Peter Visclosky: “At the outset of my remarks, Madam Chair, I would not in any way dispute the value or the good work done at the proving…”

“At the outset of my remarks, Madam Chair, I would not in any way dispute the value or the good work done at the proving grounds in Arizona or the good work of the military and civilian personnel who are there. I would concur in the gentleman's remarks. That is true, though, of the military and civilian employees throughout the Department of Defense, both in our country and around the world. I would remind our colleagues that, despite the fact of including the overseas contingency account, this bill contains $569.6 billion, which is an astronomical amount of money. It is a finite amount of money despite, as I have also said repeatedly over the last 3 days, infinite amounts of demand. I do think the gentleman's amendment is contrary to what we are doing as far as conceptually in the bill in that we are trying to stay out of some of these decisions that the Department must make. In the committee, we had discussions about whether or not KC-10s should be moved or retired. We declined to become involved as far as the movement of one airlift wing from a State to another State. Also, I couldn't dispute the gentleman's assertion that we would save money if we didn't spend it on transferring, but I might parenthetically ask the question: perhaps we will save more in the long run in that the Department of Defense may not be wrong in its assertion. For those reasons, I would respectfully oppose the gentleman's amendment.”