Political Quotes

“I rise to deliver tonight some brief remarks about a matter that a group of freshmen Democrats in this body have worked on together, and that is a bipartisan commission on wartime contracting and to expand the authority of the existing oversight mechanisms to help make sure our taxpayer dollars are spent properly and wisely in Iraq and Afghanistan. I, like the Presiding Officer from the State of Ohio, joined Senators Webb and McCaskill and 23 other Members in cosponsoring this amendment and encourage the full Senate to approve it when it comes to a vote tomorrow. As a former auditor general in Pennsylvania, I know firsthand the need to aggressively root out waste in government. But it is especially egregious to discover waste and abuse and the loss of taxpayer dollars when our troops are in harm's way. I also know that the oversight required to monitor potential abuse is a full-time job. That is why this amendment takes the extraordinary step of creating a new commission, evenly divided between the political parties, to investigate contractor abuses in a thorough manner.”