Political Quotes

“Mr. President, last week, I came to the floor to speak about a new acronym that we are becoming more and more familiar with-- DOGE, or the Department of Government Efficiency--that will be led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. One of the priorities I am looking forward to working with DOGE on to accomplish, as a founding member of the caucus, is to reform and, hopefully, revitalize the Pentagon. As I have said repeatedly, we are living in one of the most dangerous times since World War II. So it is absolutely critical that our systems at the Pentagon are operating in top-notch shape. But as we know, as of now, many of the acquisition processes the Pentagon follows are similar, if not identical, to those followed by the Soviet Union back in the day. If you know your history, the United States beat the Soviet Union when the wall fell and when the Soviet Union collapsed. So it is obvious that their model doesn't work very well, and neither did their system of military procurement. But, as I mentioned last week, where and how we spend our money is just as important as how much we spend. We seem to be fixated on the ``how much'' but not how and where the money is spent. Preparing for the strategic competition we are in the midst of is not as simple as just increasing the percentage of the spending of GDP. We need to make sure that the money that is spent is spent efficiently and accurately, meeting the needs of the world--the dangerous world--we live in.…”