Andrew P. Hunter: “let me just say that the distinguished whip on the other side has made a point that more time should be given to this…”

“let me just say that the distinguished whip on the other side has made a point that more time should be given to this issue. We are doing a $400 billion bill; and arguably the decisions on hundreds of weapons system that we are approving, both whether we are talking about the high-tech stuff or the low-tech stuff that we are bolstering in this bill, those decisions could have life and death impact, and yet we moved this bill through. I want to assure the gentleman that we gave more time to this issue. We did a 10-hour hearing on this issue, largely at the insistence of the distinguished ranking member, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), but we did a 10-hour hearing. That is more time than we gave any single weapons system in the entire DOD bill. So the argument can be made that we should have 10 times as many hearings as we have, and the gentleman knows that in this House and on this floor we have a myriad of responsibilities. We spent more time on this than any single weapons system in the entire DOD bill, and we had a 25-hour markup.”