Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, during the previous administration, deep funding cuts as well as budget dysfunction in Congress have allowed a real atrophying of our military readiness in the Department of Defense. We have seen a steep decline in our capabilities while at the same time our adversaries have been making advances and increasing their ability to threaten us. We now face a situation, particularly with nations like China and Russia, where they are developing capabilities that we may not be able to defend against. Countering this threat requires funding for the space-based missile defense tracking system in line 117 of the defense-wide RDTE account, funding that was authorized but not included in the appropriations bill. This capability is absolutely critical to improving our missile defense capabilities, particularly to address the rapidly increasing threat from hypersonic weapons, which our committee has placed particular focus on this year with broad bipartisan support. Additionally, Mr. Chairman, funding was not included in line 92 of the defense-wide RDTE account to continue critical development of laser scaling technologies for boost-phase ICBM missile defense. This technology has the potential that we need and that is crucial to give our warfighters the capability to shoot down missiles while they are still in a boost phase, making our adversaries have to think twice, understanding that missiles they fire at us could be destroyed over their own soil. Mr.…”