Political Quotes

“I rise in solid opposition to this amendment. We are in no way, shape or form able to meet the needs of our military. The irony here is that we had President Clinton's former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry come before us in January and tell us that the President's request, the $15 billion above last year, was inadequate and that in his mind it should be more like 10 to $20 billion above the President's request. That is after we put money in each year, bipartisan support, to make those increases occur. Yet Bill Perry still said we were 10 to $20 billion short in what the President requested. Now, I know some of my colleagues are not happy, but even the proponents of this amendment signed letters to us asking for tens of billions of dollars above what we were willing to give. I have the information here and I am not going to embarrass Members personally, but I can tell you that Members who are supportive of this amendment signed letters to us asking for us to put more money in the defense bill than what the President asked for.”