Political Quotes

“Madam Chairman, once again my good friend from Virginia talks about equal justice; we agree. He talks about not acting with impunity; we agree. That's why this minority when it was the majority passed the MEJA legislation in the first place. That is why we have covered the DOD contractors, their employees and dependents and the Armed Forces members. All of these individuals are already covered at this point in time if they are supporting a mission of DOD. And we agree, the American people and most people in this House want us to reach out and get the bad actors. The only thing that they don't want us to do in the process is, one, jeopardize the intelligence operations that we could have, which this bill could easily do. Number two, they don't want us to divert resources here from the United States in dealing with terrorism and gang activities and criminal activities here, or put our FBI agents in harm. The third thing they don't want us to do is let bad actors do these things in Germany and Haiti wherever they may be sent just simply because we couldn't get the drafting right. That is our point that we have been saying from the beginning. It is easy to have equal justice, not let contractors act with impunity, but write it in a good, rational basis that can be enforceable and not the kind of drafting that we have had brought forward in this legislation.”