Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Let's deal with two things here. First, with regard to the ability of the Minuteman III to be serviceable for the next 17 years, in fact, it has to be for the GBSD or the Sentinel to be put in place. All the Sentinels will not arrive on day one. They will arrive year by year, Sentinel by Sentinel, over the next 17 years. The Minuteman IIIs will be maintained for that period of time, so it is not true that they cannot be maintained. They, in fact, will be. Secondly, are we talking about deterrence, or are we talking about dominance? Do we have to have more to deter, or do we have a good deterrence in the next decade with the Minuteman III, the submarines, the aircraft, and the bombers of many different designs? The fact of the matter is we have sufficient deterrence. The question is, do we want to dominate simply with numbers? We don't need to do that to deter, and we do have other priorities that we need to spend money on, much of which was discussed here. The issue for us, it seems to me, is should we delay, for a decade, the development and placement of the Minuteman III replacement--that is, the Sentinel. The answer is we have other things to do. We have other priorities, and we will be quite safe enough. We will quite have enough deterrence. With regard to the 87-1, that is being delayed because it cannot be developed in the near term. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.”