Political Quotes

“we generally assume that there are no prospects for savings in readiness. The reality is that we maintain most of our active force units at very high levels of readiness at considerable expense, when, in fact, we could relax readiness levels for certain units, especially those not slated to go into combat early. Senator McCain included language in this and last year's bill requiring an evaluation of a concept he refers to as ``tiered readiness'' where four tiers of readiness are established for our units based on their likely time of deployment to battle. I have included language in this bill asking for an estimate of savings from a related concept I refer to as ``cyclical readiness.'' It would involve alternating a high state of readiness between units, where the units at the high state of readiness would be slated for a first major theater war, and the other lower readiness units would be available for a second theater. The services tell us that their operational and personnel tempos are too high to relax the readiness of any units. I have come to the conclusion that much of that problem is self-inflicted through excessive training and contingency requirements. I have included another provision in this bill that requires a look at how much of the demands on our troops are, in fact, self-inflicted. The reality is that come October, our largest overseas contingency commitment will be about a third of an Army division in Bosnia.”