Political Quotes

“I believe we are in a period of dueling reserves, trying to accommodate colleagues who are en route. But I would elaborate. As a prior enlisted servicemember, never serving in a field of combat, just getting a letter from home when you were away on a deployment, or even from the very moment you went to basic training, in those days, you didn't have cell phones, text messages, emails, instant messages, web chat rooms and all these things, so your lifeline was the postal service. Frankly, I owe to the mail service that delivered letters to me while I was a cadet at West Point a big part of the courtship that led to me marrying my wife. We dated the whole time we were there. We looked forward to letters. We did have pay phones back then, so you would wait in line for the pay phone that augmented the letters. It is heroic what these women did, as we think about other things that have changed, thankfully, the period of time where it was looked upon with skepticism that women could serve in our military, or African Americans, men or women, in any other way could serve. The idea that they were segregated in every way through this whole period of history is, I think, shocking to people today. But this was really a key piece of our history in allowing this transition. So I think it is fitting that they are recognized with the Congressional Gold Medal, and I encourage, once again, all of our colleagues to support this bill.…”