Political Quotes

“I am proud to stand once again with Senator Gillibrand in support of the Military Justice Improvement Act. Two years ago, Congress enacted a number of commonsense reforms as part of the National Defense Authorization Act. These changes were mostly good, commonsense measures, and I supported them; however, they were not sufficient. As I said at that time a year ago, we are past the point of tinkering with the current system and hoping that does the trick. I urged the Senate at that time to support bold actions that would make sexual assault in the military a thing of the past. Unfortunately, those of us arguing for the Military Justice Improvement Act did not prevail. We were told to wait and see if the reforms that were included would work, while leaving in place the current military justice system. Well, we have had time to see if things have really changed. They have not. The rate of sexual assault in the military is unchanged. Forty-two percent of servicemember survivors who reported retaliation were actually encouraged to drop the issue by their supervisor or someone else in the chain of command. That means a crime was committed, and you shouldn't bother to report the crime. A majority of servicemember survivors indicated that they were not satisfied with the official actions taken against the alleged perpetrator. Three out of four survivors lacked sufficient confidence in the military justice system to report the crime. Isn't that awful.…”