Political Quotes

“I wanted to thank our great chairman for putting this package together, and the gentlewoman from California [Ms. Harman] who has worked so hard on it and all the Members on both sides of the aisle. I think one theme that we have heard this year on the floor with this national security bill is bipartisanship. We have had to have that because we have had very tough times, the dollars are very scarce, and we have had to come together and find ways to save money so that we can modernize and buy the equipment that everybody, including the Clinton administration, says we need for our people in uniform. I just wanted to mention one thing that I know Ms. Harman has an interest in, and I do. It is the fact that while we have pulled our Army down from 18 divisions to 10 divisions, and almost nobody knows about it, we did it almost under the cover of darkness, we pulled our fighter air wings down from 24 fighter air wings to 13, and our Navy ships from 546 to 346. We have kept an army, literally two Marine Corps of shoppers, of professional acquisition folks, in DOD, and we thought it was prudent and reasonable to have the professional shopping corps in DOD no bigger than the United States Marine Corps. And this reform bill does that. It brings it down to the same force level as the U.S. Marine Corps.”