Jim Inhofe: “first of all, let me clarify something. I do support the process. It happens that I was elected to the other body in…”

“first of all, let me clarify something. I do support the process. It happens that I was elected to the other body in 1986, and that is when Representative Dick Armey from the State of Texas came out with the whole idea that we have got to close down some of the infrastructure that is no longer needed. We understand that. But we can't do it because of the politics that are there. So he devised a system, and that system was devised to take the politics out of it, and it worked. If there were time, I would read the statement he made on the floor of the House of Representatives when he found out he had to do something that was bad for his State of Texas, and he was willing to do it to save the system, the integrity of the system that was designed to take politics out of it. Now, as the Senator from Washington said, politics were reinserted, and when that happened I think several of us felt we had to ensure that did not happen again. And so some of the people, wisely perhaps, said that, well, we can do that by waiting until after this President is no longer in office, 2001. My concern there is I don't know who is going to be the Republican nominee or who is going to be the Democratic nominee or who will ultimately be the next President of the United States.”