Political Quotes

“I thank the gentlewoman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H. Res. 995. As many of us have stood on this floor and said, We have planes that can't fly, ships that can't sail, and troops that can't deploy. Under the Obama administration, we saw an alarming trend where we allowed our Armed Forces to be hollowed out, and we allowed a critical readiness crisis to develop. Over the last 2 years, members of the House Armed Services Committee and others have fought tirelessly to ensure our military gets the level of funding they need, not only to fix our current readiness crisis but also to build up our force to a size to match the current threat environment, which is the most complex one we have faced since World War II. While I am proud of the work we have done so far to raise the top line Defense number, there is another critical piece to the puzzle. Continuing resolutions are just as detrimental to our national security as the Budget Control Act caps. Every day we don't pass the Defense Appropriations bill, we are denying resources to our servicemembers and making it harder for them to do their job. Continuing resolutions and budgetary uncertainty also end up costing the taxpayers more money. The Secretary of the Navy has said that the Department of Navy alone wasted $4 billion since 2011 because of continuing resolutions. That is $4 billion of real money that could have been used to fund more ships, more planes, or more maintenance.…”