Addressing equipment shortfalls for Army National Guard and Reserve
CongressDaily online newspaper reports that Congressman Neil Abercrombie, chairman of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Air and Land Forces, is moving to “fill equipment shortfalls for the Army National Guard and Army Reserve, whose leaders have testified repeatedly about dramatic shortages in inventories.” CongressDaily says the subcommittee added $800 million to address equipment shortfalls. The action came after Abercrombie’s panel on Wednesday approved its part of a defense bill for fiscal 2009. The Hill.com quotes Abercrombie: “These adjustments are based on the need to shift funding to higher-priority Army readiness needs” while a “modest” cut in the Pentagon's Future Combat Systems (FCS) program “mainly reduces funding for technologies that won’t be ready until 2015 at the earliest.”

Hawaii economy, Army, and Navy benefit from Abercrombie legislation
New military housing construction on Oahu continues to provide a much-needed boost to Hawaii’s economy, resulting from legislation sponsored by Congressman Abercrombie. Another in a series of new projects broke ground on April 29th—the second phase of a major project at Hickam Air Force Base. The Air Force Times newspaper reports that the project “includes new home construction and historic home restoration, and will add 1,118 homes to the 1,356 homes already privatized by the Air Force at Hickam.” Actus Lend Lease is developing the project.

Abercrombie sponsored legislation leading to the creation of public-private partnerships that are now building and renovating thousands of houses on military bases around Oahu. The 50-year partnerships in Hawaii have boosted the local economy and helped to address the shortage of affordable rental housing for local residents by alleviating the competition between civilian and military families for off-base rental housing.