John Kasich Quotes

This nation can no longer tolerate the autonomous conduct of any single service. A waste of the resources of America in spendthrift defense is an invitation to disaster for America.

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

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

The military budget must reflect the threats we face, rather than the budget defining those threats.

So I think if we want to turn the table around, more than thinking about how can we starve the Islamic State in terms of money, we should think about how can we maximise the amount of resources that we have in order to secure ourselves. For us, instead of bombing so much, which is extremely expensive, perhaps, you know, we should use some of that money in order to protect ourselves.

We are a nation at war. This is also a time for hard choices. It's about ensuring that we are able to prevail in the conflicts in which we are now engaged. But it's also about being able to be strong and disciplined in applying our nation's limited resources to defending America.

If the Pentagon truly confined itself to providing defense, then presumably we wouldn't need a whole separate government agency to provide 'Homeland Security.'

Only those who are ideologically opposed to military programs think of the defense budget as the first and best place to get resources for social welfare needs.

I understand all the problems for the Ministry of Defence, of course I do; working within a budget and trying to do so many things is not easy.

We have a military policy instead of an energy policy.

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

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’s not the plans, it’s the people. I think we should have Defense Department people.

It is necessarily requisite to the peoples defense, that they be fore-armed. Now to be fore-armed is to be furnished with Soldiers, Armies, Ships, Forts and Monies, before the danger be instant; for the listing of Soldiers, and taking up of Arms after a blow is given, is too late at least, if not impossible.

Fighting terrorists does not require half a trillion dollars worth of conventional and nuclear forces.

Because the resources available to the U. S. military will be increasingly limited, the objectives must be too.

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.

The Pentagon … kills ideas that threaten its core programs more efficiently than it does any foreign enemy.

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

Our national-security strategy must drive our military budget, rather than the budget setting our strategy.

I'm very, very pro-defense.

Al Qaida changes; Al Qaida adapts. We have to adapt as well. We rely on resources to do that. Reducing resources beyond a certain point will make us less able to adapt as our enemy adapts.

The bottom line, addressing defense spending cuts with a meat ax like sequestration will damage defense readiness for decades to come.

If the military is to show the capabilities that we demand and expect of it, then the defense budget has to continue to rise.

The National Defense Strategy remains our guiding document, and everything we do should support its stated objectives.