Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I certainly appreciate this comment by the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee because the Secretaries of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs have all said our strategic deterrent has to be our No. 1 priority. Why is that? It is because this is the one area in which the entire U.S. security is at risk. This is the existential threat--the threat that could destroy the entire United States. Obviously, a nuclear war between either the United States and China or Russia would be devastating to the entire world, but because it is a direct threat to the homeland, it has to be the No. 1 priority. Yet, as the chairman notes, through our negligence, the administration's and Congress's past, we have allowed three things to deteriorate all at the same time, and the bill is now coming due on all three. Therefore, it is going to be a difficult proposition to get funded. The first are the laboratories in which our nuclear weapons were designed. There was testing and, to some extent, they have been modified or refurbished and have had their life extended through a program operated at our National Labs. The National Labs are in incredible need of modernization. We have a 1946-built facility in which our uranium is being produced, and the roof is literally falling in--I have been there--in Oak Ridge, TN. In Los Alamos, there is a great need to make changes, and we have to create a new facility for the production of plutonium pits.…”