Political Quotes

“Madam Speaker, I rise in support of this en bloc package and thank the gentlewoman for including my amendment today. Madam Speaker, before coming to Congress, I served at the State Department working on countering and preventing violent extremism and addressing the real drivers behind it. What we know is that it is not possible to solely rely on security assistance and military tools to counter violent extremism. In fact, one of the common drivers of local recruitment into these extremist groups is abuses by state security forces. When the United States provides security assistance to militaries tasked with countering violent groups, we need to acknowledge the possible consequences and ensure that the assistance we do provide is not going to people who will abuse their own citizens and, in turn, exacerbate the very problem we are seeking to address in the first place. We need to properly allocate resources to actually address the drivers of violence and conflict, which means more funding to efforts like the Global Fragility Act. Madam Speaker, I look forward to working with my colleagues on these efforts.”