Political Quotes

“in reserving the right to object, let's set the record straight. There is no possibility of this money or any other money going to the Taliban. Section 9021 of the fiscal year 2021 Defense Appropriations Act--we all voted for it--makes funding the Taliban illegal, and if any Pentagon official breaks that law, they could go to jail under the Antideficiency Act. Whatever the Secretary of State may have answered to Senator Paul's question at a hearing, we should know and he should know that spending money in any way that enables it to go to the Taliban would be breaking the law, and he would have to come to Congress to use any of that money to aid the Taliban. So this is a false issue. The funds that the Paul amendment seeks to rescind have actually not yet been appropriated. He targets the $3.3 billion in the fiscal year 2022 request. You can't rescind funds that haven't yet been appropriated. So the amendment falls of its own weight, but I want to deal with the merits. No. 1, the Paul amendment seeks to rescind funds from the Department of Defense's Afghan Security Forces Fund. Those funds are still needed to complete the withdrawal. They are in an account that is urgently needed to terminate contracts that are already in place and secure military equipment that has been withdrawn from Afghanistan. All of the complaints about the withdrawal and all of the complaints about the need to secure that military equipment are met by this funding.…”