Political Quotes

“This year in the Department of Defense we are going to be spending about $40 billion for procurement of weapons systems. That is for aircraft, for ships, for submarines, and for all that equipment that our Armed Forces use, so we spend about $40 billion for equipment. Well, folks, we have about 300,000 Government shoppers buying that equipment. Those 300,000 Government shoppers, that is two U.S. Marine Corps of shoppers. I call them the 173rd Airborne shopping division, call them the Big Red One shopping division, but those shoppers are necessary because we have built a mountainous system of regulations that says if you buy a military airplane for $100 million, you will spend about $40 million that you pay in salaries to the Pentagon for the service of buying it. If we do not start reducing the regulations, and this bill goes a long way toward doing that, we are going to continue to maintain two U.S. Marine Corps for the service of shopping for weapon systems. That is not in the interest of the taxpayers.”