Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I rise to speak in morning business about the military construction issue I spoke about in July. I raised concerns then about the Pentagon's overseas military construction program, particularly in Germany, Korea, and Guam, because, as the ranking member of the Military Construction Subcommittee, I am seeing that we are changing a strategy. Yet we have not had the strategy explained to us. This is the beginning of a huge taxpayer-funded influx of rebuilding overseas in a way that I think is perhaps duplicative and even against the interests that have been shown in our previous strategy. I think it is time to take a pause. I rise to speak because the GAO has just released a study this week that says we should take a pause. The Military Construction Subcommittee, chaired by Senator Johnson--and I respect and appreciate his leadership in this so much--asked the GAO to do a study because we were seeing the Army coming in and asking for what is going to be a commitment for $1 to $2 billion to change their headquarters from Heidelberg to Wiesbaden and to add more BCTs than were originally intended to stay in Germany. We looked at this and said: Wait a minute. We are getting ready to duplicate a lot of effort that we have made in bases in America and at a great taxpayer expense. Yet we are not seeing the backup and the strategy proposed to support this kind of taxpayer expense. Let me start back in the beginning.…”