Political Quotes

“Mr. President, first let me thank Senator Inhofe for his leadership and his cooperation, which has gotten us to this point in the consideration of the fiscal year 2020 National Defense Authorization Act. The chairman has been thoughtful. He has been very reasonable. We had a record hearing in our committee in terms of the number of amendments we dealt with and how we did it in a very collegial fashion. As a result, we were able to once again, as he has indicated, include 93 additional amendments in the substitute package that has been submitted. That is testimony to the good work of the chairman and the outstanding work of our staff, who have been working very diligently, and I appreciate it. This is a very good bill. It passed out of committee by a vote of 25 to 2--totally bipartisan vote. It contains many needed authorities, funding authorizations, and reforms that will help the men and women of our Armed Services. As both of us have indicated, it also contains numerous amendments from many of my colleagues on other issues of great importance, such as, for example, the intelligence authorization. We have included in this legislation the work of the Intelligence Committee not just for this year but the past 3 years. So we will now have up-to-date authorities for the intelligence community. We will authorize the Maritime Administration. We have provisions that range far and wide. We have an amendment dealing with the fentanyl crisis.…”