Political Quotes

“Mr. Chair, again, with all due respect to my friend, the gentleman from New York, to suggest that if my amendment passes, that somehow readiness will go down admits that we are spending money in violation of the law. Contingency operations are not meant for readiness. That is what the base military budget is for. We should be doing that anyway. I share in the concern of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle about the size of the military and our readiness, but that is not war. Readiness to go to war is not war. This is not supposed to be a replacement for the base budget. This should be, as my colleague from New York correctly pointed out, part of the war on terror. The OCO budget should be used to fight ISIS overseas, and it should be used to fight in Iraq and to fight in Syria. It should not be used for items that are not contingency operations. I go back to the example of the MILCON-VA bill that we had here a couple of weeks ago. We had no direction as to where money was being spent. I had a subcommittee chairman get up and say, ``Well, it is going to be a health facility in Djibouti.'' Nothing in law says that-- nothing. The only thing we passed out of this House was X number of dollars to be spent overseas before 2022. That is it. You could sit here and say, ``Well, this money is for the troops, or this money is for a base.'' No, it is not. This money is for whatever we decide we want to spend it on, and that is not right.…”