Political Quotes

“Mr. President, this week, the Senate Armed Services Committee is marking up the fiscal year 2024 National Defense Authorization Act. The NDAA is one of the most important pieces of legislation we consider literally every year. It is a bill that authorizes funding for our men and women in uniform and our defense needs and lays out our defense priorities. Hopefully, it is one of the things that force us to sit down and seriously consider the state of our national defense and what we need both now and in the future to ensure that America's military is prepared to deter and if necessary confront any threat. I like to say that if we don't get national security right, the rest is conversation. And it is true. All these other things we debate and talk about, if we can't protect the country, really end up being very secondary. The security of our Nation is the precondition for everything else--for the continued enjoyment of our freedoms, for a flourishing society, for a healthy economy, for the government's ability to do anything. My Democratic colleagues these days often seem to think we can let defense spending take a back seat to the latest Big Government issue, but that betrays a fundamental lack of understanding of reality. We live in a fallen world, and as long as we live in a fallen world, there will be evil people bent on aggression. So our national defense is not something we can ever afford to minimize or take for granted.…”