Political Quotes

“I thank the chairman of the subcommittee for the great work he has done and for his leadership on this issue. I do agree with my colleague from California, yes, we need to do modernization. If you will remember, President Obama pledged to modernize our nuclear forces in return for the Senate passing the New START Treaty. The current national posture review, which has been endorsed by security officials from several administrations going back, both Democratic and Republican, says this: Maintaining and operating our current aging nuclear forces now requires between 2 and 3 percent of the DOD budget. The replacement program to rebuild the triad for decades of service will peak for several years at only approximately 4 percent beyond the ongoing 2 to 3 percent needed for maintenance and operations. This 6.4 percent, just slightly under the 7 percent that the chairman mentioned, of the current DOD budget required for the long-term replacement program represents less than 1 percent of the overall Federal budget. That is a bargain. Nuclear warfare is, God forbid it should ever happen, an existential threat. One percent of our Federal budget devoted to preventing that is truly worth investing in. The modernization needs to take place. It is well within the moneys that are going to be available to the Department of Defense in the coming years.…”