Political Quotes

“First, let me express my thanks to Mr. Andrews, to the committee, and to the ranking members for all of their work by bringing this bipartisan bill to the floor today. My amendment is similar, but I think it adds a very important clarification to the bill. There is a really important program in title IV of this legislation which seeks to have the Department of Defense do outreach to nontraditional suppliers, to nontraditional manufacturers, throughout the country. With a little bit of outreach and with a little bit of contracting help, those small manufacturers, by and large, which may have very small numbers of contracts with the Department of Defense or which may have no contracts at all, can be future suppliers and future members of our industrial military base in this country. This amendment simply seeks to make sure that that program is operational for firms here in the United States of America, specifically targeting the help to the national technology and industrial base, which is defined as those companies in the United States and Canada. We know why it is so important to spend our military acquisition dollars here at home. First, we need to be using taxpayer dollars to grow jobs right here in our backyard. By better targeting U.S. taxpayer dollars, 70 percent of which are used to purchase goods through the military budget here in the United States, we are growing the American workforce.”