Dick Cheney Quotes

The military always asks for more [appropriations] than it gets.

Pentagon dollars are essentially seen as a different kind of funding that doesn't have to stand for itself and make an argument for itself in the house of Congress.

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

Our Defense Department is the best in the world at winning wars and protecting the country. However on basic management, and fiscal activities, their grade would be a D…. The Pentagon is the last obstacle we have to overcome in order to audit the Defense Department. They are unauditable today.

The Pentagon has a long tradition of dialing up the threat to get more dollars at budget time.

As Secretary of Defense my job would be much easier if I didn't have to put up with [budget] cuts.

We can always find money for what the military wants.

We must have a Secretary of Defense who will manage, and not be managed, by the Pentagon.

It is important that any long term tax reduction or spending initiative be phased in.

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.

Balanced budgets have a lot to do with National Defense.

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

Sometimes Republicans want to cut the social welfare programs and yet they ask for billions and billions more for the Defense Department. I don’t take that approach.

Contrary to … conventional wisdom, the consequence of past U. S. Defense cuts were not bad …. austerity can be useful in forcing Washington to think strategically, something it rarely does when times are flush.

The Pentagon cannot acquire any equipment or technology without adequate funding. And the current budget process does not allow for the development and deployment of solutions to urgent problems on the battlefield.

We want to make sure the military gets it right and understands that if they're going to have less money, they're going to have to spend it a lot more smartly.

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

The only one benefiting from this, the American taxpayer, almost half of our taxes, our income taxes, are going to the military and to these wars.

Next to the effectual establishment of the Union, the best possible precaution against danger from standing armies is a limitation of the term for which revenue may be appropriated to their support.

… war is a matter not so much of arms as of money

The defense industry understands that the military budgets will continue to be cut until a new threat comes along.

Show me your budget and I’ll describe your strategy.

…[In Israel] the army and the intelligence services dominate the national budget, define internal and external threats, initiate policies, review their own performance, run a large portion of the economy, control vast tracts of land and airspace, and exert immense influence over communications and news media through censorship.

The Pentagon doesn’t need more money. What it needs desperately is a functional procurement system …. The result [of not having one] is not just ordinary waste, fraud and abuse … but also deep and lasting damage to the country’s ability to project power and wage war.

If we don’t take defense spending seriously, it undermines our credibility on other spending issues