Political Quotes

“Madam President, a number of people have asked me to comment about the situation since President Putin has moved aggressively with regard to Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, which has therefore brought about some retaliation of sanctions by the United States against Russia. We are now hearing comments--a number of troubling statements--coming out of Russia by the Deputy Prime Minister, who has the responsibility for defense and aerospace, regarding the U.S. development of rockets that can again take Americans, on American rockets, to and from the International Space Station. He has made a sarcastic comment, something to the effect of, well, how do the Americans think they are going to get to the space station--on a trampoline? And then most recently a statement having been issued in his name that the Russian rocket company will not sell the very efficient and very energetic Russian rocket engine, the RD-180, to the United States for military purposes. This is a very complex issue. It affects not only our military access to space, it affects our civilian access to space. I will see if I can dissect this in about 4 minutes, as a number of people have asked me about this. This will be an issue, for example, next week in the markup in the Senate Armed Services Committee of the Armed Services Defense authorization bill. First, let's go back and see the history. How do we have this relationship with Russia and what is it?…”