Political Quotes

“I thank the Senator from Missouri, and I thank the Senator from New York for her passionate and important debate. Let's not forget the work we have already done in the Defense authorization, ensuring that every victim will have his or her own attorney to represent their interests, taking commanders out of overturning verdicts, and making retaliation a crime. So we have done very important work. But why are we here today? The issue is will more cases be prosecuted if we take it out of the chain of command? Actually, no. There would be 93 cases under the current situation that wouldn't have been brought where commanders actually made a different decision than their military lawyer. What about those victims and those victims having their day in court? I want more victims to have their day in court. As we think about it, why are we doing this? Some of our allies did it. We looked at that issue. Our allies haven't seen any greater reporting, so there is no evidence that we are going to have reporting. Many of them did it to protect defendants. We are here to protect victims today. We certainly want a system with due process, but this is about having more victims coming forward. I also want to make sure people understand that under the system now they do not have to report to their commander. We had people come to the floor and say they shouldn't have to go to their boss. They can go to a sexual assault response coordinator, clergy, minister, civilian medical personnel.…”