Political Quotes

“Reserving the right to object, the senior Senator from Texas has always been very courteous to me. Yesterday was no exception in withholding his unanimous consent request when we discussed this issue. It was about 2 o'clock in the afternoon, as he indicated. I indicated that I thought that if we waited until 3:30 we would have this matter revolved, as that is what I had been told. In fact, it was a little after 3 o'clock yesterday afternoon that Secretary Hagel issued a statement announcing that the Department of Defense had entered into an agreement, as my friend said, with the organization my friend mentioned, and that would provide the family of fallen servicemembers--over the weekend, the Senator from Texas is correct, we had five soldiers killed, one of whom was a woman, four men and one woman. The agreement Senator Hagel came up with would give everyone-- provide to family members of the military the full set of benefits they have been promised, including the $100,000 death benefit gratuity. So the death benefit issue has been resolved. The Department of Defense stepped forward and took care of everything, so this issue is largely moot. It is clear the action on this legislation is now just for show here. We all agree it is bad that the government shutdown led to this added grief for the families who had suffered such a terrible loss. Now we need to do what we can to prevent any further bad results--and there have been plenty of them in other areas.…”