Political Quotes

“And my good friends who serve on these committees with me, this is not about the President and this is not about missile defense. This is about the unnecessary expenditure of a very important national asset--our money. Testimony given in committee indicates that we may or may not need an east coast missile defense site. And we also know that the current missiles that are being used for these anti-ballistic missiles don't work. At least there's a failure, and there's been repeated failures just in the boost system, let alone if we can hit Iraq with a rock. So the problem here is this money should not be spent now for this site. It is absolutely clear: the Department of Defense from last year's budget and appropriation has sufficient money to determine where to locate a site. With regard to the cancellation of the missile that was discussed a few minutes ago, it doesn't fit in the existing sites, and so they canceled it because it doesn't fit in the hole in the ground. So what are we doing here? This is $70 million, not a vast amount of money when considering the appropriation for the Department of Defense, but that's $70 million that could be used to--well, how about protecting a levee of some city in the United States? It could be used to much better effect. There was another amendment that I understand that failed that took another $100 million or so out of this particular thing.…”