These were major accomplishments, and I thank everyone who was involved in them.

I hope that we can have disaster legislation and a GSA reform bill ready for the committee to consider in the first half of this year.

I think there is something that we can do. Time is money when it comes to rebuilding.

the Stafford Act doesn't come close to bringing people back to where they were before a disaster.

It is sanctions, tough sanctions, not the goodness of the hearts of the Iranian leaders, that brought Iran to the negotiating table.

So we get an alarm bell, but we do not dismantle Iran's illicit nuclear infrastructure.

we remain hopeful that diplomacy will succeed in reversing Iran's ability to develop a nuclear weapon capability in accordance with the timeline that the P5+1 and Iran negotiating teams have set for themselves, which is March 24, 2015, for…

Now, the legislation that Senator Kirk and I have drafted would signal to the Iranian regime that there will be more consequences if they choose not to reach a final deal.

I understand the Obama administration has threatened to veto any bill that would do what I have just described.

It is for that reason that I support legislation to strengthen sanctions should the Iranians fail to reach an agreement by the deadline the White House has set.

We need to know what their scientists were able to develop prior to 2003.

We need Iran to understand that there are consequences if they fail to reach a comprehensive agreement.

Moving forward with new, unilateral U.S. sanctions at this time risks undermining the negotiations and could jeopardize chances to secure additional gains through a comprehensive agreement.

It makes little sense to decide now what we will do if negotiations are not successful. We should give these negotiations a chance and wait to see if a comprehensive agreement can be reached.

Neither are desirable.

The days are over when the American people are going to say, 'Hey, they can just go negotiate this thing, we will take their word for it.'

If we cannot protect, at the end of the day, the intellectual property of our companies, ... then it is a real problem.

As someone who is very concerned about our challenges already with Central America--its stability, its prosperity, and, as we saw last year in those who seek to flee their country because of instability and whatnot--this would be an…