Roy Blunt: “I appreciate my good friend from Illinois allowing me to go ahead and talk about the Defense bill at this time, but…”

“I appreciate my good friend from Illinois allowing me to go ahead and talk about the Defense bill at this time, but doing it in the context of where we are on the floor right now. Mr. President, defending the country is the Congress's most important constitutional responsibility. Abraham Lincoln said that government should do for people only those things that people cannot better do for themselves. If there is anything at the top of that list, this is at the top of that list. So it is critical that we have this discussion, that we pass this bill as soon as possible in order to give our men and women in uniform the tools they need to do their job and the certainty we need to know how that job is going to be done from the point of view of what the Government can and needs to provide. While this bill we are debating today is only about next year's defense program, we should not lose sight of the fact that our budget environment is more challenging all the time and whether the automatic budget cuts to future defense happen, we do know we are going to have to be more thoughtful, more cautious about how we get the most for our investment in defense. Everybody else in America has spent the last 20 years figuring out how you focus on a better result from less investment, and defense is going to have to be there as well. Still, that does not mean it is not a top priority for the Federal Government.…”