Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, there are two very compelling reasons to oppose this amendment. First of all, this is, again, not recognizing the reality of sequestration and the defense budget. The way Congress seems to have reacted to the reality of the fact that the defense budget has already been cut substantially and that because of sequestration--which nobody seems to want to put forward a plan to get rid of or certainly won't pass the House and the Senate--the defense budget is going to be cut. So the way Congress reacts is, okay, fine, but I have to protect mine. Don't close my base, don't shut down a ship, don't shut down a plane, and don't move anything out of the National Guard. All of this is an effort to preserve, in these three States, their military presence, which means money. And I get that. But the Pentagon is going to have to reduce their budget. Every time we pass one of these things that says you can't do this and you can't save money here and you can't save money there, we are creating a hollow force. The Pentagon will not have the funds necessary to train our troops to be ready to perform the missions that we need to if they can't save money anywhere because Congress has stepped in and said you can't because it's mine and I don't want to give it up. The second reason is we have well over 5,000 nuclear weapons. We will be amply able to scare the living crap out of everybody in the world for a very long time even if we reduce that somewhat and sensibly.…”