Chuck Grassley: “first of all, we have been hearing from a lot of very competent Senators who are members of Defense Appropriations, who…”

“first of all, we have been hearing from a lot of very competent Senators who are members of Defense Appropriations, who are members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who have the responsibility to make sure that we meet our defense needs. I compliment them for doing that. We have people on the Armed Services Committee who are using budget arguments rather than national security arguments. I think if they want more money for defense, they have to be able to justify it on national security grounds. While I have these good friends of mine who are members of this committee saying why we ought to spend more, one of the reasons I feel very good about having Senator Exon as a cosponsor of my amendment is because he brings good judgment to this issue because he sits both as a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and he is also the senior Democrat on the Budget Committee. So I believe that Senator Exon as well has a point of view that he can bring to this, and I thank him for doing that, but I hope that my colleagues on this side of the aisle who oppose what I am doing know that we have taken both the national security argument and the budget argument into consideration.”