I'd like to thank my friends from Florida, Mr. Grayson and Mr. Hastings, for offering this amendment. It makes eminently good sense. It says this: if a procurement officer decides to buy the product that isn't the least expensive, a couple…

I commend the gentlemen from North Carolina and from Maine for offering the amendment and support it. The general rule under the law is that the Defense Department must buy goods and services made in the United States. There's an exception…

I, in fact, support this amendment. I think it not only adds important tools to the bill before the body today but to the law that was enacted last year. Both today's bill and last year's law require the Department of Defense to make early…

I want to commend and thank my friend from Virginia for his excellent amendment. We have tried to establish in this bill the idea that the Defense Department should coordinate the industrial base and broaden it so the servicemembers and…

I thank my friend from Mississippi for offering this very well-thought-out amendment. One of the key ideas of this bill is that we have a high-quality, well-trained acquisition workforce. Mr. Childers's amendment makes sure that that…

Mr. Hastings makes a very valid amendment to this bill that acknowledges that when we want to build the best workforce and brightest workforce, we should reach for diversity of the workforce. Mr. Hastings' amendment acknowledges the fact…

As I stated earlier, the basic mechanism in this bill is to provide performance criteria for the purchasing organizations within the Department of Defense. This amendment says that one criterion may be energy-efficiency standards in the…

I would like to thank my friend from Connecticut for offering this very important amendment which clarifies the legislation and which, I think, drives home a very important point. He has been very focused, as many of us have, on protecting…

Not only do we want to increase the number of people working on solving this problem, we want to increase the quality of their work. So this bill provides for education and training. It provides for diversification of our workforce. It…

In the CMS report the minority references, the ``M'' stands for Medicare. CMS is in the business of counting and accounting for the Medicare program. Here's what they said: Under the law before the health care bill passed, Medicare was…

There is a justifiable and broad consensus in our country and in this Congress that the regime in Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. The issue is how to achieve that objective and why to achieve that objective. We cannot act in isolation…

There are ugly signals saying that one Holocaust is not enough, that the Jewish state should be wiped off the face of the Earth. We ignore these ugly signals at our own peril. We should learn the terrible history of the thirties and not…