Mark Neumann: “I would like to start this evening, and I do have this amendment to present, but I do want to praise our chairman for…”

“I would like to start this evening, and I do have this amendment to present, but I do want to praise our chairman for the work that he has done on this bill and the members of the committee. There are three things, in my opinion, this Nation faces. Any one of the three could bring this Nation to its knees. One is the budget and fiscal constraints that we must act on in order to bring our budget back in line to get our budget balanced, to get our deficit under control. The second one is, while we are balancing the budget and getting the budget under control, we cannot destroy our ability to defend our Nation. So, the three things that could bring us to our knees, failure to promptly take care of the defense budget is certainly the second one. The third one is the moral values facing this Nation. More on that in the future. The bottom line is our chairman has done a great job paying attention to the fact we need to preserve a very strong military in this Nation. The world is not a safe place. We need to look forward to the fact that our children can look at this Nation in a situation where we can defend our homelands and defend our Nation in the future. Our chairman deserves a lot of praise for that. Mr. Chairman, you have done a great job. I am offering this amendment even though the bill that has been presented is in line with what is necessary to balance the budget. There are some accounts in the defense budget that can still be cut further.”