Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, earlier today I took up this issue by attempting to strike the $15 million that is appropriated in this bill for the initial phases of figuring out how to make the F-35 dual- capable, that is, capable of handling both conventional as well as nuclear weapons. This is the opening of a very, very expensive process. Probably well over somewhere between 10 and $20 billion will be spent on this entire program. The F-35 is our plane of the future. It is extremely important for the defense of this Nation. However, the issue of whether that plane should be dual-capable or not really revolves around the role that the F-35 dual-capable plane will play in the European theater. Presently, we are deploying in Europe the B-61 bomb. That bomb is now being life-extended, rebuilt for the purposes of doing what it has done before, that is, to sit there basically unused. It will be both a tactical as well as a strategic weapon. There is a major cost factor that will affect this budget and future budgets for years to come with this initial decision that we are now making. What this amendment does is to simply build off a portion of the bill that is already in place. It does call for a report. This amendment fences off the $15 million, says you can't use it until such time as the details that I add to the existing language of the bill before us-- those details were read by the reader a moment ago.…”