Political Quotes

“I rise in strong support of the amendment from the gentleman from Florida. Cutting spending is not easy, but this one should be. I think the gentleman hit it right on the head. You are talking about the Department of Defense, the Secretary of Defense, the President, the generals who command the field all recommending against the development of a second engine. We should listen. Now, we have heard a lot of discussion tonight, as we have when we've debated this issue in the past, about the dual issues of both quality and cost. But if this was really about the issues of both quality and cost, then we wouldn't just be talking about building a second engine. We would be talking about building a second plane; we would be talking about building a second aircraft carrier. But as Representative Courtney so eloquently stated, the reason that we aren't talking about competitive bidding for a second plane, the reason why we aren't talking about two or three different aircraft carriers is that our generals, our military professionals have told us over and over again that it would be a tactical and operational nightmare to have a diversity of operational platforms with respect to these large operating systems. This isn't about quality in the end, because the Army, the Navy, the Secretary of Defense tell us that it's not about quality. If this was really about quality and cost, then we would have actual real competition. But we're not going to have real actual competition.”