Joe Cunningham: “I have got friends on both sides of this issue. I am a Californian. Let me tell Members why I am opposed to this…”

“I have got friends on both sides of this issue. I am a Californian. Let me tell Members why I am opposed to this amendment. First of all, remember that every BRACC base closed is for privatization. Every one closed. That is what we are saying. We are closing them. We do not want the Federal Government to take care of them. We initially had six Air Force and six Navy depots. In the first BRACC round the Navy closed down three. The Air Force did not close any. So there was three and six in the next round, the Air Force closed three. So there was three and three. And yet there is still a 50 percent overhead or excess, so that we are operating at only 50 percent capacity. And now we want two other depots to come in and privatize. That is going to cost $700 million a year to compete against the ones that have and that is core military. Let me tell my colleagues why from personal experience. During the Vietnam war, we privatized because we could not do the work to build F-14 or FB4's to F-4N's. Six months before we got ready to go, four airwings of Phantoms could not go to Vietnam because they found wing cracks. If we would have flown those airplanes, our pilots would have been killed. That never would have happened in a depot. Not in a military depot. It would not have got through. So it is not only readiness, the core capability that we need to fight the war, and this is wrong.”