I want to follow up on part your testimony, and we understand that the oversight components, funding oversight comes out of the actual funding for the program; it is not a separate fund.

ARRA funds were supposed to help fund shovel-ready projects that would be completed within 2 years, but here we are 3 and a half years later.

We have already received complaints in the State of Nebraska about an entity that was all privately funded, business, now has competition laid over it with government subsidized broadband.

I think it is worth noting that your background and commitment to this region provides a deep reservoir of experience.

My priorities for the region are threefold and intertwined. First, it is to prevent widescale conflict, protect Israel...

But I think the central question here is, what does a post-Assad regime governance structure look like?

The United States is not going to stand by idly and watch this kind of brutality. It is not who we are, and the times in which that has happened we go back and question ourselves.

It doesn't function well, you are correct. But somehow it functions.

Let me be clear. I didn't say the United States.

To the United States, Africa is becoming a lost continent.

the Chinese take the stuff and we beg them to help the people in Africa.

Are there some trade practices or business constraints that we could re-examine that, again, would put us on a better competing field for African commerce?

American companies are at a disadvantage because we are not going to play by those same rules.

China has a choice: It can join the responsible community of nations to aid and do business with Africa in an ethical fashion or stand by its 'friendship' with despots and tyrants as countless more lives are lost across the continent.

I would respectfully state that I disagree, and I think, frankly, putting an agency in charge of developing rules, even with collaboration, is dooming that industry.

That is interesting considering that most economists state that the reduction of imports is due to a recession where people used less.

It is certainly quite a learning curve from both the Speaker's task force and the task force that Anna and I have been lucky enough to oversee.

The Global Online Freedom Act seeks to integrate these foundational human rights principles into the complexities of our participation in the vast global technology marketplace.