John Joseph Moakley: “Mr. Speaker, the do-nothing Congress is limping to a pathetic end, one final $500 billion bill. Just to my left there is…”

“Mr. Speaker, the do-nothing Congress is limping to a pathetic end, one final $500 billion bill. Just to my left there is a copy bound with twine 2 feet tall. It weighs 40 pounds. Who among the rank and file Members of the House can say they have read and understood the entire package? Half the Members here could not even lift it, let alone read it. The chairman of the Committee on Rules said it was about readiness. For once we are in vague agreement. This bill is about readiness, campaign readiness. It is stuffed to the gills with election-year goodies. The gentleman meant military readiness, but from the quarter of a million dollars that the Pentagon is going to be forced to spend to study the effect of stay-awake gum on the troops, to the C-130J airplanes that they are going to be forced to buy that will be built in the Speaker's district, and they will have to retire other good planes 10 years early to accommodate them, it is much more of an assault on the orderly readiness of our troops than it is a help. Of the $7.5 billion stuffed into the Pentagon budget in this bill, perhaps $1.1 billion, 14 percent, can be said to truly be going to the readiness needs of our men and women in uniform. Is $1 billion more for the Star Wars fantasy that has wasted $50 billion, so far with no successful experiments, is that the readiness that our troops need? I think not.”