Political Quotes

“I accept responsibility for bringing up this bill early and encouraging our leadership to give me their support. And here is the reason. Let me just give you one example of the problems we are seeing in our military today. During fiscal year 1998, the military lost 1,641 more pilots than they expected. They very carefully planned for a certain amount of attrition through retirements at the end of 20 years--or whenever it may be--and for those persons who decided not to make the military a career, it was time to accept other challenges. Those figures show you have to retain a certain percentage in each of those key pay grades of pilots in order to keep the airplane flying, in order to fulfill the missions abroad. President Clinton has sent the men and women of the Armed Forces of the United States abroad more than any other President in the history of this great Nation. We need these people, particularly the airmen. We are 1,641 airmen short. Let's translate that into dollars. The average cost to train a military pilot is about $5.8 million. To replace 1,600 pilots will cost the Department of Defense over $9 billion--repeat, $9 billion.”