Jim Inhofe: “Thank you, Mr. President. As chairman of the Readiness Subcommittee, I want to make a couple of comments concerning the…”

“Thank you, Mr. President. As chairman of the Readiness Subcommittee, I want to make a couple of comments concerning the defense authorization bill of 1999 and how it affects readiness. Over the past several years, a number of military officers have expressed deep concerns regarding the trends in the operational readiness of the Armed Forces. Last year, these trends led one military officer to state, ``The storm clouds are on the horizon.'' This was a year in which most of the Armed Forces were ready to meet their wartime mission, but in order to do so in a resource-constrained environment, they were forced to resort to cost-saving practices which could impact negatively on our wartime readiness. For example, the Marine Corps began using retreaded tires. This had not been done before. We have no way of knowing how these will perform in the case of some type of a Persian Gulf or Middle East desert-type of operation.”