Political Quotes

“I want to address my good friend, Mr. Murtha, who pointed out that there was a shortage of Humvees back here, particularly up-armored Humvees. Well, let me show you how many Humvees we had at the end of the Clinton administration: up-armored Humvees, zero. We didn't have any up-armored Humvees for the National Guard to train on, for the Army to train on, for the National Guard to deploy or for the Army to deploy. We had zero. Actually, we had 1,300 at the end of 2000, 1,300. We now have 18,400 up-armored Humvees. We have got roughly 15 times as many up-armored Humvees as we had at the end of the Clinton administration. Now, let me remind my colleagues how much body armor we had at the end of the Clinton administration, body armor. If I hear another parent call up because they are listening to this debate and they are listening to information which is erroneous, I think it is important for us to remind them, there was nobody armored at the end of the Clinton administration, not one stitch of bulletproof armor at the end of the Clinton administration. Today there are just under 1 million sets of body armor for our troops. Now, let's talk about what we didn't fund in this bill. We didn't fund the ambush protection vehicles to the full extent that the Army asked for. The Army asked for $4.75 billion worth of ambush protection vehicles.”