It requires pragmatic problem-solving from even the most passionate partisans. It relies on compromise between opposing sides to protect the interest… - John McCain

The job of research and engineering would be developing defense technologies that can ensure a new era of U.S. qualitative military dominance. This office would set defense-wide acquisition and industrial-based policy. It would pull together the centers of innovation in the defense acquisition system. It would oversee the development and manufacturing of weapons by the services. In short, research and engineering would be a staff job focused on innovation, policy, and oversight of the military services and certain defense agencies, such as DARPA. By contrast, management and support would be a line management position. It would manage the multibillion-dollar businesses--such as the Defense Logistics Agency and the Defense Commissary Agency--that buy goods and services for the Department of Defense. It would also manage other defense agencies that perform other critical business functions for the Department, such as performing audits, paying our troops, and managing contracts. This would not only enable research and engineering to focus on technology development, it would also provide for a better management of billions of dollars of spending on mission support activities.

I come back from this recess--and I see my colleague also from Arizona in the Chamber--both of us come back, as a lot of my colleagues do, in the face of extreme unease, anger, and frustration on the part of the American people, not just over the issue of health care but over the issue, as I pointed out, of this massive spending and debt and deficit we have laid on future generations of Americans. They want us to act in their interests. So wouldn't it be appropriate for the President, tomorrow night, if I may be so bold, to say: My friends and colleagues, the citizens have spoken. They want us to sit down together, and they want us to do what is doable. They want us to fix this cost escalation of health care in America, which is making it less and less affordable to all Americans. But the message we have gotten is, they are very skeptical about "government-run health care" or a "government option."

I'm not President Bush