“There's no excuse for skimping on national defense when the country is at war. Retiring an aircraft carrier more than a decade early isn't in the best interest of the nation at this time.”
“Sometimes we get lost in seeing the entire forest for the particular trees, but I think we need to pull back and see that this threat of radical terrorists is now being directed not only at us in the homeland, but it is being directed at a source of energy upon which the western industrialized world has become dependent.”
“Our nation recommitted itself to making manned space flight as safe as possible after the Challenger explosion. But these efforts have lagged amid the budget pressures and cuts of recent years. Now, in the wake of this new tragedy, we need to make a new commitment. And we must live up to it.”
“Almost all of the Gulf of Mexico off of the state of Florida is restricted airspace; it's where we train our military, ... The ace up my sleeve is, at this time in our nation's history, you don't want to fool around with training our military to be the absolute best - and you can't be doing those joint exercises if you've got oil rigs down there on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico.”
“There has been an ignoring and a starving of NASA for funds by the administration, and this isn't a partisan comment ... It goes back to the previous administration. They have delayed as a result of that the safety upgrades to the space shuttle.”
