Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I am going to briefly comment on a number of points the Senator from Arizona made. First, he read a list of items that he thought were wasteful items that we added to the bill. I went through a long list of the items we added to the bill, probably three pages of types of items that we added in the Armed Services Committee that support the troops, their readiness, their capabilities, their benefits. He suggested--in fact, stated that these spending items were put in the bill without debate, discussion, or amendment. I first want to comment on that because, as the Presiding Officer knows as a very valued and esteemed member of our committee, we spent days on markup. I think we have at least 60 amendments--at least that is my recollection. Every proposed funding item in this bill and every item of the bill and report language was shared with the minority staff at least a full week before the beginning of the markup. This is, by the way, about twice as much time as was provided by any other committee chairman I can remember in the 30-plus years I have been here in order to give the minority staff an opportunity to look at what the proposed markup documents were. We then provided the minority staff with several days to suggest changes to the proposed language. A number of significant changes, as a matter of fact, were made on the basis of those discussions and recommendations from the minority staff.…”