Political Quotes

“I had hoped to offer two amendments to the continuing resolution, CR, we are considering to fund government operations through April 28, 2017. I want to say from the outset that I am disappointed the Republican majority has decided to consider another CR rather than pass full appropriations bills. This is an abdication of our responsibility to govern, and there are real negative effects for the American people. As vice chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, I can tell you that 4 more months of a CR poses significant funding issues for the Department of Defense, DOD. Given the thousands of funding lines that make up the DOD budget and the changing needs from one fiscal year to the next, it does not work to simply continue spending from year to year. For example, rolling the fiscal year 2016 DOD budget into fiscal year 2017 means that procurement accounts are overfunded by $6 billion, while operations and maintenance accounts--those primarily concerned with maintaining military readiness--are underfunded by $12 billion. This is not the support our men and women in uniform deserve. To mitigate the worst of these effects, the bill before us contains a very small number of changes to particular funding needs, so-called anomalies. The two amendments I filed today suggest two more such changes, to ensure that important DOD medical research efforts and significant increases in spending for Israeli missile defense programs move forward.…”