Political Quotes

“Mr. President, because of the tremendous cooperation of the Senator from Michigan and the Senator from Arizona--obviously, my goal is to call for this amendment to be adopted--I did not provide a lot of context because I know they both support this amendment. But I want to thank them both for their comments. I do not think there are two Senators who can better articulate the issue we face in Afghanistan with Pakistan, which is both a friend and a foe on many occasions. None of us who have traveled to Afghanistan--I know these two Senators have probably more than most, but all of us who have been there have heard our generals talking about the fact that they are fighting a war in Afghanistan that is really being led and directed out of Pakistan. So basically we have an issue here. I think the two Senators have articulated the issue very well. The fact is, we need to know, first of all, if what we are doing in support of the Pakistan military is effective for us, and the two Senators have outlined that is a big issue. The second piece is how we are actually reimbursing. If you talk with folks at the State Department, we literally are going through reams of invoices and documents, looking at how many bullets they have used, how much food has been supplied to the military, what is going to be counted, what is not going to be counted. We are spending more time, in many ways, accounting for this than we are really looking at how effective the aid is.…”