Political Quotes

“This amendment is not about fiscal security. It is arbitrary. It is arbitrary cuts without any reference whatsoever to our security risks, without any assessments to the needs of our military, and it is incorrectly stated that we are giving things to our military that they do not want. In fact, they needed more. There is a whole category called unfunded requirements that they put before the House Armed Services Committee. And I want to say that again: unfunded requirements. It is not unfunded wishes, unfunded needs--unfunded requirements. And they are based on the mission that we have assigned the military and their inability to do so as a result of that gap, and many of which we were unable to fund in this bill. What would some of those relate to? We could take a tour around the world and we know the risks that we are facing: China, Russia, North Korea, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, ISIS, terrorism. These are not issues that you take up lightly and then say we can undertake an arbitrary cut. By the way, if this was really about fiscal security, it would be a 1 percent cut across all spending, but it is only going to apply to the military. This doesn't apply to the IRS. It doesn't apply to the EPA. This is only saying that the military should be cut as a result of some concept of fiscal savings. But the savings that we have taken have damaged our military already.…”