Two Paths, by John Kasich: on Homeland Security

John Kasich: Focused on excess spending on Armed Services Committee

Perhaps the biggest headline I made on the House Armed Services Committee was my focus on excess spending. Like most Republicans, I'd always been strong on defense, but once in Congress, I started paying particular attention to some of the costs in our federal budget. The one didn't always go hand in hand with the other, I was realizing. However, this realization put me in conflict with some of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, who came to see me as a part of group they viewed as "cheap hawks." No matter where I saw wasteful spending, I believe it needed to be eliminated, even in our military, but Republicans weren't supposed to think in this way, so my position set some people off.

John Kasich: Cutting Pentagon budget doesn't weaken defense

John Kasich: 1980s: B-2 didn't make financial sense nor strategic sense

We set about trying to pare back the B-2 proposal, and perhaps redirect some of those monies to the development of standoff weapons, which we believed would be more strategically effective as well as more cost-effective. We were never out to kill the proposal entirely; in response to an initial proposal of 132 bombers, we proposed a more modest plan of just 13. The projected squadron was cut to a final compromise of 20 B-2 bombers. So that's where we landed on this issue--an incredible win.

Ron Dellums: 1980s: B-2 didn't make financial sense nor strategic sense

I joined with Ron Dellums, a liberal Democrat, and together we set about trying to pare back the B-2 proposal, and perhaps redirect some of those monies to the development of standoff weapons, which we believed would be more strategically effective as well as more cost-effective. We were never out to kill the proposal entirely; in response to an initial proposal of 132 bombers, we proposed a more modest plan of just 13. [After years], the Pentagon agreed to a compromise of 20 bombers