Political Quotes

“first of all, let me thank my friend the distinguished Senator from Ohio for including me in his unanimous consent request. I will briefly speak about an amendment. We all understand that the issue is going to come before this body to send activity into Syria. I am very much opposed to any kind of force in Syria, but if it happens, we want to be sure there is some protection there. So I have an amendment that even if my amendment passes, I will still oppose the effort of this President to send activity into Syria, and I believe it would precipitate a war. My amendment is very simple. If the President takes military action against Syria, sequestration of our Armed Forces would be delayed for 1 year. We are talking about the fiscal year where we would take another $52 billion out of our military. What Asad has done and continues to do is reprehensible, but the United States can't afford another war given the current state of our military. The threats from Syria and the Middle East are not emerging threats. These threats have been around for decades. We knew they were there. There is nothing new about them. Yet the readiness capabilities of our military continue to be decimated by drastic budget cuts. Sixteen Air Force combat flying squadrons have been grounded. We finally, after 3 months, put them back in the air again, and right now we know it costs more to get them back in a state of readiness than the money we saved from grounding them for 3 months.…”