[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 26 (Tuesday, February 14, 2017)]
[House]
[Page H1138]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    THE MILITARY NEEDS MORE ENLISTED MEN AND WOMEN NOT MORE OFFICERS

  (Mr. DUNCAN of Tennessee asked and was given permission to address 
the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. DUNCAN of Tennessee. Mr. Speaker, in Scott Berg's biography on 
Woodrow Wilson, it says that, in World War I, we had one officer for 
ever 30 enlisted men.
  President Eisenhower once said we had too many officers when we had 
one officer for every nine enlisted. Now we have one officer for every 
4\1/2\ to 5 enlisted. We are almost overrun with retired admirals and 
generals. This is very expensive.
  President Trump wants to greatly expand the numbers in our Armed 
Forces. If we do, what we need is more enlisted men and women, not more 
officers.
  I started in the Army as enlisted and left as a captain, but we 
simply can't afford as many officers as we have today. We now have 
475,000 retired officers drawing military pensions and 1,500,000 
enlisted retirees. These two million military retirees, and those near 
retirement, should be demanding more fiscal conservatism by the 
Pentagon, or, in the very near future, we will not be able to pay our 
military pensions with money that will buy very much.

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