Political Quotes

“My colleague from Massachusetts raises some very important points. It would be appropriate for our Foreign Affairs Committee to take up those points and consider them after we have had a lot of hearings, including an opportunity for a notice to the American people so the American people can be heard. Coming up with this sort of an idea that it is just going to come through the Rules Committee without any hearing, without any real expertise in the Rules Committee to consider it, and then putting it on the floor for limited debate is not the way to do it. Now, I must admit I have some reservations about establishing a hard stop of April 30 of next year. Saying that we are going to allow the next President to come forward with a new OCO proposal before April 30 of next year, which we did 8 years ago, is not the same thing. What my colleague is proposing is a hard stop. That is exactly what the President did in Iraq: a hard stop. We pulled out, and look what happened: absolute chaos, a nation that has gone from being a nation into being a nation in total dissolution. We came close to doing the same thing in Afghanistan. Thankfully, the President has pulled back from that. Because when we telegraph to our enemies, ``Hey, we are out of here after a certain date,'' they know when we are leaving, they know when we are stopping, and they know exactly how to time their activities against us.…”