Military Representation Quotes

What I feel most strongly here being in Congress is kind of the burden - the good burden - of representing all of our military.

42% of today’s army enlistees are ethnic or racial minorities. In the general population in the 18 to 24 year old age cohort, nearly 50% of the people…have had some exposure to college education. In that same age cohort in the U.S. military today…the percentage of people who’ve had some kind of exposure to college education is 6.5%. So the vast majority of our society…has, in effect, hired some of the least disadvantaged of their fellow citizens to conduct some of our most dangerous business. I think that is an unstable situation, and one that does threaten, in the long run, the health of our democracy.

Sitting on the House Armed Services Committee is a great responsibility and an opportunity to represent not only the thousands of veterans in the 33rd Congressional District of Texas that I represent in Dallas-Fort Worth but also the active-duty men and women of our armed forces, national guard, and reserve components.

'The Avengers' made it more believable that I could have been a major in the U.S. Army.

There cannot be any better cross-section of America and I think the soldiers represent the best we have. Today's soldiers are brighter and smarter, perhaps in a different way, than past generations because they've been brought up in the computer and information age.

The U.S. Military is us. There is no truer representation of a country than the people that it sends into the field to fight for it. The people who wear our uniform and carry our rifles into combat are our kids, and our job is to support them, because they're protecting us.

I understand the needs of both the military and the veteran, and that has helped me tremendously as a congressman. I am proud to serve on the House Committee on Veterans Affairs.

You never can predict things. I knew the movie Peducted would get a reaction, because it's showing a different vision of our soldiers in Iraq. All we ever get told is that they're valued and we support them, and as they're represented on television, they're true-blue and honorable. Which is true, for the most part.

I'm not a representative of the military establishment. I came in with the Reagan Administration in 1981 as a presidential appointee.

There should be a 5% tax break for people who served in the military…. We are developing a class divide in military, service. Very few people who have brought us this war have served in the military and very view of their children have served.

The people who were against the Vietnam War thought I was attacking the Army. The guys in the Army thought I was representing their experiences. I was on both sides, and I survived.

We have a great all-volunteer force, but the fact is that 0.5% of the U.S. population serves in the military, maybe another 3-5% knows someone who serves. Leaving 95% of Ameria with no real contact with the military.

Most people know nobody in the military.