Roy Cooper: “I come here today to praise the men and women of the 118th Air Wing who fly out of Nashville, Tennessee. They have been…”

“I come here today to praise the men and women of the 118th Air Wing who fly out of Nashville, Tennessee. They have been mistreated by this BRAC process. I do not blame the BRAC Commission. I think the fault lies originally with the Pentagon recommendation because they simply did not take into account one of the best flying units in America. They are proven, they are ready, they have performed valiantly every time the Nation has called them to service. They have volunteered for extra duty. They fly C-130s. We have, and we soon will miss, those eight C-130 airplanes. The bottom line for the Pentagon decision, did it really have anything to do with military judgment for value or cost savings? No. What did it have to do with? A political calculation on the part of the Pentagon that because Tennessee had a great air unit in Memphis with C- 5s and a great air unit in Knoxville with KC-135s, that therefore, Nashville had to lose one of the best Air Guard units in the country. Now, they did not close down our base entirely; they did not have the temerity to do that, but they took all our aircraft. They took the ``air'' out of the Air National Guard in Nashville, Tennessee. Now, Members might say, well, I am just protecting a local interest. Look at the facts. First they came at us with wrong data because the Air Guard unit there does not own the runways; we only lease them from a fine commercial airport. We got no credit for that. So we addressed that problem.…”