Rod Blagojevich Quotes

We need to stop spending money on those weapons systems that do not advance national security.

National security - the military is the first thing we should spend money on. You have to fully fund that first. And then you should be paying for everything else.

I am not disputing the need for this money. What I am disputing and calling attention to is the fact that we are taking the tab for defense in our time against terrorists in the Middle East and elsewhere and shoving this tab off onto our children.

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.

We pay for the navy, and we have no commerce for the navy to protect; we pay for the army, and we loathe and execrate the work upon which it has been engaged.

The Pentagon budget, like all government spending, is an expression of priorities.

I was able to promote a strong defense budget when it could have been cut a lot more severely.

Today, the US spends less on defense as a percentage of our economy than we did at any time since he Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. For the world's only superpower, that is an invitation to very serious trouble.

After announcing that the Stealth bomber would overrun by 16%, and would cost over half a billion:] Whatever it costs, it's worth it.

[The] up-and-down pattern of [defense] spending over the last 18 years averages out to below zero percent real growth. In other words, if defense spending had followed a path of zero percent real growth, the U.S. probably could have obtained more defense for its dollar.

No state, without being soon exhausted, can maintain above the hundredth part of its members in arms and idleness.

When the greatest part of the [U.S.] budget pays for our defense and the livelihood of retirees, it is pointless to pretend that public spending is an embarrassment consisting only of welfare and waste.

How much do we really need for the defense of the United States of America? Only the defense to defend its shores? Well I suppose that the maximum for the defense of our shores is one billion dollars. So the rest of our defense budget relates to what we regard as our responsibilities as a world power.

It is not how much you spend on defense as much as how you spend it.

Japan is the only country in the world that does not call its defense organizations a military. That is absurd, when the government is spending 5 trillion yen a year for self-defense.

Foreign policy debates are frequently segregated from domestic policy ones, so commentators who propose increasing the defense budget or sending more foreign aid are seldom asked to explain which domestic programs they’d cut or which taxes they’d raise, in order to find the money.

I have long believed there is a lot of waste in the defense budget.

Europe - and in particular Germany - must assume more responsibility. We must be ready to take on this responsibility and that has consequences domestically. That means, for example, we must be ready to spend more money on defense at home and abroad.

Spending on the military doesn't increase the deficit.

Mammoth organizations, these ponderous processes. Many people don't realize that the nuclear capability that this country [USA] amassed and maintained over the period of the Cold War cost $6 trillion .

To defend Western Europe we have to let the Pentagon buy all these tanks and guns and things, and the Pentagon is unable to buy any object that that costs less than a condominium in Vail. If the Pentagon needs, say, fruit, it will argue that it must have fruit that can withstand the rigors of combat conditions, and it will wind up purchasing the FX-700 Seedless Tactical Grape, which will cost $160,000 per bunch, and will have an 83 percent failure rate.

I suspect that Donald Trump is going to be very tough with those countries that don't spend at least 2 percent of their gross domestic product on defense. He will ask them why should we allow a free-ride policy.

So-called defense now absorbs sixty per cent of the national budget, and about twelve per cent of the Gross National Product.

Only five NATO countries, including the United States, are currently meeting their minimum requirement to spend 2% of GDP on defense.

There's nothing magic about spending on tanks and bombs rather than roads and bridges.