Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, this amendment offered by my friend and colleague, Congresswoman Barbara Lee, restores the NDAA to the original funding level requested by the White House, the Pentagon, and the chair of the Armed Services Committee. Specifically, it would remove the Rogers amendment which would increase the pending authorization by $23.9 billion. When Mr. Rogers' amendment was offered during committee markup, I voted against it, and nothing over the last few weeks has led me to change my mind. Mr. Speaker, just 3 weeks ago we ended our military operations in Afghanistan--America's longest war and one that started when I was in middle school. Yet what some are concluding from that is that what we need is more war, more weapons, and billions of dollars more than even what the Pentagon themselves are asking for. So many of my colleagues who supported Mr. Rogers' amendment note the emerging threat from China as their reason to support this increase, even though very little of this increase is even relevant to China and most national security experts agree that making needed domestic investments is far more important to our competitiveness with China. Instead, this inflated budget seeks to sugarcoat that for years we have been decreasing investments in diplomacy and the support of our servicemembers in favor of purchasing new, unproven, and un-needed weapons.…”