Political Quotes

“Mr. President, to the extent any one of these nominations-- or all of them taken together--to the extent military readiness is invoked, implicated, is threatened, challenged, by all means, let's figure out a workaround. By all means, let's have the Department of Defense realize that as this policy debate happens, it should be the very last entity putting American national security at risk. So if that is what this is resulting in, then the Department of Defense, with all due respect, needs to stand down on this until such time as this can be debated and discussed. The fact is that every single year--every single year--the Department of Defense has the luxury that very few other branches have in that we devote an enormous amount of time to debating a policy bill--every year, year after year, going back for the last half century--the National Defense Authorization Act. This is the kind of thing that, if it is going to be addressed, if they want a change of law, then that change of law ought to be pursued on the floor of the Senate. The National Defense Authorization Act would present an opportunity for the Department of Defense to pursue that change. It can do it that way. It can do it in a stand-alone bill if it wants to. What it may not do is change the law on its own.…”