Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I thank Senator Gillibrand for her leadership in this area over a long period of time, and I add my voice to the support of her amendment. She has been a great leader on the issue. As you can see, she has a lot of passion in her dogged pursuit of justice. Last year, when I spoke in favor of this measure, I made the point this was not a new issue that required further study or incremental reforms. We had been hearing promises for years and years that there would be zero tolerance and a real crackdown on military sexual assault. Last year, the National Defense Authorization Act included a lot of commonsense reforms, but it did not include any fundamental reform of the military justice system. We were told to give these new adjustments to the current system a chance to work and come back next year. At the time, I made the point that we had already tried working within the current system to no avail. I am not one to advocate for major sweeping reform if less will address the problem, but what we have been doing has not worked.…”