W. Todd Akin: “the rule that we are considering does not allow a very critical amendment which we voted on in committee. Several of the…”

“the rule that we are considering does not allow a very critical amendment which we voted on in committee. Several of the votes that were most important in committee were not done in a bipartisan way. They were strict party-line votes. This was one of those. One was missile defense; the other is the modernization program for the Army. The modernization program for the Army that I am talking about was cut by 25 percent, a massive slash in that particular program. What that program does is, it provides the first major modernization program in the last 40 years for the Army. What the program does is, it provides real-time online information, networking, a whole group of different sensors, satellites and individuals on the field, tanks, unmanned aerial vehicles, pulling all that information together to give us accurate and timely information in the battlefield. Now, anybody who's studied military warfare will tell you that if you just had this piece of information or that piece of information, the tide of battle would have shifted, and so this whole system is designed to provide that information for our warfighters. It has been slashed 25 percent. It is called Future Combat Systems. Why is that important? First of all, it means you've got to go all the way back to the drawing board with this program, changing all the time schedules. It is tremendously complex.…”