Political Quotes

“I rise this morning to speak in favor of the National Defense Authorization Act. We are currently negotiating with Members of the Republican and Democratic Parties on how to consider amendments. We will eventually get there, as we do every year, because the NDAA bill has passed Congress--the Senate and the House-- and has been signed by the President for 57 years in a row on a wonderfully bipartisan basis. I expect, when it is all said and done, that will happen again this year. As a matter of fact, I was just speaking to a group of Hawaiians who were gathered together under the leadership of Senator Mazie Hirono. Senator Hirono is the ranking member of the subcommittee that I chair, the Seapower Subcommittee. We were able to make the point and have been able to make the point at several forums about what a bipartisan issue this is, to protect our country through a strong Navy and through the provisions that we will enact under the Seapower title. Of course, this bipartisan exercise is a very important fulfillment of our constitutional responsibility. It is right there in the preamble--to ``provide for the common defence.'' And that is what our subcommittee has done. The bill this year authorizes $716 billion for national defense. This is an increase from last year, and we finally got rid of the notion that we can somehow be a safe and secure nation and have this defense sequestration that had come upon us due to our inability to deal with the budget.…”