Political Quotes

“yesterday Senator Graham and I introduced a bill to establish a National Commission on the Future of the Army, an independent panel that will bear the responsibility of analyzing some major changes to the U.S. Army that were proposed in the President's budget. The Army's budget for Fiscal Year 2015 sets a path toward major, irreversible changes to Army capacity and capability, particularly in the Army National Guard and Army Reserves, that cannot be ignored by the Congress. Senator Graham, my fellow co-chair of the Senate National Guard Caucus, has said repeatedly that these changes fundamentally alter what it means for the National Guard to be a combat reserve of the Army. The changes would also render the Nation's operational reserve insufficient in its ability to retain gains in experience and readiness that the reserve has achieved over a decade of continuous deployment. Most dramatically, these changes would transfer all of the National Guard's AH-64 Apaches to the active component, leaving the Nation without any combat reserves for one of the aircraft most essential to ground operations. But the changes that the President's budget proposal would begin to make next year go much deeper. They would eventually reduce the Nation's Army National Guard to 315,000 soldiers, the fewest in decades. The Chief of Staff of the Army, General Odierno, testified before the Appropriations Committee's Subcommittee on Defense that this number is too low.…”