“Mr. Speaker, last week we passed a $585 billion bill known as the defense bill, with a large percentage of that money going into overseas contingencies: Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. I question how much damage this bill causes our military Active Duty and our retirees”, complains Jones. Pictured here a family in Kabul living in extreme poverty.
On December 9, 2014 Rep. Jones of North Carolina asked for and was granted permission to address the United States House of Representatives for a few minutes about the rathole:
“Mr. Speaker, let me quote from Roger Simon in a recent article, titled, “Down the Opium Rathole.” Mr. Simon writes about Afghanistan:
If you spent 13 years pounding money down a rathole with little to show for it, you might wake up one morning and say, “Hey, I’m going to stop pounding money down the rathole.” Unfortunately, the United States Government does not think this way.
Mr. Speaker, last week we passed a $585 billion bill known as the defense bill, with a large percentage of that money going into overseas contingencies: Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. I question how much damage this bill causes our military Active Duty and our retirees.
Let me quote from Lori Falkner Volkman, a former prosecutor and spokesman for the Keep Your Promise Alliance, an online coalition of military families and organizations. She said: “This is the second Christmas in a row that national leaders have tried to cut military pay benefits. Earned benefits should not even be on the table when entitlement budgets soar and appropriations budgets are billions of dollars over budget.”
I did not vote for the NDAA bill. It was 1,648 pages, and we did not have enough time to read and comprehend the contents of the bill. In a recent article in the Jacksonville Daily News regarding my “no” vote on this bill, Mike Hayden, a retired Air Force colonel and present director of governmental relations for the Military Officers Association of America, known as MOAA, said: “An E-5 servicemember would lose more than $800 in purchasing power annually when the bill takes effect. This is going to cost them a loss of about $600 a month just in pay.”
In the same article, Jim Davis, a retired marine who now lives in Jacksonville and serves as a senior vice commander of the local DAV chapter, said the cuts could adversely affect military families.
Charlie Brown, a quartermaster for the VFW post in Jacksonville, agreed with Mr. Davis and said the bill doesn’t accurately reflect what servicemembers actually deserve.”
Source: Congressional Record