Political Quotes

“I'm not going to repeat some of the arguments that were made by my colleague from Rhode Island, but I understand them. There is, indeed, a large need for infrastructure in our country. We're falling far behind, and we've invested a lot of money in Afghanistan that has been wasted; a tremendous amount of money has been wasted. The most recent report I saw said that we cannot even begin to approximate how much money has been stolen and wasted in Afghanistan. We're not providing infrastructure for the people. We're providing a ruling class, a limited--we talk about the 2 percent here--we're talking about the one-tenth of 1 percent in Afghanistan, if that, and giving them the opportunity to put money in their pocket that should be going to the people. I ask the gentleman on the other side of the aisle who opposed the last amendment to consider this one, which almost passed last year, same basic amendment. This takes 175 million out, leaves 200 million in the fund, but it says they have got to prioritize, pick their projects and pick what they do. It doesn't decimate the fund; it just prioritizes and takes 175 million out of the Afghan infrastructure fund. We rebuilt Iraq. They're partners with Iran now. Didn't do us a lot of good. Most of us have been to Afghanistan or, at least, better yet, many of us have. We could do all the infrastructure in the world. It will go to waste. They can't even maintain it. They don't have vehicles to use the roads.…”