Political Quotes

“I thank the subcommittee chairman for yielding, and I do want to applaud my friend and colleague from California for her desire to fund nonproliferation. That is a worthy goal that we all agree with, but right now, NNSA is going to be spending in the bill that we are debating $1.6 billion for that worthy goal, and to allow the Department of Defense to go in that direction also would dilute the money that they need so badly for readiness and training, paying our men and women in uniform, providing them the food and weapons that they need. So for that reason, I, too, oppose this amendment and ask for a ``no'' vote. Nuclear nonproliferation efforts simply don't need more money, and if you don't believe me, believe General Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. At our March 16 hearing, he said, in response to a question of my colleague from California, Ms. Sanchez: I speak in this regard on behalf of the Joint Chiefs because, of course, we have discussed and debated this among ourselves, and I think we have allocated an appropriate and adequate amount of money into nonproliferation in our budget. So simply put, our senior military officials agree that the nonproliferation budget is already sufficient, and therefore, this amendment is unnecessary. This is the fourth year in a row we have debated it, and I would just ask that we stop the debate on this amendment and vote ``no.''”