Political Quotes

“I respectfully ask that the members of this year's NDAA conference committee--I am assuming there will be one--that they consider all these issues as they go to conference. This is not just a bureaucratic budget dispute or some interagency accounting measure. This is, I believe, a very important issue, as it relates to civilian oversight of our nuclear weapons complex and, as written in the original bill, would have required the Nuclear Weapons Council to set the priorities for the NNSA budget and would have required the Department of Energy to get the Nuclear Weapons Council's approval before it could submit its Energy budget to OMB. So, yes, there was a big takeover of the Department of Energy budget snuck into the NDAA. Well, let's just say some of us knew about it; some of us didn't know about it. But we objected, and now, we have taken this language out. But I am sure this will continue, and I think it still continues. I think people who have a desire to have a larger National Nuclear Security Administration budget definitely are going to continue this effort. But people should know that the National Nuclear Security Administration makes up about 45 percent of the Department of Energy's budget. So, in other words, the Secretary of Energy would have lost control over almost half of his budget.…”