Willie Hefner: “For many, many years I have been on this Subcommittee on Military Construction. It has been our number one initiative to…”

“For many, many years I have been on this Subcommittee on Military Construction. It has been our number one initiative to try to do what we can for quality of life and to help for retention for what we believe is the finest young men and women in the world in our Armed Forces. We have tried very, very hard to put the focus on quality of life, both in the authorizing committee and in the appropriations committee. But I must say, it has been very difficult over the years in both Democrat and Republican administrations, it always makes the request short of what is needed for quality of life for our military people. We have had some criticism in this particular bill that we are pork-barreling. But I do not think it is pork-barreling when we are doing the very best that we can with limited dollars for our men and women in the Armed Forces. The people who are so critical of us do not realize that we have had pauses, one year we did not have any money particular at all, we did no improvements in barracks and quality of life, and then we have had the only budget in this House that has been stagnant at best. We have actually lost ground over the last few budget sessions. We have done a good job, and the chairman has done a good job in putting together along with the staff what I consider a very, very good budget.”