Political Quotes

“We are in the process of wrapping up a budget agreement that is welcome since it protects against default on the national debt and prevents draconian cuts for disability payments and unfairness in Medicare premiums for our senior citizens; but it continues a downward spiral in government spending for essential items that would improve America's infrastructure, education, medical research, and much more. Yet, at the same time, we are continuing on autopilot with some of the largest expenditures for generations to come. We had an announcement yesterday that we will be replacing the next generation of stealth bombers for our nuclear triad--up to 100 of them--at an estimated cost of over $550 million each, and that is just the estimated shelf price, the opening bid, plus another $20 billion in development costs. Our history of developing weapons of this magnitude is that from the opening bid, the price is likely to spiral much higher in the future. The same contractor, Northrop Grumman, which won this bid, could only build 21 B-2s out of a planned 132 as the costs spiraled to over $1 billion a plane. This comes at a time when we are committed to spending over $1 trillion in the coming decades in upgrading our nuclear fleet. Think about it: 12 new ballistic missile submarines, up to 100 new long- range, nuclear-capable bombers, 642 new land-based ballistic missiles, 1,000 new nuclear-capable, long-range standoff cruise missiles.…”