Mark Neumann: “Well, this is a reprioritizing of how we are spending the taxpayers' money. We can spend it on any one of a number of…”

“Well, this is a reprioritizing of how we are spending the taxpayers' money. We can spend it on any one of a number of programs out here. We simply said, look, if the rest of the budget is going to be allowed to increase at the rate of inflation, we want our defense spending to increase at the rate of inflation too. Everybody out here called that an increase. They call it cuts when we are actually spending much more than the rate of inflation. They call it an increase when we are only letting it go up at the rate of inflation. It is a very strange community when we start thinking about the actual language. I had this discussion as a matter of fact with a well-respected reporter from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And I mean it. He is a good reporter from the community of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and we had this discussion. My opponent was talking to me about how we were increasing spending by $9 billion in defense. I took out the numbers. Our first year here we spent $272 billion on defense. We are now spending $264 billion. We spent $272 billion the first year; we are now spending $264 billion. Now in Wisconsin we would call that a decrease in spending, but that is not what they call it. They call it an increase. Let me explain why that is an increase in spending, even though spending went down from $272 billion to $264 billion. The President only requested $255 billion.…”