Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I would like to respond and to inform my colleagues about what would happen if this amendment were adopted by the body. No. 1, the foreign aid budget is less than 1 percent of the total Federal budget. It is about $52 to $53 billion. It has been reduced. A lot of things Senator Paul said about money being wasted were very much true in the past. President Bush looked at foreign assistance in a different way to come up with the Millennium Challenge Corporation. We are now trying to make sure our dollars go to make us safer, to help people who are truly in need, and to make sure we have a presence in the world for which I think there would be no substitute. It cuts 67 percent of the foreign aid budget in three titles: USAID--those of you who have been to Afghanistan and other places, USAID projects are designed to make sure that once the military is withdrawn from that area, that we can hold. Those of you who are tired of war, like all of us, I just want to go back to ``Charlie Wilson's War.'' The last scene in the movie was Mr. Wilson wanted $1 million to build some schoolhouses in Afghanistan, and the reply was: Man, I have got broken schools in my State and my district. And that is true in South Carolina, that is true in Kentucky, and it is true in West Virginia. But we had no soldiers in Afghanistan and no aid to Afghanistan during the Taliban reign. That model did not work.…”