Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman for his comment, Joe Wilson, of course, a member of his party. Joe Wilson filed that bill five Congresses ago, 8 years ago, and it languished. It was not brought to the floor. It did not pass. I understand the gentleman's concern, but he ought to also reflect upon the fact that Joe Wilson introduced it four Congresses ago, so that we have now included it in the bill. We think it was a proper provision to have in our bill. Of course, all your people voted against that bill, and I would observe, they voted against a bill that, frankly, the chairman of your committee, now the ranking member, wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal that said the appropriate level of funding was exactly what we put in our bill. The Joint Chiefs of Staff said that the figure for 2020 was 733. I was deeply regretful that a bill which was the figure that Mr. Thornberry put forward in an editorial in The Wall Street Journal--and, I might say, I had conversations with him subsequent to that, recently, which confirmed to me that he still held that view. Notwithstanding that, every one of your Republicans voted against it. And it was the largest--there was this complaint about the size of the military pay raise. It was the largest raise for our military in 10 years. Now, we were in charge 10 years ago and we are now back in charge, which means we have had the two largest raises, and that was included in your MTR. Mr.…”