Political Quotes

“I stand in opposition to this amendment for a few reasons, not any as eloquent as the ones that have already been stated but for some fairly simple reasons, I think. Number one, what if one of us here, one of us Members, a Congressman, earmarked a $100 billion project today? If it were one of us who did this, who said that we're going to give this one job worth $100 billion to one company, I think there would be an outcry from all over. We don't do that anymore, and there's a reason we don't do it anymore: Because it leads to corruption, and it leads to people doing things that they should not be doing. We shouldn't give the DOD the same-- let's call it--temptations to have to give a $100 billion contract to one company. {time} 2000 Number two, competition. It's interesting now to see how things have switched where you have folks that have been talking about competition when it comes to health care, competition when it comes to business now saying that competition's going to bring quality down and bring costs up. That's not what competition does, Mr. Chairman. What competition does is bring quality up and bring costs down. I think there is definitely bipartisan agreement on that. And number three, I served in Afghanistan on my third tour and, when I was over there about midway through in 2007, an F-18 went down.…”