The request might be as high as $100 billion, but that’ll be over a two-year split.

My guess is that you will never hear a peep about this as they debate the bill, … Wastrels of Defense: How Congress Sabotages U.S. Security.

[In that kind of pressure cooker,] you become risk-averse, … The Wastrels of Defense: How Congress Sabotages U.S. Security.

There are all kinds of ways to address it, but it’s hard to eliminate. The problem is fundamental to the nature of the insurgency.

Earmarks undergo virtually no review, making it impossible to distinguish between truly meritorious projects and those that are pure pork.

That sounds like they’re saying we’ll save money because we’re not at war. There’s no justification in the report, so no way for me to check and see if this is as stupid as it...

We don’t know if the operational tempo is going to go up, down, or stay the same. We don’t know what the number will be or what the direction of the trend will be.

When it comes to budget decisions that would help us fight the long war, they either change nothing or walk in the wrong direction.

These numbers sound astoundingly high.

He has to convince me about this every time it comes up.

If it’s beyond the next election cycle, we’ll worry about it next year after we get ourselves elected.

The ones that pop up at the last minute at conference are rare.

There is a big chasm between rhetoric and the budget process.

That the DOD appropriations legislation has been stuck at this 2.3 percent suggests a conscious, not a random, pattern. Could it be that the House and Senate Appropriations Committees have settled on a fixed percentage...

It is true that programs are going to be hunting for dollars. And it is true there are more programs than dollars. But the civilian leaders are doing nothing to bring the budget in line....

These are the wastrels of defense.