Rodney Frelinghuysen: “I thank the chairman for yielding. I thank him for his leadership. First of all, it is a pleasure to rise to support…”

“I thank the chairman for yielding. I thank him for his leadership. First of all, it is a pleasure to rise to support this bill, and let me specifically address the defense portion, which is, indeed, our primary constitutional responsibility, a strong national defense. First I want to thank my ranking member, Pete Visclosky, for his help in crafting this bill. It was not an easy task, given the short deadlines, but I think we have produced a bipartisan product that meets our national defense needs. I thank all the committee members and our professional staff for their hard work. A few words about our allocation, which is a direct result of the decision we made in mid-December. The base allocation is $486.9 billion, which is $29 billion below the President's budget request and $25.7 billion below the bill we passed, the defense bill we passed in July. The Overseas Contingency allocation is $85.2 billion, which is $4.5 billion above the request. Even with the small increase in the Overseas Contingency allocation, which we essentially use for buy-back readiness, the subcommittee's task was formidable. We cut $24.5 billion from the administration's budget request. I want to assure my colleagues that not many programs were left untouched. We did our best to protect quantities of critical major weapons systems and avoid significant disruption to vital programs.…”