Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I rise today, colleagues, to urge the Senate to proceed quickly--quickly--to the consideration of the accession protocols for Finland and Sweden to join NATO. Once again the Senate has been given the responsibility of offering advice and consent to ratifying the accession of two new members to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. We have been advising aggressively for quite some time, and it is time now to move to the consent portion of getting this done. NATO is the most successful political-military alliance in history. It helped bring down the Soviet Union, and it united Europe so it could rebuild economically. The Senate has the opportunity to expand NATO and bring both Finland and Sweden into the alliance. Over the years, these countries never sought membership. They were content to just partner with NATO, but they did not join. However, Putin's attempt to rewrite the security landscape in Europe with his invasion of Ukraine convinced the people of Finland and Sweden that they should become formal members of NATO. Why wouldn't they? After the past 2 weeks--and really the entire summer--the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has carefully considered and discussed the prospective membership of our longtime partners, Finland and Sweden. The Senate has already shown bipartisan support for Finland and Sweden joining NATO.…”