Barbara Boxer: “I am proud to have their support. There can be no stronger advocate of the strongest possible military than Senators…”

“I am proud to have their support. There can be no stronger advocate of the strongest possible military than Senators Lieberman and Graham. We know that. We have seen them here. They are supporters because they understand, as I do, that it weakens our country when we do these kinds of deals. The amendment that my friend has offered is fine; there is nothing wrong with it, but it does not get to the heart of this particular contract. It is general, whereas the amendment I have offered--and, by the way, it is just a sense of the Senate. It is nice. But what I have offered says that if the Secretary of Defense finds that the Army Corps has not, in fact, put the rest of this contract out for bid by the date of September 30--and they have promised to do so by August 31--then they have to tell us why they did not bid out this contract. I am going to put up a chart that shows a copy of the congressional notification of this contract. It looks scary when one sees it because there is lots in it, but I have highlighted in yellow the things my colleagues ought to know, because maybe they do not know this. I want to compliment the minority ranking member of the Committee on Government Reform in the House, Henry Waxman, for doing so much of the research.”