Political Quotes

“Mr. President, first, I want to thank Senator Fischer for all of her work on the Senate Armed Services Committee and in so many other areas. I am here to talk about the same subject, the National Defense Authorization Act. It may be difficult to understand the difference between appropriating and authorizing. We have two different sorts of committees here. One focuses on the resources funding their use, but they can't be used unless they are authorized. So every year for 58 years, we have come into the committee, we have heard differing opinions on priorities, but at the end of the day, the amazing thing about the Senate Armed Services Committee when it comes to the National Defense Authorization Act is that we always reach a bipartisan agreement. It passed out of the Senate Armed Services Committee with I believe unanimous support, and then it got passed out of the Senate. Normally, this happens in the June timeframe, maybe the July timeframe. Now here we are in November. Not only have we not passed the National Defense Authorization Act, but we are at risk of not passing anything. Now what we are hearing about is a so-called skinny bill that would just be the basic authorities while we are leaving everything else on the table. I am going to talk a little bit about the Personnel Subcommittee, which I chair, but what do authorities mean? It means research on new weapons systems.…”