John Lehman Quotes

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.

The Pentagon is the Poster Child for waste in Government.

The purchase of unnecessary military hardware is undoubtedly the most wasteful element in American government.

The poor taxpayer may wipe his shoes on a $3 doormat when he goes home, but not the Navy. It is, damn the cost, full feet ahead on a doormat you would be ashamed to get muddy.

Where the public money runs deepest the hogs fight each other to get their snouts in the trough, and the big trough nowadays runs through the Pentagon.

There are hugely creative military leaders who have contemplated just the kind of changes that are needed. In Washington, however, strength lies with the opponents rather than the proponents of change. And the opponents possess the ultimate political weapon of mass destruction. They can accuse leaders who want to challenge the status quo of making America weak. So we’re left with all the systems the country has accumulated to counter every post World War II defense challenge: multiple air forces, multiple expeditionary forces; multiple cyber-commands. We can’t afford what we have. We don’t need much of what we have.

There is no excuse for waste, fraud, and abuse in the Defense Department budget.

The defense budget has become a jobs program.

We can always find money for what the military wants.

The good news is the Pentagon is going to make some significant budget cuts. The bad news is: They want to kill a plane that's built in your district.

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.

Base closings [are] the most atrocious waste of money I have ever seen in my life.

The biggest problem with the deficit is programs that are unconstitutional and wasteful.

Congress votes for things the military doesn't want, and planes and other weaponry that cost a lot but don't work.

Spending an extra dollar on the D.C. public school system isn't spending an extra dollar on education. Spending an extra dollar with the Pentagon doesn't buy you an extra dollar on defense. Republicans need to look skeptically at military spending.

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

Let's push the Pentagon off the fiscal cliff.

One of the things the government can't do is run anything. The only things our government runs are the post office and the railroads, and both of them are bankrupt.

The Pentagon can't even audit its own books. It doesn't even know where its money is going. And we refuse to have the tough forces go on the Pentagon so that at least they are efficient with the money they're spending.

We disarm ourselves by making weapons so expensive.

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.

Those of you who are in public life have a right to be here at this celebration today only if you are prepared to do your part in building up the Navy of the present.

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

Taxpayers are burdened with so-called defense spending that is used not for defense, but to create or hold jobs in someone's congressional district, or to continue to pile up profits for an arms manufacturer.

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