Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I thank Chairman Takano for moving this very important legislation. In this polarized and angry time, one of the lights of this institution is that we have always come together to better serve our veterans, to better serve those men and women who took the ultimate risk and were prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice on behalf of all of us and the system that this room embodies. And this is a real problem. As I go around my district and I talk to young veterans, they face any number of transitional issues; with housing, with healthcare. And let's face it, the change from being on active duty to being a veteran is a challenging one, one that all too often results in the kind of tragedy that we have acknowledged here in this Chamber today. And so I rise in strong support of the EVEST Act. It is consistent with something that I am very proud to have accomplished many years ago when we passed the SERVE Act, which made it easier for veterans to show that they had an income so that they could get the housing which they were entitled to. It was a small thing, but it just eased the passage for those young men and women who have so well served this country. This is important, and it is not a big deal, but it is going to affect tens of thousands of veterans. My Republican friends know that I respect and value their input and their objections to our ideas. It makes us better when you pose objections to our ideas.…”