He also gives troops the rare chance to ask him questions. When it's their turn, service members generally ask about pay raises, housing, deployments and the drawdown. In Naples, a service member asked about the importance of quality of life. We invest millions of dollars on training, and that only makes sense if we retain people. Training is the key to our capability, and retaining is the key to getting the benefit of that training.
Quality of life is the key to retaining.
Perry assured the audience quality of life concerns are, and will continue to be, a top priority at the Pentagon. Pay raises are in the budget as far as the eye can see. Many of the housing programs, new child care centers, morale and recreation centers are in the budget now and through the rest of this century. The fact that makes me most confident our emphasis on quality of life has become part of our way of doing business is that everywhere I go, base commanders and people who run base housing, have picked up this message with enthusiasm. They're out doing things I never even thought about doing.