Political Quotes

“Well, I couldn't agree with what my colleague said more. I mean, we do want to have a balanced approach. Nobody's arguing--certainly I'm not arguing that we should eliminate outsourcing or the privatization of certain services where that makes sense. In fact, what the amendment that we're proposing here would do is keep in law a process whereby the Department of Defense looks at its contracting activities through a commonsense lens and determines whether continued outsourcing in some instances makes sense, whether additional outsourcing makes sense. Right now, there does not exist a comprehensive inventory of these contracting activities, so how are you going to make a commonsense judgment about where to allocate your resources going forward if you don't have that at your disposal? That's why the requirement was put in place. I think it's very bipartisan in that sense because it's saying let's get as much knowledge as we can so the government can run efficiently and make these decisions in an efficient way, which is very much in keeping with what the public wants to see these days. So this is about good government. It's about having good information at your fingertips. We think that the requirement to do this kind of inventory ought to stay in place. The underlying bill right now would remove that commonsense requirement, and this amendment would put it back. That is why we are putting forward the amendment today. I reserve the balance of my time.”