Political Quotes

“Thank you, Mr. President. I wish to commend my colleague from Ohio. The national parks mean so much to us in Alaska, and I am looking forward to getting on that bill as a cosponsor. It is a very important piece of legislation. Once again, Senator Portman is leading the way in the Senate on so many issues. NATO Summit Mr. President, this afternoon, I want to say a few words about the President's visit to NATO and the NATO meeting we just had and talk about the importance of alliances and our allies. If you read the press accounts, I think you will see that this trip and the meeting of the President with all of the NATO leaders in Brussels was, overall, a good trip. There has been this commitment by NATO members since at least 2014-- but it really goes way earlier than 2014--for each country to spend 2 percent or more of their GDP on defense spending so that we share the burden of defense. The United States has essentially always met this target--easily met this target--but a lot of other countries haven't. They have heard time and again from Presidents about this, and yet they have kind of ignored it. The success of this trip is that it looks like for the first time in years, NATO countries are moving away from cuts in defense spending. Even in the United States, from 2010 to 2016, we were cutting our defense spending. Although it was way above 2 percent, we cut it by almost 25 percent. We saw a huge drop in readiness. We are changing that.…”