Political Quotes

“No one is arguing, Mr. Chairman, that there is no benefit to the United States from our presence in Europe. What we are arguing is that there is at least as much benefit to the Europeans. They simply have not been doing a fair share. The gentleman from Florida who just spoke cited the contribution we get from the Japanese, but that is a direct result of this Congress, over the objections of the administration then in power, mandating that the Japanese pay us some part of the nonpersonnel costs. I believe we ought to be doing the same with Western Europe. There is an enormous disparity between the percentage of the American gross domestic product that goes to the military and that of our European allies, and it is all the more important that we do this now, because the Europeans are now facing pressure to cut their budgets, to get their deficits down to 3 percent so they can get into the common European currency.”