Political Quotes

“I thank the gentlewoman from Missouri for all of her hard work on the Armed Services Committee. Mr. Speaker, I served my country 21 years in the Infantry in the United States Army and have deployed operationally to Kosovo, Kuwait, Afghanistan and Iraq. As a combat Infantry veteran, I know firsthand the hardships and dangers that our warriors face. The question that we have to ask is: Why has the President increased the hardship and danger to our troops? Has he forgotten that we have troops in the field that are still fighting? Has he forgotten that he has committed to contingency operations that created new hardships, new deployments, unscheduled training, unscheduled maintenance? And now, after asking them to turn everything on their heads, he is not even going to support it. A Presidential veto blocks needed funds for our ongoing combat operations and for our emergency operations and contingencies. The President claims that we need to do this right; yet, he has created the foreign policy mess that has required our troops to deploy on contingencies and then has asked this body to get additional Congressional authorization for those efforts. And now he adds to their burden. The veto eliminates crucial planning time just for normal peacetime operations in training from 3 to 6 months, forcing the military to waste millions of dollars as they play a catch-up game, usually in the spring, by having to deal with such efforts to try to make up for lost time.…”