Political Quotes

“if I might just speak personally, I served in the Reserves some 12, 14 years and we knew what we had as our obligation when we signed up. That is the way it has been throughout our contemporary military history. I share with the Senator how the Reserves and the Guard with their families have borne the brunt of battle in the same way as the regular forces, but bear in mind that the regular forces, which are given an option for early retirement, have to put in a minimum of 20 full years of obligated service. If we continue to narrow the differences between the pay and benefits for the Reserves and Guard and the Regulars, pretty soon people will say, let's opt for the Reserve or the Guard rather than spend 20 years of our lives to gain those benefits that Congress accords our people. For that reason, I intend to raise a budgetary point of order with respect to Senator Corzine's amendment on that very point. The amendment would allow eligible reservists to be able to collect retirement pay at age 55 instead of age 60. That would be an extremely costly change to implement. CBO has estimated it would increase mandatory spending in 2005 by $1.7 billion. It would cost $8.2 billion in mandatory spending over the coming 5 years and $16 billion over the coming decade. Those are very major costs.…”