Political Quotes

“The argument for committee infallibility continues to lack any persuasive effect. The gentleman said I am offering an amendment without analysis. I am offering the President's budget. I very much have to disagree that the President and the National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Joint Chiefs did no analysis. That simply is not worthy of consideration. The argument is that our committee, which we designated, is infallible, and the administration and all of the people involved in national security did no informational work here at all. The gentleman mentioned that we need to protect private investment. Well, I would disagree that that is an absolute national security priority. I just voted in committee for the Export-Import Bank, to protect it, but the argument that we have got to in a secret budget fund economists and others to analyze economics and that once the committee has put its imprimatur on the figure it is unchallengeable is simply not sensible. I do think we have a right to say given the priorities, given priorities in the environment and law enforcement on the streets and other things, all of which are hurting in this budget, we would rather not put an extra x hundred million dollars into economic analysis by the intelligence people.”