Political Quotes

“I am very pleased to bring to the House what I believe to be an extraordinary--and I say to the gentleman from the Rules Committee [Mr. Dreier], nonmundane conference report to accompany H.R. 889, making emergency supplemental appropriations for the Department of Defense and rescinding additional budget authority. We need to adopt the conference report so that we can respond quickly to what we all acknowledge is an emergency in funding readiness operations. First, I want to acknowledge the valiant efforts of the distinguished chairman of the Subcommittee on National Security, the gentleman from Florida, [Mr. Young] and all of the members of that subcommittee, as well as all of the subcommittee chairmen who participated in the conference. They have worked diligently, along with the Members of the other body, to confect this conference agreement and have it ready today before the recess begins. It was not an easy conference, but I think that everyone worked so hard that we ended up with an extremely valuable product which will not only provide needed assistance and support to the young men and women in uniform in our armed services but ultimately will maintain the national security of this country. Mr. Speaker, this bill contains $3,041,700,000 in new budget authority for the Department of Defense. All of this budget authority is paid for, mostly from other less critical defense programs. We offset $2,259,956,000 from the Defense Department.”