Political Quotes

“I am coming down to the floor to speak briefly on our efforts to protect women's access to birth control and contraception, but before I do, I just want to note something that happened here today that was really odd. So a few weeks back, we came together and had a consensus bipartisan vote to stand up for our veterans. A number of Republican and Democratic legislators here in the House and the Senate worked together to develop something called the PACT Act. This is groundbreaking legislation, decades in the making, that provides veterans access to healthcare for exposure to toxic chemicals, exposure that comes through being subjected to military burn pits-- these are pits where a lot of toxic chemicals and plastics are burned at military installations--but also for exposure to chemicals like Agent Orange. So we had an 84-to-14 vote here just a few weeks ago in favor of the PACT Act and then the bill came back to the Senate due to some technical corrections having nothing to do with the substance of the bill. And yesterday the vote went from 84 to 55. Thirty Senators reversed their vote, and the bill failed. All 30 of those were Republicans. What happened in 2 weeks that convinced 30 Republicans, who previously thought it was a good idea to help veterans, to decide instead to tank a bill that was helping veterans? There are really only two explanations.…”