Larry Kissell: “Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 3116, the Berry Amendment Extension Act. For over 60 years, the Berry…”

“Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 3116, the Berry Amendment Extension Act. For over 60 years, the Berry Amendment has served as the law by which the Department of Defense has had to purchase uniforms for our military. It has served its purpose well in protecting the men and women of our services with having the best uniforms and also protecting Americans that make these uniforms in providing for the jobs thereof. In January of 2009, shortly after I was sworn in as a freshman Congressman, folks came to me and asked me if I would help extend the Berry Act in homeland security to just the TSA part. Now, I could not understand why this had not been done before, but I was assured it had been tried and had been unsuccessful because there was apparently a lot of special interest that was in opposition to this. Having worked 27 years in textiles myself, I gladly took on this initiative, and with a lot of help, we were able to overcome the special interest, and we were able to get the extension of the Berry Act to the amendment for the Recovery Act applying just to TSA.”