Political Quotes

“Madam President, as the Republican leader indicated pursuant to unanimous consent, I will shortly be offering a motion to instruct conferees on the fiscal year 2016 National Defense Authorization Act regarding the inappropriate use of overseas contingency operations funding in this bill. The motion to instruct I am offering today directs the NDAA conferees to ``insist that the final conference report fully fund the President's budget request for the Department of Defense, including $534.3 billion in base budget funding and $50.9 billion in Overseas Contingency Operations or OCO budget funding, thereby supporting the bipartisan view that the funding caps imposed by the Budget Control Act of 2011 should be eliminated or increased in proportionally equal amounts for the revised security and nonsecurity spending categories.'' This motion to instruct is consistent with the President's fiscal year 2016 budget request for defense, which assumed a resolution to the Budget Control Act, or BCA, dilemma that we have been trying to address. If this BCA situation is resolved, we can remove the threat of sequestration on both the defense and domestic spending. Unfortunately, the bill had to rely upon a budgetary--and it has been described by many people--gimmick by transferring $39 billion from the base budget request for enduring military requirements to the OCO budget, leaving a base budget that is just below BCA levels in order to avoid triggering sequestration.…”