Political Quotes

“I come to the floor this afternoon to talk against an amendment that would undermine the spirit of bipartisanship we have cultivated with the last several budget deals without fully addressing our national security and domestic needs and to speak in support of an alternative that would do so much more to protect our families, improve our national security, and build on our bipartisan budget deal in a truly fair and responsible way. As I will go into a bit more, for an amendment to a bill focused on ensuring our Nation is prepared to meet future challenges here at home and across the world, the Republican amendment ignores too many priorities in the nondefense world that are critical to our Nation's security. It only supplements defense priorities, leaving by the wayside domestic challenges, such as the Flint water crisis, the Zika outbreak, the opioid crisis, and domestic law enforcement agencies like the FBI, to say nothing of investments that we also know improve national security in the long run, such as education, health care, a strong economy, and more. It casts aside the principles we laid down in our bipartisan budget deal that we should be building on, not tearing down. I want to spend a minute or two on that last point, since it is a very important one. As many of us have said before, a budget is far more than simply numbers on a page.…”