Political Quotes

“the Senate today will pass the National Defense Authorization Act for the coming fiscal year. This vote is historic as Congress has enacted a national defense authorization act every year for the past half century. I commend the Senate for maintaining this steadfast support for our armed services, but this legislation will be remembered for reasons both bad and good. I regret the decision of the House and Senate conferees to include unnecessary and potentially harmful provisions related to the detention of terrorist suspects. However, I strongly support measures in the conference report that will empower the National Guard within the Department of Defense, enhance protections for military victims of sexual violence, increase transparency by limiting unnecessary exclusions from the Freedom of Information Act, improve mental health outreach to members of the National Guard and Reserves, and make many other changes to strengthen our national defense and take care of our men and women in uniform. I continue to strongly oppose the detention related provisions in this conference report, which I believe are unwise and unnecessary. These provisions undermine our Nation's fundamental principles of due process and civil liberties and inject operational uncertainty into our counterterrorism efforts in a way that I believe harms our national security. I strongly oppose section 1021 of this conference report, which statutorily authorizes indefinite detention.…”