Political Quotes

“I would like to offer a bipartisan proposition to my colleagues here in the nature of this amendment. The reason I say this idea enjoys bipartisan support is 47 Senators, Democrats and Republicans, have joined in a letter to the administration asking that the administration grant a sale of F-16C/D models to our ally Taiwan. This amendment would compel that sale because unfortunately the administration declined to make that sale yesterday, notwithstanding the fact that the Taiwan Relations Act signed by Jimmy Carter and passed by a bipartisan Congress requires the United States to provide Taiwan with defense articles necessary to enable Taiwan to maintain sufficient self-defense capabilities. They have lost that capability, as demonstrated by this chart taken from Defense Department records. Currently, the People's Republic of China has about 2,300 operational combat aircraft to Taiwan's 490. Taiwan, by comparison, has 490 operational aircraft, of which about 100 need to be retired, French Mirage aircraft, F-5 aircraft. About 100 of them need to be retired because they are literally obsolete. What this amendment would do would be to compel the sale of 66 F-16C/ D models to our friends in Taiwan. Why is this important?…”