Political Quotes

“There are two things that I think are important to note about the Speier amendment. First is that the author of the amendment is actually a full member of the Armed Services Committee and chose not to offer this amendment in the Armed Services Committee where there could have been unlimited debate on the substance of the amendment; instead choosing to offer it in this more limited format where there were hundreds of amendments and certainly limited time and issues of great import. Also, it is cast in the light of the fact that you have bipartisan, full support for the provisions that are in our bill that do address sexual assault. The second thing that is important about the Speier amendment is that, as the author noted, there had been debate on this in the Senate. And in that debate, in fact, it was rejected--the structure that was being proposed in the Speier amendment. So we already have the Senate's view, and we also have a bipartisan view of this House on what needs to be done. And we share with the author the absolute commitment that this needs to be addressed. The manner in which we've done it, again on a bipartisan basis, is by moving it up the chain of command and restricting the chain of command. No more can a commander, by their signature, set aside a conviction for sexual assault. No more can someone who's convicted of a sexual assault stay in the military.…”