Political Quotes

“We have another great bipartisan success today, at the closing day of our Congress, and I want to thank Representatives Larsen, Blunt, Tiahrt, Moran, and McDermott for bringing this bipartisan bill to the floor. This bill is the Defense Level Playing Field Act, which will incorporate in standalone legislation an amendment we adopted with huge bipartisan support previously by a vote of 410-8 on the defense authorization bill. This bill is very important to bring a level of fairness and competitiveness from a job creation perspective to the tanker contract, which is now one of the largest procurement contracts in American history, a $35 billion contract providing for 179, and ultimately 400, aerial refueling planes, which will replace the Eisenhower-era tankers, which is so critical to our Nation's skeleton and backbone of our Nation's defense. I note the basic thrust of this bill is to make sure that in our procurement process that we have fairness--fairness both to the law and fairness to the American workers, who are so successful. And one of the bidders we hope to be so successful with is the Boeing 767 platform, which will be fully capable of continuing the tradition of American provision of the very backbone of our American fleet and providing our tankers. I want to make four points about what this bill will do.…”