Political Quotes

“I want to read something at the beginning of this: ``Abuse of the overseas contingency operation global war on terror cap adjustment is a backdoor loophole that undermines the integrity of the budget process.'' It goes on to say that the Budget Committee will oppose increases above the levels the administration and our military commanders say are needed to carry out operations unless it can be clearly demonstrated that such amounts are war related. That is from last year's House-passed budget report. Last year, this body took a position that we were not going to use the OCO budget, the global war on terror budget, in order to get around the BCA caps. The appropriations bill, as currently offered, does exactly that. It spends about $532 million in the OCO budget for matters that the Department of Defense admits are not war related. These are matters that the Department of Defense included in its original base defense budget request, but for which there wasn't enough money under the BCA caps. So what the appropriators have done is taken those requests which are admittedly not war related and buried it in this appropriations bill, using the OCO money in order to violate the caps. By the way, the money goes to overseas bases, bases in Italy, Poland, Bahrain, Niger, Djibouti, and Oman, admitted by the Defense Department not to be war related, yet is in the war budget today. All I ask, Mr.…”