Rae Oliver Davis: “I thank the gentleman for the opportunity to share with you tonight, as I remember those days being both a freshman…”

“I thank the gentleman for the opportunity to share with you tonight, as I remember those days being both a freshman doing Special Orders, and also serving on the Armed Services Committee before moving over to the Ways and Means Committee. I appreciate the chance to share. One thing that I would emphasize: you know, over the last 18 months we've heard a lot of interesting arguments in the media about the 99 percent and the 1 percent and on and on, and it fueled lots of politics. I think the whole argument got best clarified by a group of Army men and women who put together a little video called ``The Real 1 Percent.'' It was focused on servicemembers and servicemembers' families. Most recently, a little company called Ranger Up T-shirts--admittedly with a tie to my alumni in the Rangers--more accurately stated it was the 0.45 percent. It just talked about the descending level of public involvement in the military to almost a minimal level. People don't understand right now, at this time, that we are in the midst of two wars, we have threats of a wide spectrum that we've never had before. When I enlisted in the military 36 years ago next month, our Army was twice as big as it is today. We're carrying an operations tempo that's significant. I'm very concerned about the cuts and have made that clear.…”