Ronald Dellums: “I rarely walk into the well; I generally speak from where the ranking member and the chair speak, but I choose to speak…”

“I rarely walk into the well; I generally speak from where the ranking member and the chair speak, but I choose to speak from the well because I want to speak to each and every one of my colleagues face-to-face. First of all, for those of my colleagues who are the freshmen and the sophomore Members, that is half of this Congress, I would remind each and every one of them that they campaigned diligently on the integrity of balancing the budget. My colleagues were elected, Republican and Democrat, freshman and sophomore, on that basis. This was not contemplated in the 5-year balanced budget agreement. This is not about B-2's. We have 21. All of this hyperbole, as if some way we are this Third World country technologically, is bizarre, extreme, absurd and ridiculous. We have 21 B-2 bombers. My colleagues leap quickly from the B-2 to the B-52, but they do not pause at the 95 B-1B bombers that you spent $20.5 billion building and billions of additional dollars giving them conventional capability. Someone said the B-2 is the only long-range bomber. They know that is not true. The B-1 can fly as far as the B-2 flies. Both of them need tankers to refill them. What is this about? It is not even about the $331 million that I transferred. I just made a transfer. It could have been transferred anyplace. The point I am making is that this is not about transfer. It is about trade-off. It is about $27 billion.…”