William J. Crowe Jr. Quotes

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

We can always find money for what the military wants.

We can cut the Defense Department budget because we’ve got bombs running out of our ears.

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.

What chiefly governs the military budget is the need to spend enormous sums of money in a useless way. The allegedly powerful Pentagon is simply a receptacle for wasteful expenditure, just as a city dump is the receptacle for the refuse of a city.

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.

I have spoken to Donald Trump about this. He understands the dramatic budget cuts our military has faced.

The administration has a disturbing pattern of behavior when it comes to budgeting not only for the ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan but also for military requirements not directly related to these conflicts.

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.

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.

What I say is, national defense is the most important thing we do in Washington, but there's still waste in the military budget.

During the 2000 election, the current administration told our military, help is on the way. That is clearly not the case. The administration has failed to request the funds needed for the defense of this Nation. We must give the Army what it needs.

At the present time we are keeping our military expenditures below the…minimum which would in themselves ensure national security. By doing so we are able to increase our expenditures to assist in European recovery.

While our superpower military is stunningly effective, it is also stunningly expensive.

The only way to make budget cuts is to bring down force structure.

[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.

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

[Discussing specific weapons systems:] I voted for them when I was in Congress. Now that I'm secretary [of defense] I have to figure out a way to pay for them.

The Republicans can't say no to military spending, and the Democrats can't say no to social spending.

Every dollar needlessly spent on our military … diminishes our overall security.

Balanced budgets have a lot to do with National Defense.

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.

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

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.

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.