Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, last week I called our friend Tom Foglietta, who is the Ambassador to Italy, and I said, ``Mr. Ambassador, tell me what the reaction in Italy is to the debate going on in the United States Congress.'' And the Ambassador called me back 2 days ago and he said, The Italian papers in their editorial section said we do not have to worry about the communists. We do not have to worry about the Greens. We have to worry about the United States Congress destroying the NATO allies, the alliance. Now, that was in reaction to the fiasco we had last week. We have two ways that we can limit the President. One is, by a two-thirds vote we can override his veto. The other way is to limit the funds that the President has to use for readiness. For 5 years we have limited the funds of the President for readiness because for 2 years this Congress, this House, insisted we offset the money that the President asked for in his emergency money for Bosnia because there were a number of people that asked for those funds or a number of people who opposed that position of us being in Bosnia. We were not successful in getting out of Bosnia, but we did limit the readiness money. Our troops are now at a precipice of readiness. I went aboard the Abraham Lincoln. The Abraham Lincoln has 5,000 troops normally. It was 800 people short. If Members think they are hurting anybody but the troops, they are wrong.…”