Political Quotes

“I just want to make sure my friends understand. The Senator from Texas does not just have a toothache and needs a dentist. He needs a root canal, and it is a bad one and he needs some other experts to look at the situation. I have to let him know that the experts we have used so far have told us that while the Congress has said to close these bases and while the authorizers say in effect they are closed, we have not closed 15 percent. We have closed less than 5 percent. The reason we have closed less than 5 percent is because Congress keeps passing environmental standards which must be met by the military, and these bases now are costing us more to close than they cost to operate. As a matter of fact, part of the problem is it was estimated that we could close some and sell them, and the revenue would be turned back into the Treasury and would be available to help sustain the military at the level we thought it would be sustained. The sales are abysmally low. No one wants to bid on this land because of the environmental problems. They are not willing to take them. As a consequence, we have the situation where, although we have ordered about 15 percent to be closed, they have not even come close to that. We are now going to order some more to be closed, and we are going to increase spending on them. It will actually be more expensive to go into it than to let them be delayed for a couple years.”