Political Quotes

“Mr. President, please inform me when 10 minutes has expired. I rise tonight to let the military know that we may have a short night in the Senate, but you are going have better days ahead. This whole exercise, for me, is about you. It is about those who have been fighting this war for the last 17 years. It is about stopping the madness created by the Congress in 2011. What we did in 2011 was we came up with a budget proposal called sequestration. If we could not find a bipartisan path forward to cut $1.2 trillion in the Federal budget over a decade, we would punish the military by taking $600 billion out of the military and $600 billion out of nondefense spending and leave entitlements alone. Nobody thought it would happen. There was a penalty clause in the Budget Control Act to make sure that the supercommittee would act responsibly. Guess what. They didn't. There is no use blaming them over everybody else. The bottom line is, we couldn't reach a budget agreement. We spent $47 trillion over the next 10 years, which is how much we will spend. We couldn't save $1.2 trillion, so sequestration kicked in. What has it done to our military? This is what General Mattis, the Secretary of Defense, said: Let me be clear: As hard as the last 16 years of war have been on our military, no enemy in the field has done as much harm to the readiness of U.S.…”