Political Quotes

“I wanted to talk for just a couple of minutes following the eulogy and the little memorial discussion that we had with respect to our old friend Floyd Spence who really represented the idea that you needed to have a strong national defense to maintain all of our other freedoms and who dedicated his career as a member of the Committee on Armed Services and ultimately the chairman of the committee to national defense. I thought that the best service we could render to Floyd right now would be to remind our colleagues that we still have a lot of work to do with respect to national defense. We are still short on ammunition, measurably short. We are $3 billion short in terms of the Army's requirements and several hundred million dollars short with respect to the Marine Corps. We are still vastly short on ammunition. Spare parts, we have now cannibalization taking place across the array of front line aircraft, the front line fighter. I am talking about F-15s, F-15Es and F-16s. Their mission-capable rates are dropping off the cliff, meaning that they now are not as ready as they used to be to be able to go out and do their mission and come back. We still have personnel problems. We are still some 800-plus pilots short in the United States Air Force and across the services. We have lots of personnel shortages. So we have a need, Mr. Speaker, to spend about an additional $50 billion per year on top of what we are spending right now.”