Joe Cunningham: “I came on this committee thinking I was going to show them something. They have taught me. It is a bipartisan committee.…”

“I came on this committee thinking I was going to show them something. They have taught me. It is a bipartisan committee. It works very, very well; and I would like to thank the gentleman from Florida (Chairman Goss) and the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi). I should have known better, one can always learn something from a good woman. On this particular committee, there is so much information out there that a Member can always learn a lot. I also want to thank the staff. Many of the staff were former members from our intelligence community. Twenty-four hours a day they will sit and brief Members on any area in the classified area, and I recommend that Members do that more. I would also like to talk about the defense budget. It is about $200 billion in the deficit primarily because of the 124 deployments that our services were asked to go on during the last administration. If one transposes that over to the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, they had to deploy 124 times along with the military. That funding deficit caused them the inability to modernize the systems and equipment that all of us say that they need to do their job. When I hear some Members, especially from the other body, criticize our intelligence agencies, remember that they did not have the assets. They were denied modernization. Personally, I think they are doing a good job.”