Political Quotes

“I welcome the President's budget submission, which will mark the first time since 2009 that the House, the Senate, and the President have all submitted budgets. It's an encouraging development, but the larger question is whether Congress can actually use the budgeting process to show how we will do business differently. Despite the media sideshows about the artificial sequestration crisis, the major issues we have to address to fix the budget and our current deficit are spending on defense, health care, and the tax system itself. Although the administration has started us down a path to manage Pentagon spending in the future, we have barely scratched the surface. There are too many unnecessary bases at home and abroad that should be phased down or closed. There's far too much invested in an antiquated nuclear arsenal that we haven't used in 68 years and contains many, many times more weapons than we would ever need for deterrence. The $700 billion scheduled to be spent over the next 10 years must be reduced dramatically. We have yet to come to grips with the long-term costs of an all-volunteer Army and the right balance between reserve and regular forces. Until these fundamental issues are addressed, the challenges of the future are going to be difficult to face because we spend too much time and energy and money preparing for the conflicts of the past while we avoid hard budget reality.…”