Political Quotes

“I thank the ranking member for yielding to me. Mr. Chairman, I, first of all, thank Chairwoman Granger. This is her first time leading the Defense Appropriations bill on the floor. She has done so under very difficult circumstances, with a steadfast commitment to maintaining the tradition of cooperative bipartisanship on our subcommittee, maintaining transparency, and taking a thoughtful approach to solving problems. Mr. Chairman, I would also like to express my immense gratitude to Chairman Frelinghuysen, Ranking Member Lowey, the members of our subcommittee, and our exceptional staff for all of their hard work. Mr. Chairman, we have a duty to provide predictable and timely appropriations to the Department of Defense and the rest of the Federal Government. This is a consistent request by our senior Defense leaders. However, the House bills exceed the cap of fiscal year 2018 defense spending established under the Budget Control Act of 2011 by $72.5 billion. If enacted as written and the budget control caps remain in place, the Department of Defense would face a sequestration of roughly 13 percent. The Department has still not recovered from the rash of problems caused the last time it was forced to deal with sequestration in 2013. In the second half of that fiscal year, the Department savaged its operations and maintenance accounts to continue ongoing contingency operations and to protect military personnel accounts.…”