Political Quotes

“First, I want to address my friend from Washington (Mr. Dicks). When the President asked for $6 billion within a supplemental for this operation, I wanted to give him $28.7 billion. We ended up, on this side of the aisle, giving the people in uniform, the people who count, $12 billion. We came up with twice as much for combat operations and for military accounts, for ammunition, for spare parts, for equipment than the President wanted. In fact, he complained he had too much. The gentleman knows what the problem is here. The problem is in the fiscal year 2000 budget the President did not come up with a doggone cent for this operation. Everything that we have got in that $280-some billion budget is designated for certain things, like ammunition, where we are extremely low. We are $13 billion low on ammunition; spare parts. We crashed 55 aircraft last year in peacetime operations. We have got 10,000 troops on food stamps. We are 18,000 sailors short in the Navy. The gentleman knows, as my good friend who works these issues with me, that we have a lot of deficiencies. And yet when the President came up with the budget, he did not put a dime toward Yugoslav operations.”