Scalise: Time to Finally Start Restoring Our Nation’s Defense
WASHINGTON, D.C.—At the House Leadership stakeout today Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) urged support for restoring America’s defense to necessary levels, which is important to ensure the country’s readiness and the safety of our men and women in uniform. This includes restoring the country’s air and naval superiority, giving our troops a pay raise, and increasing support to America’s allies.
Click here or on the image above to watch his remarks.
Remarks:Â
“We start this morning with heavy hearts. We’re hearing reports of a shooting at St. Mary’s County in Maryland. And our prayers go out to everybody impacted. Obviously, we’re going to be trying to get as much information as we can throughout the day.
“In the meantime, later this week, as you heard from my two colleagues that have been leaders in the defense industry and understand how to rebuild our nation’s defense, we’re going to be voting on a bill to finally start restoring our nation’s defense to the levels that it needs to be; to give our men and women in uniform the tools that they need not only to be prepared to defend our country, but to be able to train in a safe environment.
“We’ve seen, even in the last week, planes falling out of the sky and killing some of our men and women in uniform. That needs to stop.
“And in this bill, we finally start to reverse that problem by restoring air superiority, by giving our troops a much-needed pay raise, something that is going to be part of this bill. We actually restore our naval fleet.
“But we also support our friends around the world. We’ve traditionally had a strong alliance with Israel. In this bill, we actually increase that. And we continue to fund the Israeli Missile Defense that’s so critical to keeping the people of Israel safe–the Iron Dome, David’s Sling.
“We advance some of the technology in anti-tunneling. That’s going to be something important to help our allies around the world, not just Israel.
“So it’s an important bill that finally restores the cuts that have been made to our nation’s defense, so that we can rebuild and maintain one of our basic constitutional responsibilities, that is to provide for a strong national defense. I expect to see a strong vote on this bill later this week.”