Political Quotes

“I do intend to withdraw this amendment, but I'd like to just say why I offered it and why I think this debate is so important. We're talking about now trying to address a deficit, which we all want to address. We do not want to leave this debt to our children and our grandchildren. That's a given. The big issue I think for many of us is how do we get there and what do we do? And how do we ensure that we have a budget that reflects, yes, our national security priorities, but also a budget that protects the most vulnerable in our country and a budget that ensures that we have priorities to create jobs and to turn this economy around? And so I believe that we have to talk about not only discretionary spending and entitlement cuts, which the other side is talking about and making such an issue of. We have not really talked about the Pentagon budget. We have not talked about looking at what it would mean if we cut the defense budget back to 2008 as the Republicans want to do with regard to our domestic discretionary spending. And so what this amendment basically does is just say that if we are going to do this, we need to engage in a debate that is honest and we need to put everything on the table, and that includes the Pentagon. And in fact, we need to begin to look at how we cut back to 2008 levels. We all know that there is waste, fraud and abuse in the Pentagon.…”