Quote

In Congress, while the House's proposed defense budget calls for significant increases, it also cuts 11 billion dollars from veterans spending - including healthcare and disability pay. Be clear: we can't equate spending on veterans with spending on defense.

The military budget must reflect the threats we face, rather than the budget defining those threats.

Defense spending as a share of the economy dropped significantly during the early 1990s, and that was one of the things, along with other policy changes, that put us back on the path to a balanced budget.

We cannot allow anything that's called 'national defense' to justify any and all spending. We need to be very, very careful that we don't overspend and say, 'Oh, that's defense,' when perhaps it isn't.

Our national-security strategy must drive our military budget, rather than the budget setting our strategy.

We can't equate spending on veterans with spending on defense. Our strength is not just in the size of our defense budget, but in the size of our hearts, in the size of our gratitude for their sacrifice. And that's not just measured in words or gestures.

I ask the American people to consider the legacy this administration has handed us in the defense budget as we spend billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars without the tools and ability to track these dollars.

We need a defense budget that's big enough to sustain an increase in the size of the Army.

Of all government expenditures, defense spending is the... most stimulative to the economy.

When you cut a half-a-trillion dollars from the defense budget, it affects almost every area in the defense budget.