John Murtha: “There's no question in my mind. The highest level of the Marine Corps has come to me and told me what happened.”

Let me tell you, we have added, we have added all kinds of money for body armor, for paint, for the gentleman from Ohio, predecessors, one of your predecessors was always looking for new ways, new developments. Small business has been the…

Let me mention to the gentleman, we have a $459 billion bill. We look at every one. We ask the Members to vet them. Our staff vets them. We go over every single earmark. We don't apologize for them because we think the Members know as much…

Every one of these earmarks are competitively granted under the regulations of the Defense Department. We depend on them to competitively check them over, and they do.

You can see the hearings we've had on this issue. We felt that the missile defense cuts we made were because of schedule more than anything else, and I appreciate your determination to put it in. We'll take another look at conference, but…