Richard Shelby

We've spent billions of dollars on immigration enforcement, but to no avail.

The Obama administration, as well as previous administrations, have failed to secure our borders.

I personally have no confidence that pouring billions of dollars into our current immigration system will solve the crisis.

I believe that we must start with actually securing our border, which we have never done; enforcing our Nation's immigration laws, which we don't do; and definitively saying no to people who come here illegally.

We are here because our Nation's immigration system is broken.

Is that because of the electronic growth, the use of electronics as we have seen a technological change?

The Federal Government should not pick winners and losers in the market. Yet, that is exactly what a designation does; it chooses which firms are too-big-to-fail.

I have strong concerns with the Council, which, I believe, was one of Dodd-Frank's ways of preserving and codifying preferential treatment for large institutions with any hand in financial markets.

We need outside special prosecutors to do it because it is important, not only to this Administration but to the functioning of Government, period.

The integrity of the IRS is what is important, and the American people--I think that is in question now.

Isn't it time--isn't it past time--for us to get past you looking at internally, even by an inspector general, and get a special prosecutor to restore the integrity of the IRS, whatever the cost, wherever it leads?

You are not letting the international standards be our standards without a lot of thought, I hope.

I think most people would think there has been a lot of interference by the IRS.

Could you outline for the Committee, briefly, the specific quantitative measures used to determine the minimum level of interconnectedness for both bank and nonbank SIFIs and the difference between the two standards?

I have just got a minute. So in a recent speech--you are familiar with this, I am sure--the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, Christine LaGarde, suggested that increasing the capital standards 2.5 above Basel III for…

Cooperation rather than collusion, right?

We'll never be able to field a system that's going to intercept hundreds or thousands of ballistic missiles.

The Iron Dome system is incredibly effective.

I've been to Israel. I've seen the real threat that they face.

The Missile Defense Agency and the Navy, together, successfully completed their first flight test of the Aegis Ashore system component.

Our potential adversaries are acquiring a greater number of ballistic missiles. Increasing their range and making them more complex, viable, reliable and accurate.

The threat that North Korea poses to the Asia Pacific region and to the world, I believe, is real.

Our missile defense program and our ability to protect ourselves, is becoming more and more important as the Army continues to have over 50 percent of its ballistic missile defense capability deployed around the world.

I agree with a lot of people; we live in a troubled and an unsettled world whether we realize it or not.

Funding for MDA is essential to work with the warfighter to develop, test and field a network global ballistic missile defense that is flexible, survivable and affordable.