Political Quotes

“I thank the chairman of the committee for his great work on this bill and for yielding me this time. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in support of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2016. This is an important bill that provides funding and authority for the men and women in uniform who are willing to go in harm's way to keep our country safe. This bill takes some of the important steps to reform the Department of Defense, both in acquisition and in retirement benefits. It includes a number of provisions that I worked on regarding military space, missile defense, and tunnel detection, to name just a few. This is a bipartisan bill. Dozens, if not hundreds, of provisions were authored by Democrats. It came out of committee by a vote of 60-2. Only one Democrat voted against it in committee. Nothing substantive has changed; only now Nancy Pelosi is calling the shots, and Democrats have flip-flopped. I understand that Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats want to increase taxes and increase spending on domestic programs, but that debate should not be fought on the backs of our troops. If you vote against this bill, it is a vote to cut our defense budget. It is even a vote against President Obama's requested defense budget. Today we have troops doing humanitarian relief in Nepal, dropping bombs on ISIS, fighting the Taliban, deterring Iran in the Straits of Hormuz, and supporting our European allies in the face of Russian aggression. Now is not the time to cut the defense budget.…”