February 20, 2009 - BEND, OR -- Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.) issued the following statement on the placement of Kingsley air base on a list of potential military facility closures in Oregon. Walden attended a briefing at Kingsley with Col. Jim Miller on Monday.
"Kingsley employs 1,000 and has a $69.3 million direct impact on the local economy, with a 7-time multiplier on top of that. Kingsley is the finest F-15 training center in the country. Someone show me a model where the closure of Kingsley makes any sense economically or with respect to homeland security. Especially at a time when our National Guard is relied on more heavily for service overseas than ever before, our servicemen and servicewomen shouldn't have to come home to a shuttered base. I hope by even having this on the state's list to potentially cut, it won't send the wrong signal to Washington and hurt our efforts to expand the national security mission and improve the facility on the base."

Representative Greg Walden represents the Oregon’s Second Congressional District, which is comprised of 20 counties in eastern, southern, and central Oregon. He is a member of the Committee on Energy and Commerce and the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.