I thank my friend. And the picture that they create is of just a big bureaucracy in Washington that takes up money, and that bureaucracy does not translate into real people who have real needs. Actually the Department of Defense is about 50 percent people. That means that not only the soldiers, the sailors, the airmen, the marines who serve this country, but also the many people who back them up. That means people who repair aircraft like those at North Island Naval Aviation Depot in San Diego, California or the people that repair the ships or the people that do the high-tech work or the teams that fly around the world as we project American military power.
Personnel is a very important part of our national defense.
If you talk to folks like Commandant of the Marine Corps Chuck Krulak and others, you may come to the conclusion that actually they are the primary part of our national defense, they are the most important part, and they come from America's villages and towns and cities and farms and they serve in the American military often at great inconvenience and often at a pay scale that is much less than their civilian counterparts. Let us talk about personnel shortages that we have today. The United States Air Force is going to be short almost 800 pilots, a little over 700 pilots for this fiscal year that is coming up. We are going to be very short on pilots. In the Navy we are going to be short 18,000 sailors and 1,400 recruits in this fiscal year.