Political Quotes

“I yield myself 2 minutes. Let me just say in response to my colleague who has just spoken that we did something that was unprecedented in this bill, which was look into the future, into the last several months of this year, and decide that, even though we all agreed and the budget chairman announced on the floor and to the world that we were going to need supplementals of $50 billion this next year, we decided that we did not want to have any strain on the troops in the closing months of this year before Congress, after the election, could put together another supplemental. So we provided this bridge, which even the gentleman will admit carries us well into the next year, into the next calendar year; and we did fully provide for the additional forces that we have in the field, the 1st Armored Division, which is going to be an additional $750,000. For all of the armor upgrades, we have got roughly $1 billion for armor upgrades in Humvees and trucks, for all of the modernization that the chief of staff of the Army needs for modularity, that is, building this new brigade centric force for the U.S. Army. The reason we do not go off into the new year and say, okay, should it be $50 billion, should it be $75 billion is very simple. We cannot see the future. We do not know how much weight this new Iraqi military is going to be able to take on their shoulders, how fast we are going to be able to make this handoff; and all of those things drive the costs of operation.”