Political Quotes

“The amendment I bring forward is a very basic, straightforward, commonsense amendment that deals with the funding priorities within the Department of Defense. We know we are living in a post-sequester world. We have many hearings here on Capitol Hill where we have generals and, in fact, even the Secretary of Defense talking about the threats to military operations through the sequester cuts. We all know that those are real, and especially in these tight economic times, and even if we weren't in tight economic times, but especially right now, we ought to be watching every single dollar that is spent within the Department of Defense and work to find ways to make smarter use of those dollars. One of the things that we've found as we've combed through is that the Department of Defense has been entering into contracts to buy renewable fuels, biodiesel and other forms of renewable fuels to supplant what are the traditional, conventional fuels. The problem is that the contracts they are entering into are tremendously more expensive to the taxpayer than if they just bought conventional fuel. So what this amendment would do is to say that the Department of Defense cannot enter into those contracts to buy nontraditional fuels at these higher costs. I want to give a couple of examples. I think it is important to note a few of them because this is something that has been happening recently that we found.…”