Political Quotes

“I want to start off again by thanking our chairman and our ranking member, two of the great patriots of this institution, this country, for their outstanding work in bringing us a defense bill that all of us can get behind. It is not a perfect bill. In fact, there are some amendments that I would like to have seen offered that were not made in order, and that is a part of the process, unfortunately, we go through. I am also not happy with the dollar amount. Our chairman and ranking member made the best possible good faith effort to increase funding, but it is woefully underfunding our modernization. Other Members who have spoken here have talked about too much for defense. Our soldiers today are fighting in tactical fighters that are 17 years old on average. Our Navy that at one time was 555 ships is now 314 ships. Our shipbuilding account is taking us down to a 235-ship Navy. The B-52 bomber will be 70 years old before it is retired. Our Chinook helicopters will be 60 years old. We have underfunded the military consistently in both Democrat and Republican administrations for the past 10 years. This bill begins to correct that, but it does not solve all of those problems. We are asking for some relief in this bill.”