Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, I thank the ranking member for yielding, and for your very hard work on this Department of Defense Appropriations bill. Mr. Chairman, as the daughter of a veteran, I know how important it is to fully fund and support our troops. I strongly support these provisions of this legislation. With that said, though, there are many provisions in this bill which I cannot support. These include nearly $500 billion in discretionary funding, with an increase of $4 billion above the fiscal year 2014 enacted level, which we have not seen for any other appropriations bill this year. This inflated level of spending fails to account, mind you, for the waste, fraud, and abuse that continue at the Pentagon. We must audit the Pentagon and reduce unnecessary Pentagon spending. This bill also includes nearly $80 billion for the overseas contingency operations slush fund, which is what it is, at a time when the President has not even made a specific request about how much is needed. This is outrageous, and this slush fund should be eliminated. Now I will be offering several amendments to this bill, one to limit operations in Afghanistan after 2014, as well as to repeal the 2001 blank check authorization. The farm bill, transportation bill, other bills, other authorizations have end dates. We need to end this. Come back to Congress, debate what we are going to do in Iraq, if anything, in terms of military strikes and, in fact, repeal the authorization on Afghanistan passed in 2001.”