[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 5]
[House]
[Page 6752]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            THE DEFENSE BILL

  (Mr. MOULTON asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. MOULTON. Mr. Speaker, the Rules Committee just rejected an 
amendment to the defense bill that I offered to protect our troops on 
the front line by shifting funds from the A-10, an airplane the Air 
Force and the Department of Defense don't want, to unfunded priorities 
for IED protection and other things our front-line infantry troops 
desperately need.
  Thousands of young American men and women have been killed by IEDs in 
the past decade. If the A-10 is so critical, why has neither the Army 
nor the Marine Corps, which many troops feel provides the best close 
air support in the world, asked for A-10s themselves? With a limitless 
budget we would all love to have the A-10 and other weapons. But our 
troops know that we live in a real world with real tradeoffs. And 
America expects us to make the politically difficult decisions to 
protect our shared national security and the lives of young Americans 
whom we ask to defend it.

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