Political Quotes

“I thank the ranking member for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I will begin by saying that I do not agree with everything in this bill, but the committee passed a bill worthy of support. I especially commend Chairman Smith and Ranking Member Rogers for navigating a markup that was 16 hours and 12 minutes long, including the debate of almost 900 amendments. The House Armed Services Committee agreed on a bipartisan basis to increase our national security topline by over $35 billion, accounting for the damaging impacts of inflation or our military, and the rising threats we face today. I am particularly proud of the decisive final bipartisan vote of 57 to 1 that passed this bill out of committee. Unfortunately, this bipartisan national security effort is in peril. The Rules Committee has allowed a series of particularly harmful and sometimes unrelated provisions that Speaker Pelosi would like to, once again, tack to the backs of our servicemembers, endangering Congress' support of their service and our national security. I specifically hope during our floor debate we can move to exclude these harmful riders. As to the committee mark, we started once again with an anemic budget request from the Biden administration that in the Seapower portfolio requested only 8 ships and proposed the retirement of 24 ships, many of these ships well before the end of their expected service life.…”