Political Quotes

“I come to the floor again to urge my colleagues to stand up for Congress as a coequal branch of government and assert our institutional rights in the arms sales process. I want to thank my colleagues on both sides of the aisle who have joined with me in this effort to bring us here today. As we get ready to vote on these resolutions, I want to again remind my colleagues what is at stake here. At the end of the day, these votes are not about any one President or any one arms sale. There will be another President in the White House someday. There will be another President who will want to claim Executive authorities to run over Congress and who will want to use emergency declarations to push through their agenda. We in this body must embrace our article I responsibilities and ensure that we serve as an effective check on whoever that Executive is. Regarding these resolutions, in particular, we must both assert our role in upholding the rule of law at home and use our position to ensure that when our government seeks to sell weapons, those sales advance our national security interests and our values. It is the Congress that provided the President with the authority to sell arms while retaining strong oversight in the process. At the risk of getting in the weeds, I want to briefly explain why Secretary Pompeo's 22 emergency certifications don't meet the basic requirements laid out by Congress in the Arms Export Control Act.…”