Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I stand with my colleagues today to help raise the alarm about our unsustainable and reckless nuclear posture. Sadly, we have come a long way in the wrong direction since Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev pledged to rid the world of nuclear weapons. Many of my friends in this Chamber, particularly on the Republican side of the aisle, speak passionately and eloquently about our fiscal trajectory and the rising national debt. I share their concerns and believe we need to be clear-eyed about the scale of the increasingly serious debt problem and we must seriously consider the merits of additional spending in a difficult fiscal environment. Yet, many seem to forget this issue when it comes to the larger defense budget and, specifically, our nuclear weapons modernization program. The CBO estimates that it will cost us over $1.5 trillion over the next 30 years and $800 billion over the next 10 years. Please remember that our current estimates in defense costs are always wrong, and they are always wrong on the low side. We always underestimate significantly, sometimes dramatically. Mr. Speaker, while I appreciate the need for nuclear deterrence, particularly with Russian saber-rattling and an expanding Chinese nuclear arsenal, our spending priorities and nuclear strategy are becoming divorced from reality, a reality of scarce resources and a variety of competing national security priorities.…”