Political Quotes

“Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I first want to begin by complimenting my friend and colleague Senator Gillibrand of New York, who has been working diligently--and we all know it--for 10 years, a decade, on this issue, particularly the issue of sexual assault and the related crimes in our military. There is nobody who has been more focused on it, and I applaud her for her relentless efforts--relentless. And I have a lot of respect for her. She has been coming to the floor every night here for the last 3 or 4 weeks and trying to move her bill. I am going to talk about her bill a little bit more and why I and others, in a bipartisan way--the chairman of the Armed Services, the ranking member of the Armed Services, and others--have been coming to the floor to object. But I also want to say that I care deeply--deeply--about this issue for two very important reasons. No. 1, the issue of sexual assault, domestic violence, is an enormous problem in America but is a huge problem in my State, the great State of Alaska. And since my time as attorney general and now my time as a U.S. Senator, I have been very focused on these issues. And I think, again, Senator Gillibrand has done an outstanding job, not just on the military ones but on a whole broad-based number of these kinds of bills that focus on the issues of domestic violence and sexual assault.…”