Political Quotes

“Again, I want to emphasize, at this time in our Nation's defense budgeting, we ought to be looking at where we can save dollars, where we can apply dollars to those areas of greatest need. And I argue those areas of greatest need are for this Nation's readiness, the training of our troops, the operation and maintenance of our equipment, making sure that we get those dollars there; and that before we pursue a BRAC, we ought to know what the areas are, where we are going to go with this Nation's strategy, what our base structure should be in other areas of the world. After being at war for nearly 12 years, now we have a well-trained, battle-hardened, combat-tested force, and they are an all-volunteer force that's more joint than ever. We want to understand where we need to be going forward to make sure that we provide for them. Closing these bases now, or even pursuing a Base Realignment and Closure commission, this is not the time to do that. Mr. Chairman, again, this is the wrong time. We ought to be looking at the place in time where we have actually accrued the savings on the last BRAC, which started in 2005. Before we pursue another, we ought to make sure we know what this Nation's strategy is, militarily, before we pursue a Base Realignment and Closure commission. We ought to know what should our base structures be elsewhere in the world.…”