Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I rise to talk about an amendment that I believe is on an incredibly urgent matter. Today the vast majority, almost all of our servicemembers, serve this country so honorably, so bravely. But there is a very small number who do not, who are engaging in sexual assault in the military. Despite Secretary Panetta's efforts to have a zero tolerance policy in this country, in 2011 alone there were 3,000 military assaults reported, and the Secretary of Defense reports the real number is much closer to 19,000 assaults. In the words of the DOD, sexual violence in the military ``is an affront to the basic American values we defend, and may degrade military readiness, subverts our strategic goodwill, and forever changes the lives of victims and their families.'' My amendment is very simple. Today each of the services have policies that address this issue, but the one that the Navy has is the best. My amendment requires the Department to oversee that each of the service branches has established a policy that would mandate that servicemembers convicted of sexual offenses will be processed for administrative separation. The reason this is so important is because one-third of convicted sexual offenders in the military are still retained. They are still serving. So, obviously, we must do better. We need a uniform standard to correct these deficiencies in the respective branch policies to be able to serve our military families and our military members as we should.…”