Political Quotes

“let me just respond to my friend, the gentleman from California (Mr. Farr). What he does not tell our colleagues is that we have spent $19 billion in contingency funds out of our defense budget for deployments that were never budgeted for over the past 6 years. Nineteen billion dollars, all over the world, $9 billion in Bosnia; all of that money came out of a defense budget that was already shrinking. So, we have made a commitment. We should oppose the Allen motion to recommit. H.R. 4 is a simple, straightforward bill with bipartisan support; the Allen motion is not. It is complicated, it is hard to understand. H.R. 4 does not mandate a system architecture which is why the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) and I worked together. His amendment would, in fact, say we must have a ground-based system. It precludes a system that perhaps one day could use our AEGIS technology. H.R. 4 addresses the serious threats we face today, not unknown threats that may emerge down the road. We cannot predict what they will be. Operational effectiveness should be key in determining. The Allen motion mandates operational effectiveness prior to establishing a policy. Mr. Speaker, that is ridiculous. If we had done that, we would not have the Poseidon program, we would not have Trident, we would not have the AIM-9 side winder, we would not have AMRAAM, we would not have the Hawk.…”