Political Quotes

“Thank you very much. Mr. President, standing here listening to the debate and discussion by colleagues on both sides of the aisle really makes the point that many of us are saying. We need a new budget agreement. We have people-- I think we all agree on both sides of the aisle that we need to defend America. There is no doubt about that. In order to do that, we need to look at national security both in its funding for the Department of Defense, but we also need to be looking at what are the components to national security. Many of the key agencies that are not in the Department of Defense are also important to the national security. Yet, at the same time, we have defense with this budget gimmick, and that is what it is. It is a budget gimmick to avoid the caps we have on spending on both defense and discretionary spending. What this bill is, is a gimmick to have the money through something called OCO, which was meant to be a specific expense for overseas contingency funds. It was meant to deal with specific wars. Now it has been plussed-up by several millions and millions of dollars to avoid the budget caps. This isn't a budget debate here. I will be saying more about it on the floor. But I just want to say to my colleagues, think about national security. Yes, we do need a strong national defense and we do need to support our troops and we do need to support our military families. We do need to support our troops. We do need to support our military families.…”