Political Quotes

“I come to the floor today to discuss the continuing need for addressing hard-hitting oversight of the Department of Defense. That need for oversight is as great today as it ever was. Waste is alive and very well at the Pentagon. I have a poster, a blowup of a cartoon published in the Washington Post in 1985, during my early years in the U.S. Senate. It shows Ernie Fitzgerald, a famous whistleblower, confronting what are quite obviously his chief adversaries, the big spenders at the Pentagon. As a senior Air Force official, Ernie Fitzgerald committed a crime. He says he ``committed truth.'' Ernie Fitzgerald is famous for, in 1968, exposing a $2.3 billion cost overrun on the C-5 aircraft program. In those days, having a senior Pentagon official like Ernie Fitzgerald speak the truth about a cost overrun on a high visibility program was unheard of. In fact, it was dangerous. It was so dangerous that it cost Ernie Fitzgerald his job. That is why I like to call Ernie Fitzgerald the father of whistleblowers. The cartoon also depicts the infamous $640 toilet seat that made history back in those days as one example of the terrible waste at the Defense Department. That happened in 1985, when I, as a first-term Senator, began watchdogging the Pentagon. After a report uncovered a $640 toilet seat and a $400 hammer, I began asking very tough questions, such as: How could the bureaucrats possibly justify paying such exorbitant prices?…”