Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. Today, during this debate, you may hear that some of the reforms that are in H.R. 1960 do not go far enough, that commanders absolutely have to be taken out of the decision process in sex-related offenses. Well, I disagree, Mr. Speaker, and let me tell you why. Holding commanders responsible and accountable for their actions and decisions is the most effective way to change the military culture, especially with regard to sex-related events. Proposals to take the commander out of the military justice decision process, they believe that it will improve those prosecutions. I disagree. They believe it will improve convictions and overall confidence of victims in the military justice system. There is no evidence to support these assertions. In fact, in 2005, the HASC heard similar assertions about the need to conform the UCMJ section on rape and sexual assault to the Federal law on those offenses. Congress made that revolutionary change and found that it did not make things better. In fact, the change made things worse. Cases were thrown out, the court of military appeals declared parts of the changes were unconstitutional, and justice for victims was delayed and ignored completely in some instances. Congress had to rewrite the UCMJ to fix the harm done. The lesson from that is to slow down when you're making major changes to UCMJ to make sure that you're doing the right thing. H.R. 1960 does exactly that.…”