Rep. Alan Grayson said Tuesday that rather than intervening militarily in Syria, the United States should instead focus on problems at home.
“The questions for America are as follows: Why does this matter to us?” the outspoken Florida Democrat said on MSNBC. “We are four weeks away from the government shutting down. We are six weeks away from the government running out of money. I sometimes think that the entire U.S. government consists of people who have a serious problem with attention deficit disorder.”
Mr. Grayson said that President Obama’s “red line” statement in August 2012 on Syria’s use of chemical weapons “does not change the fact that in this country, you have 20 million people who are looking for full-time work. We still have 40 million people who can’t see a doctor when they’re sick. We have 40 million people who live in homes where their mortgage is worth more than the home, and we have roughly 45 million people dependent on the government to feed them. These are the problems that we need to be concentrating on — not the Syrian civil war.”
“What are we doing about those domestic issues?” he continued. “We’re not walking and we’re not chewing gum — we’re not doing either.”
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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