Cliff Stearns: “my colleagues, the Senate gave overwhelming unanimous consent for General Petraeus to implement his strategy in Iraq. We…”

“my colleagues, the Senate gave overwhelming unanimous consent for General Petraeus to implement his strategy in Iraq. We all agree, on both sides of the aisle, he is the best we have. In fact, he has written a manual dealing with terrorists. So why do the Democrats want to withdraw funds to support him starting the first of July? Even as we speak, the troops have to reallocate funds and prioritize their missions, because they don't have the full funding. In fact, they will run out of money shortly. So why do the Democrats not allow General Petraeus to do his job? General Petraeus intends to report back in September with a complete report on how we are doing. That is a very short amount of time, in fact, 5 months away. He deserves a chance, and he deserves full funding for this Congress through the fiscal year 2007. So I urge Congress, after the President vetoes this bill, to come back and give a clean bill so that the President can get full funding for our troops, at least through fiscal year 2007.”