Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I would like to speak on the Udall amendment. I have great admiration and respect for the Senator from Colorado as well as his cousin who now presides. I have concerns about this amendment that were raised during the committee markup. I think they have become even more of a concern since that time period. Let me begin by saying as someone who spent 5 years in the Pentagon, one as a marine and four as a defense executive, I would hope that the top order of business for our President as he begins his next term would be to call for a reexamination, a rigorous reexamination of all of the programs in the Department of Defense. In other words, not quite to zero-based but to examine the justifications for all of the programs that are in place with an eye toward the realities of the future, I think we could benefit as a country. People who care about national security, but also care about the tax bills they are getting, would benefit as well from something of a triage of the programs in the Department of Defense. We should ask the Secretary of Defense and his people who work--or her--with these programs to examine which programs in DOD are the must- haves, which are absolutely vital to our national security, and which programs are the need-to-haves, the programs that might place our national security at some level of risk if they were to be altered or modified.…”