W. Todd Akin: “Mr. Chairman, I rise today on a subject that is of great deal of interest to the Army, and that is what's called the…”

“Mr. Chairman, I rise today on a subject that is of great deal of interest to the Army, and that is what's called the Future Combat Systems. The Army has one basic modernization program, the only comprehensive modernization program that they've had in the last more than 30 years. So obviously this is of great interest to the Army, and the Army would like to see it funded at the level that it came across from the administration. And what we've done is we've cut over $200 million from Future Combat Systems. My amendment simply restores a portion, $100 million plus, of that $200 million cut. Now the thing that we have to understand about this is this is a very complicated program. And next year, at least in theory, there is a 'go, no go,' either we're going to support this program or we're going to cancel it, and there is no fallback position. So here we are, 1 year before the final decision, and what we're doing is one more time inflicting a death of 1,000 slashes. Now, last year we tried to just slit its throat with $800 million, but this year we're simply cutting it a little over $200 million. It seems to be a very bad time when we are just 1 year away from making the final decision, go or no go, to cut money from it. Now, if there is one way that you want to make a scheduled slip, the best way to do it is cut money out because then you don't have as many people working on it, it causes delays in the program.”