As Americans across the country start to prepare Christmas packages for the troops abroad filled with necessities and niceties, one of the most important necessities; the troop saving A-10, may go away if action is not taken immediately.
According to Winslow Wheeler, director of the Straus Military Reform Project, the supporters of the A-10 “have a problem.” In a letter to those supporters, Wheeler writes, “Despite strong votes in the House and Senate Armed Services Committees in favor of the A-10 and providing money and language to keep the A-10 force intact in 2015, the Air Force has convinced some, if not all, of the leaders of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees to ignore the text of their own bills and to favor–one way or another–the Air Force proposal to continue its dismantling of the A-10 force in 2015 by sending some portion of its maintainer cohort to the F-35.”
Wheeler is basing that belief on “the reticence of the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee (Carl Levin, D-MI) when asked about the A-10 by the press” last week, and his 31 years of experience on Capitol Hill.
Wheeler says action “is needed, literally today, to inform the Democratic and Republican leadership of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees that 1) we are watching, 2) the leaders should conform to the language of the bills their committees have already passed and retain the A-10 force, fully intact, in 2015.”
A-10 supporters are urging friends and family to contact their senators and representative and ask them to contact Chairmen Levin, and McKeon, and Ranking Minority Members Inhofe, and Smith on the issue.
Contact information Follows:
Sen. Carl Levin (D, MI)
Chairman, Senate Armed Services Committee
202 224-6221
Sen. Jim Inhofe (R, OK)
Ranking Minority Member, Senate Armed Services Committee
202 224-4721
Rep. “Buck” McKeon (R, CA)
Chairman, House Armed Services Committee
202 225-1956
Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA)
Ranking Minority Member, House Armed Services Committee
202 225-8901