Political Quotes

“I ask the senior Senator from Arizona, as we discussed, he has been a critic and pointed out waste in the procurement process. I know the military, in designing state-of-the-art weapons systems, the F-35, for example, built in the notion of concurrency, where they are actually designing it while they are building it which creates cost overrun challenges. But I know the Senator was also instrumental in finally getting the Pentagon to negotiate a fixed-price contract. Could the Senator talk a little bit about some of the challenges? Mr. McCAIN. For years, I say to my colleague from Texas, the cost overruns went unchecked. When someone has a roof that leaks and they hire someone to fix the roof on a cost-plus contract, I guarantee that the cost to have your roof fixed will probably exceed the initial estimate the roof fixer provides you. When we go into cost-plus contracting, which is justified by many of the contractors saying, well, we are not sure what the additional costs will be, they do not seem to have difficulty once those contracts are fixed cost. The best example--best or worst example--I can tell my friend from Texas is the original effort to replace Marine One, the Presidential helicopter. This helicopter, over a period of a couple of years, went from requirement to requirement to requirement, to the point where it was even a requirement that the helicopter could withstand a nuclear blast.…”