Political Quotes

“Let me take back my time and explain to the gentleman why it's important to have report language. You start programs and you also put policies in place. If you put those in the bill and those are locked into law and then you get a call from the administration and they say, You know, we looked at this thing and there's not enough long-lead materials to build this. You are strait-jacketed. The administration can't come back and say, We want to reprogram. At that point, you have to change the law. If you have a policy, and here you have wars in two theaters, if you have a policy you have to change, you can't just call up and you can't work the policy out with the Army, the Air Force, the Navy, the Marine Corps. You now have to go back and change the law. If you have looked at the reprogramming requests that are made by the Pentagon, they are usually made with respect to some factor that has changed. You would have hundreds of changes that now require changes in the law, and in a very real way, having report language that gives flexibility to the administration, is for their benefit.”