Political Quotes

“we have just heard the ranking minority member tell us that, if we spend a little more money now on these satellites, it will allow us to reduce later on. I think this is now the fifth year in a row that I have heard that, and have yet to see the result of it. My amendment would reduce the authorization, which is already a significant amount over the appropriation, and again I apologize for the stupid way in which we will have to carry out this debate because we are not allowed to mention the gross numbers. The American public is not to be allowed to know what the total of billions of dollars is that we are spending, and we can talk about percentage increases, but we cannot talk about how much. This is an effort to reduce from last year's budget rather than increase. The committee's proposal would increase by about 1.7 percent. Now the President asked for 5.5-percent increase. I think both are in error. This would be a 3-percent decrease. It would be about, oh, a little less than 1 percent less than last year. The point is, Mr. Chairman, that there has been a diminution in the task of intelligence greater than the diminution in any other government's job. At the maximum we were spending about 10 percent more than this bill calls for because we were confronting the Soviet Union, the nuclear-armed Soviet Union.…”