Political Quotes

“in a few minutes here--in 45 minutes or so--the Senate is going to vote to decide whether we want to begin debate on the bill that is before us, S. 1, Strengthening America's Security in the Middle East Act of 2019. I remind everybody of why we began with this bill. I don't know what the number is, but I would say the overwhelming majority of the Members of the Senate did not agree when the President decided to pull us out of Syria for various different reasons. Everybody was asking us: Well, why don't you guys do something about it? As you know, it is difficult. The Congress cannot order the President to take military action. It can authorize it, it can fund it, and it can defund it, but it cannot compel it. That is the role of the Commander in Chief. There are some things we can do. However, because there are things we were concerned about with his decision, there are things we can do to sort of deal with the consequences of what, I believe, would be a mistake, and this bill endeavors to do that. We went through and said: Let's find some bills that would help our allies in the region--Israel, Jordan--and that deal with the human rights catastrophe in Syria. Let's find things that are bipartisan and have widespread support so that we are not starting with something controversial.…”