Political Quotes

“I am very pleased to join my colleague from South Carolina in an effort to make a small reduction in the Appropriations Committee's recommendation. Our colleague from New Jersey is right, the Constitution gives this power to the Congress, not to the Appropriations Committee, to the entire Congress. The cuts that are being talked about consist, in the numbers--that I have seen in light of the chairman of the Armed Services Committee--are entirely due to the fact that we have had a drawdown of the troops in Iraq. Now I shouldn't stop at the fact that we did reduce the money we're spending in Iraq, because that's the problem with this budget. Yes, we have threats. The problem with this budget is it is dealing with the current threats, and it's dealing with past threats. This budget fully funds a capacity to win a thermonuclear war with the Soviet Union. I do not think that's a significant threat today. This continues the commitment made courageously by Harry Truman in a bipartisan way to defend Western and Central Europe against Stalin and his hordes because we went into Europe 65 years ago when the Communists were menacing and the European nations were weak, and we said we will protect you. We are still doing that. They're not weak, and they're not threatened; but we are still protecting them. Look at the budgets as a percentage of gross domestic product from all of those wealthy nations in Western Europe. They are less than half of ours.…”