Political Quotes

“I thank the chairman of the full committee. I would urge defeat of this amendment. It would reverse what the Obama administration and Secretary of Defense Hagel came forward with on March 15 of this year. After seeing the North Korean threat only increase, they appropriately came to the decision to add more Ground- Based Interceptors. Now, I believe the administration has been too slow to appropriately address the threats we have from in-coming missiles, but this is a good step forward, and so I applaud that. The Secretary said: We will take steps in the United States to stay ahead of the challenge posed by Iran and North Korea's development of longer-range ballistic missile capabilities. I have to agree with that. How we came to this point, I know that there has been some disagreement in the intelligence community, but the Defense Intelligence Agency said that they have moderate confidence that the North Koreans can put together long-range ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads. That is a threat we should take seriously. This amendment, if adopted, would not recognize that threat. Also, by doing advanced procurement, we save the taxpayers $200 million. So this is ill-advised from a financial standpoint. The military is adopting a fly-before-you-buy approach. There was one successful test a few months ago, another test is scheduled toward the end of this year. Those will be the two tests that the author of this amendment says that he wants.…”