered out of the uniformed service.”