Political Quotes

“The committee's first priority was to enhance the Department of Defense to fulfill its homeland defense responsibilities to combat terrorism both at home and abroad. In these areas, this bill authorized an increase of $400 million over the budget request, including $88.4 million for 12 additional civil support teams. Now, these are the teams that join with the first responders should we have the misfortune of a weapon of mass destruction, be it chemical, biological, or fissionable, utilized in the United States. That is a very important initiative that this committee has taken over several years now and the inclusion of this in the budget represents our strong unequivocal support of this program particularly by adding 12 additional teams, to get us closer to the goal of a team in every State and territory. Likewise, we added $181 million for the development and fielding of chemical and biological agent detection and protection technology. In addition, the committee supports the President's request of $9.1 billion for missile defense, a key component of homeland defense. As we all know, our most valuable military asset is our people.”