Political Quotes

“I thank my colleague from the Silver State and also the ranking member from the subcommittee. Mr. Speaker, I really shouldn't be here talking about this bill right now. The reason this bill was necessitated is that the public law says that the Secretary of the Army can have monuments placed only in those sections of Arlington National Cemetery that are designated by the Secretary for such placement and only on land that the Secretary deems not suitable for burial. There are about 30 million square feet at Arlington National Cemetery when you take the presently under- construction addition and the planned additional constructed addition-- 30 million square feet. This bill seeks this amount of space out of 30 million square feet. For those of you who are challenged by visual numbers, that is 5 square feet that they have asked for for all services--not just the Army but all services--and to commemorate the fact that they were nearly 10 percent of the casualties in the Vietnam war--the Helicopter war. I understand graves to be the primary mission for Arlington National Cemetery, and I respect that. I understand that there is a concern about being overrun with requests for memorials, and I concur with that concern. My problem is that that public law doesn't say there will be no memorials at Arlington National Cemetery.…”