Chuck Grassley: “I hope that I have a chance to have some dialog in a very formal way of educating our colleagues about this issue I am…”

“I hope that I have a chance to have some dialog in a very formal way of educating our colleagues about this issue I am raising, and I hope to have that with some members of the Senate Armed Services Committee as well as prominent members of the Senate Appropriations Committee who are in the Chamber. To remind my colleagues, this is the issue of whether or not we need 12 more Marine generals. This issue, I admit, appears to be micromanaging the Defense Department. Most of my speeches on the Defense Department come during the budget debate, the budget resolution debate which is very much a macro-approach on defense expenditures. I think, however, that in the sense of micromanaging we raise a point of how money is being spent because if my amendment which I will offer would be adopted, I do not pretend to subtract big dollars from the appropriations bill that is before us. The issue here is a broader issue of what are the priorities within our military establishment.”