Political Quotes

“Without diminishing in any way that very encouraging sentence, if you go on to read the totality of this communication, there are expressly in here some reservations, but I will not get into that at this point in time. I want to go back to these words, ``full, effective, and meaningful budget authorities.'' We just had a debate on the Specter amendment, which I believe, with no disrespect to my good friend and colleague, is an extreme viewpoint on this, and I am hopeful the Senate will not adopt it, but we do come back to this pivotal question, and tomorrow I hope to bring forth some amendments. Now that I see the expressed language and the Senator assured me her bill tracks this, I have to have some clarification--at least I shall seek clarification--of what is the remaining role of the Secretary of Defense with regard to those portions; namely, these three combat agencies, together with DIA, what is the residual area of collaboration, jointness, in the preparation of the budget--preparation is part 1--and then the execution of the budget after it goes through the authorization and appropriations process and begins to come back to the several departments and agencies.”