Date: 2002-06-27
Speaker: DAN MILLER (republican)
Chamber: H
State: Florida

Mr. Speaker. I rise in support of the rule and for the basic bill behind it. the military construction bill. I happen to serve on the Subcommittee on Military Construction. and it is a pleasure to serve with the gentleman from Ohio . chairing that committee for the past 4 years. and the gentleman from Massachusetts . also. It is a bipartisan committee and a bipartisan bill. My congressional district in Florida. beautiful area in southwest Florida. does not have any military facilities and does not really have any major military contractors. so I approach this bill not from my particular district but what is right for this country and right for our soldiers and what will keep the military strong and prepared. as it was for the events that developed after September 11. I know that Chairman HOBSON in the past 4 years has been working hard to improve the quality of life. The key to being prepared. as we needed to be starting in September of last year. is to have a strong military but also a military that is committed and prepared to go into action at any time. and key to that is the quality of life. That is something that we have been working on now for a number of years. In my congressional district. we have lots of retired military people. a lot of veterans. A lot of them are World War II generation. or the Korean War generation. even World War I generation. But it is a different military today with the volunteer military. People do not live in the barracks with a hundred other soldiers. Nowadays. we need to have facilities for people to volunteer to be in the military and to be willing to stay and to serve. whether it is at Fort Bragg in North Carolina or in Naples or in Korea. or wherever we have our soldiers stationed around the world. Quality of life is really critical in this job. As a businessman. before I came to the Congress. one of the things I learned is you need to keep your employees happy. You want to avoid a turnover in your employees. You want to have employees stay and not move on because of the cost of training people. If you can keep an employee for a number of years and keep that employee happy and contented. they will do a good job. And that is exactly what we need to do in the military. is to attract the good people and to provide an environment so that they feel proud and they are satisfied in their job. So in the past few years. we have had success. Several years ago I went with the gentleman from Ohio to Naples. We saw where 10.000 sailors are based in Naples. Italy. and the Sixth Fleet works out of there. The facilities were in a volcano. We had to move our facilities to take our sailors out of this area. The facilities were almost World War II era. The fact is. they were not very good accommodations. It was cramped quarters. When sailors came ashore. they had to go back to the ship at night. Over the past few years. we have been able to create the basic enlisted mans quarters. So instead of the sailors coming ashore and having to go to the ship at night and sleep in bunks. they were able to stay overnight in facilities with two people to a room. We spent a lot of money on child development centers. We have them throughout the country at military facilities because we want to allow the families to be able to stay there with their children. In Sicily. I saw facilities where instead of a barracks with 50 people in it. we had semiprivate rooms like college dormitories. When I was in college. we had bathrooms down the hallway. but it is a different world today. We have to provide facilities that will allow the military to be happy and their families satisfied in accommodations that are safe. Their children can go to a day care program. elementary and middle and secondary schools. That is what this bill is about. is providing the facilities for the quality of life. It is also things like runways. the command and control centers. We do not see them because they are top secret. but we need to have places where our admirals and generals can control things that are going on in Afghanistan. I commend the chairman for putting together a very good bipartisan bill. I hope Members will support the bill.