Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman. I thank you for your good work. Mr. Rogers, I thank you for your good work, and we are going to miss you. Your leadership on the Intel Committee has been of great benefit to this institution. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I have been working with a number of my colleagues, particularly with Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, on a question that we think is quite important to the security status of our country, and that is more transparency in the budget. This is debated because, by definition, if it is intelligence activity, it is ``secret,'' but on the other hand, the whole point of having transparency in budgets is so the rules of accountability apply across the board. We have 16 different intelligence-gathering agencies, and in all cases, the topline budget is absolutely secret. The 9/11 Commission that was a bipartisan commission of respected national security credentialed people--Lee Hamilton and the Governor of New Jersey, Governor Kean--recommended that this topline number in the intelligence agency budgets be transparent. Why? So that there is a basis for taxpayers and for all of us to start to evaluate whether we are getting our money's worth, whether there is duplication in efforts, whether one agency is stumbling into another, whether there is coordination, whether there is cooperation. The same reasons that we would have the food stamp budget subject to rigid review and accountability applies as well to our security.…”