Political Quotes

“First of all, we can certainly debate the efficient use of our funds for expenses and the cost, but I strongly suspect that my colleague's objections in this amendment do not relate to cost but to a judgment about what should and shouldn't be provided to our military families. Now, we can have this debate about transgender care for our military servicemembers, and the debate will look something like this one, but this particular amendment would ban any care for minor children. What this amendment would do is to say to our military servicemembers, you cannot have the full range of recognized medical options for your children that are available in a nonmilitary setting. That is what this amendment would do. This is about children. It is about parents making decisions for their children. This is a situation where that decision should be left to the servicemember parents who have a choice as to whether they serve in the military or not, have a choice as to whether to join the military or not, or stay in the military. We should provide them the same basic rights and options as are available in the private sector. Otherwise, aside from not being fair to them, in my estimation, we also will not have a strong military because they will choose not to join or to stay in. I yield back the balance of my time.”