Mr. President, the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act of 2019, NDAA, provides crucial resources to our Armed Forces and our national defense. Although I have serious concerns with this law, many of its provisions play a…

I understand the policy right now, you are assuring this committee that unless Russia changes its behavior, we will not only maintain all of our sanctions, you are looking for ways to strengthen those sanctions against Russia.

I agree with Senator Portman that this committee and this Congress has acted in a very bipartisan manner, recognizing the threat of Russia.

is not Putin's assault on the free and independent press inside Russia and in the Russia periphery emboldened by President Trump's regurgitation of the Stalin-era attacks on American media?

the President is handing the Russian government a gift by his regular attacks on the free press

The President should call it that and forcefully respond.

if we cannot come up with a way to safeguard the integrity of our democracy in the next 80 days, shame on us.

the lights are flashing red.

the obvious objective is to influence Russian behavior.

the Department of Homeland Security focuses on defense, trying to harden our infrastructure, including when it comes to elections, our election information.

We know what you are doing. It must stop. And if it continues, if you continue, you and your Government will pay a dear price.

I think it was a bad idea to use the recent defense bill to relax waiver authorities on Russian defense and intelligence sector sanctions.

Under the DETER Act, there is no getting around the penalties, right? That is the whole idea of deterrence.

we've got to make sure that we come to agreement.

I have been trying to constantly push SBA to make sure that they do everything they can do as quickly as possible.

we're going to do everything we can to get that information to implement as many of these policies as we can and to do as much transparency as possible.

I think there is--as I see it from the Federal perspective, there are two big pieces of this.

I appreciate that. I mean the FEMA commitment to date has been--it's been over a million dollars.