Political Quotes

“First let me thank our ranking member, Mr. Dicks, for your leadership for this time, but also for your patriotism and for your commitment to our country and to our troops. And it is an exciting committee, and it's a very important committee. And I want to thank Chairman Rogers for your leadership, and for also his service and for the attempts to bring this committee together in the spirit of bipartisanship. While I think everyone knows that I respect and support the President and I applaud him for his tremendous leadership on so many issues, like many of my colleagues, I was tremendously disappointed to hear the President's announcement last night. {time} 1820 Almost three out of four Americans want to bring our troops home from Afghanistan, and this was far from the significant reduction that the American people were expecting. A token troop reduction of 10,000 by the end of this year and waiting another year to remove another 23,000, which in total would merely reverse the 2009 troop escalation, is really, for me, unacceptable; and quite frankly, it flies in the face of the growing bipartisan calls across our war-weary Nation to exit Afghanistan and to refocus on our priorities here at home. Now, I voted against this original authorization in 2001, which was a very difficult vote for me to cast because I ended up being the only one to cast a ``no'' vote.…”