Debbie Wasserman Schultz: “I wanted to take off on the point you just made about the ability we give for the President to make a decision that he…”

“I wanted to take off on the point you just made about the ability we give for the President to make a decision that he thinks is in the national interest, of national security. Mr. Speaker, this legislation provides benchmarks, the same benchmarks that this President came before the country and said were essential on January 10; that we have unit readiness; that we have a length of deployment. We have two sets of benchmarks here. We have benchmarks that this Democratic Congress put in this legislation to make sure we can protect our troops, to make sure we weren't sending them into harm's way unprepared. Then we have benchmarks in this bill to ensure that the Iraqis meet their obligations. Those obligations, those benchmarks, are the same ones that the President indicated to the American people were essential when he spoke to the Nation on January 10. When this Congress switched from Republican to Democrat after November 7, the main reason it happened is because the American people were sick and tired of being sick and tired. They had lost their confidence in their government. Their confidence in this Congress was badly shaken. We had scandals. We had a culture of corruption. We had a situation where the American people couldn't believe that their Congress was doing right on their behalf, and that the majority, Republican at the time, was here for the right reasons. That is why there was a wholesale shift and we won 33 seats on November 7.”