U.S. State Attorneys General

I am disappointed that the Senate is likely to pass this bill today, and I can promise this committee that I will do everything in my power to stop it when it comes over to the House.

This bill increases the chance of another crash and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says the bill will increase the likelihood of another bailout.

Just 10 years after big banks crashed the economy, Senate Republicans and some Dems want to roll back the rules that we put in place to prevent the next crash.

It is the largest investment in these three areas ever made, but it isn't an investment unless the money actually materializes.

Based on everything we know about this Administration's views on climate change, it would comport with the view that words such as 'climate change' would not be included in press releases from your Department.

I am asking you whether the words 'climate change' are somehow not acceptable in your Department and your various releases.

Excuse me, I have to correct you, Mr. Secretary, because the paper's abstract did have that sentence which you excluded from your press release.

So I think it is an area we are working through. It is a challenge now.

I think if you are a Marine from Vietnam or World War II and you went into watching what the Marines were doing, you would have just been lost at what was going on with the amount of unmanned ground systems, vehicles that were in the air…

I completely agree. As we look at modernizing our four public shipyards, and I have met with many of our workers in our shipyards, they want to have the modern tools.

These threats require us to consider how we can ensure that the Navy and Marine Corps have the resources they need.

You have certainly kept a laser-beam focus on getting to a 355-ship Navy.

In my opening statement, I referred to the Navy's new plan for modernizing the public shipyards, of course, after years of neglect.

I don't think we have a very cohesive strategy for countering the ongoing Russian efforts to interfere with our elections and our democracy.

So, are you saying that the Marines are developing a capability to counter information warfare from near-peer competitors such as Russia and China?

So, by the listing that you gave, are you doing enough to address the lethality gap?

Over the course of the past several months, our committee has heard testimony and received briefings detailing the increasing lethality gaps between the U.S. military and our near-peer competitors.

The primary challenge facing our Nation is the reemergence of long-term strategic competition with Russia and China.

Earlier this year, Secretary of Defense Mattis announced a new defense strategy that would shift the focus for planning defense capabilities from one focusing on smaller regional contingencies to one focusing on being able to deal with…

This is not a top priority for the President.

Don't you think there should be a lead agency, maybe the State Department, which has $120 million to do the exact thing we're talking about?

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Ending DACA would be a nightmare for America's economy.

Totally dependent on the steadiness of our funding.