Barbara Boxer: “I believe it is not fair play, and if there is one thing I expect in the Senate--and I think we all stand for it--it is…”

“I believe it is not fair play, and if there is one thing I expect in the Senate--and I think we all stand for it--it is fair play. We voted huge amounts of money into this region of the world. We have horrible problems there. We have a few disagreements here, but I had hoped we could agree that the Secretary of Defense is correct when he puts limits on the use of DOD personnel. I am very saddened by this. I do not want to keep repeating it, but it is sad. The people in this country are going to be upset about it. The people in this country, when we get involved in a foreign place, want to know that we in the Senate put restrictions on the use of our personnel. We have had a lot of experience in this. We have had a lot of tears over this. Yet yesterday we had an amendment from Senator Sessions that was clearly legislation on an appropriations bill, which I believe gets us deeper involved because it says we should support the military and the political policies of the Government of Colombia, and no one raised a point of order. But a simple amendment supporting the Secretary of Defense, and where are we? We get a point of order. I am not going to play that game. I am not going to get caught in a procedural vote. I will just let it go, but I want to make it clear that we have a lot of options later when this bill comes back. If there are going to be things in this bill that violate our parliamentary procedures, some of us are going to get tough on it.”