Political Quotes

“Last, we added $25 million for five additional Weapons of Mass Destruction-Civil Support teams formerly known as RAID teams. This will result in a total of 32 of these teams by the end of fiscal year 2001. It is the committee's intent to support the establishment of these teams for each State and territory. I commend this committee, particularly the subcommittee that handles this under Senator Roberts, for their relentless initiative to drive and get these teams in place. The Department of Defense has not been as aggressive as has the Senate on this issue. I would like to briefly highlight some of the other major funding initiatives and provisions of the bill. First, we strengthen the Joint Strike Fighter Program by significantly increasing funding for the demonstration and validation phase of this program while removing funding for the engineering, manufacture, and development phase in the fiscal year 2001. It increases the shipbuilding budget by $603.2 million to over $12 billion. I commend the chairman and ranking member of that committee, the Senator from Maine. This is a very essential investment, an increase in spending, if we are ever to hope to maintain just a 300-ship Navy. It authorizes $98.2 million for military space programs and technologies, $22 million for strategic nuclear delivery vehicle modernization, and $190 million for national and military intelligence programs.”