Charles Skelton: “I speak for the young men and young women in uniform today. I speak for this Department of Defense appropriations bill.…”

“I speak for the young men and young women in uniform today. I speak for this Department of Defense appropriations bill. I think that this bill makes a major step in the right direction to help restore the needed dollars that have been slowly slipping away through the years. I say to my colleagues that we have the finest young men and women in uniform that we have ever had. I know this by personal observation, by meeting with them, by speaking with them at their posts, at their bases, here in this country and, yes, in other parts of the world. It is up to us, under the Constitution of the United States, Article I, Section 8, to support the military, the Armed Forces. That is what we are doing today. If we fail to do so properly today, shame on us because we will be letting those young men and those young women down who we have a constitutional duty to support. This is a step in the right direction. I am pleased because it is a strong bill for our forces. The bill only increases Department of Defense spending over 1995 by $1.7 billion. It does cut O&M, but it still remains over the President's recommendation. As a matter of fact, Mr. Speaker, I had my own military budget which was in excess of this that I had been working on for quite some time. If this does not meet my expectations of what we need, this is still a very, very dangerous and uncertain world in the kaleidoscope of history and what is to come in the future.”