Political Quotes

“I rise today to address some comments that were made. I came to the floor earlier to talk about $380 million of funding for the MEADS Program, which is the missile to nowhere. I sought, and continue to seek, to offer an amendment to the continuing resolution and the appropriations bill before the Senate right now to strike that funding, and then to transfer the funding from this missile to nowhere to the operations and maintenance fund so that our troops can use the money for important needs they have, especially in light of sequestration. My colleague from Illinois, Senator Durbin--for whom I certainly have great respect--came to the floor earlier to counter what I had to say. In fact, the Senator from Illinois said essentially that the U.S. taxpayers have truly invested in this program, and he suggested that if we were to cancel funding for this missile to nowhere, we would be incurring damages, or that our allies who have entered into this MEADS Program with us--under the agreements we have entered into, our allies--in particular the Germans and the Italians--would be able to seek damages from us, so, therefore, we would incur damage costs by terminating it. I want to point out, first of all, not just in my view, this is wrong based on the plain language of the memorandum of understanding we have with our allies. In fact, I go back to first-year contracts class in law school.…”