On the recordApril 21, 2004
A bit more than half of all the expense budget is salaries, and we now do not have enough military personnel, who are having to extend their tours. They have been on the ground over there, reservists on the ground for a year, and now they are being extended for 3 or 4 months. So obviously unless we are going to have fewer people in the military, we are not going to be able to cut defense spending. So the gentleman is right. In a sense a lot of that is mandatory because we cannot imagine a smaller military because our present military is really not large enough to do what we are now attempting to do because we are having to extend reservists who have already been there a year.
Source
govinfo.gov
