Political Quotes

“The defense bill passed this House with almost every Republican voting against it. It was a bill that provided $733 billion, a figure that the Joint Chiefs of Staff suggested publicly. It was a figure that I know personally was a figure that was deemed acceptable by the leadership of the authorizing committee and the appropriating committee on the Republican side. The rhetoric was totally partisan. We have now made a deal, and we are now going to save defense because we did $5 billion more. The figure last year, of course, was somewhere around $700 billion, a little over. I will tell my friend that we believe on our side of the aisle that the opposition to the defense bill was totally partisan, no attempt at bipartisanship. Yes, the Republicans had some success in getting bipartisan bills through. Why? Because we were prepared to vote in a bipartisan way. That is the difference. We were prepared to vote in a bipartisan way. We were prepared to accept my friend's party was the majority. Mr. Speaker, we understand when you are in the minority you work to get the best objective you think is possible. We did that, and the gentleman, Mr. Speaker, says that they got bipartisan bills done because Democrats voted for them, including me. But I know the number was an acceptable number, and it was a number suggested by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Yet we heard rhetoric after rhetoric of how this was letting down the Defense Department. What did they do?…”