Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I thank the ranking member for yielding. I voted for this bill in committee because we have brave servicemembers in harm's way that depend on it. But I want to make clear that I don't believe we have done our job to address the unbridled waste in this bill; billions of dollars, the sheer amount of waste in this bill, billions upon billions of dollars. And even worse, the bill, as currently written, sets us up to throw away billions more for years to come. I know it can be political suicide to take on defense contractors, but we owe the taxpayers a level of accountability and discipline. It is the same thing every single year, like the greatest hits of defense waste: the littoral combat ship, a combat ship that can't even survive combat, a ship on perpetual port call because it is always in need of repair, a ship the Navy said it needs only one of. But, apparently, the White House knows better, because they forced the Navy to ask for another one. And even that wasn't enough, because our committee decided to give them a third one. We are tripling the number of ships the Navy said they need. Now, how outrageous is that? That is $500 million a pop. That is $1 billion more than the Navy wanted. The F-35, the President has trumpeted how he brought down the price of this bloated program. But just a few days ago it was revealed that the bill for this program is actually going to jump 7 percent.…”