Political Quotes

“Madam President, once again, I object to the request from the Senator from New York for the reasons I have previously stated, and I will repeat again what I have said publicly and what I have committed to. I support removing prosecution of sexual assault, the types of crimes that Senator Gillibrand discussed, from the chain of command. But her bill goes further to include crimes not related to sexual assault. The removal of sexual assault crimes from the chain of command will be an historic change in the military justice system and one which Senator Gillibrand can claim great responsibility for effecting. We must take care, however, that we do it thoughtfully, in a manner that does not break the military justice system. The worst thing we can do to victims of sexual assault is to move a bill through that can't be implemented effectively or on time, creates too large a workload for too few qualified military judge advocates, imperils prosecutions, leads to convictions being overturned on appeal, or results in neglected cases because the necessary attention cannot be devoted to them. According to the Department of Defense, the number of full-time colonels, lawyer disposition authorities required to execute the system as proposed, which would take effect 180 days from enactment, exceeds the number of judge advocates in that senior grade.…”