Jim Inhofe: “I join in the remarks that were made by the Senator from Kansas about the U.S.S. Cole, the tragedy that took place. We…”

“I join in the remarks that were made by the Senator from Kansas about the U.S.S. Cole, the tragedy that took place. We are all so saddened to hear about that. It was a complete surprise to all of us. Also, his comments about our chairman--our chairman, the Senator from Virginia, has done just an incredible job of leading the way and getting this bill done. I see this bill we are about to vote on as turning the corner. After 7 years of neglecting our military, we are actually starting to improve some things. We have some things in this bill that I think are long overdue. In our readiness funding, the conferees add more than $888 million to the primary readiness accounts. That included areas of neglect: $125 million to the war reserves and training munitions. We have places where they actually do not have enough bullets, enough ammunition to train with; $222 million for spare parts--that is not nearly enough, but there is a trend going up in the right direction now. I go around as chairman of the Readiness Subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee to quite a few of the places around the country and around the world and find the cannibalization rates, getting spare parts out of engines. I have seen them open up a new, crated F-100 engine just to pull off spare parts. That becomes very labor intensive. As a result of that, we are having terrible retention rates.”