Michael Waltz: “This cut to the Overseas Contingency Operations budget, to the operations and maintenance account, is an attempt to back…”

“This cut to the Overseas Contingency Operations budget, to the operations and maintenance account, is an attempt to back us out of the war on terror. We all want peace. We all want these wars to go away, but that doesn't mean we can just wish them away, that we can just cut an account by over a third and wish these wars away like the Obama administration tried to do in Iraq. The reality is we can either fight these wars in places like Kabul and Kandahar and Damascus and Baghdad, or this problem, particularly the terrorism problem, the extremism problem, will follow us home to places like Kansas City, San Bernardino, Orlando, New York, and others. It is irresponsible, in the midst of a war--and I remind my colleagues that we are in the midst of a war--to tie the Pentagon's hands by cutting these funds when we have special operators, as we speak today, as we are debating here today, in 72 countries, as we have more American servicemembers deployed overseas than the entire armies of the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada combined, ensuring a liberal world order that has ensured the greatest period of prosperity since World War II that the world has ever known. Mr. Chair, this is an irresponsible amendment. We can have this debate over where we should be and how our servicemembers should be deployed, but to cut their funds in the middle of the war on terror and try to back us out of these wars because you disagree with them is the height of irresponsibility.…”