Tom Cotton

While our unemployment rate is a bit of good news at 4.1 percent and jobless claims seem to be continuing to trend downward, it is somewhat surprising, given those economic conditions, that over the last year labor force participation…

One of my top priorities is to ensure that hardworking Arkansans can share in the economic prosperity that we see in our country in ways that they have not over the course of my lifetime.

I want to talk about the labor market, in particular wage growth for America's workers.

The principal driver behind us making modification to the course, it was not about lowering attrition, it was about making students more successful to complete the course.

I think the taxpayer deserves to have them out, performing their job.

If the threats from Russia and China and Iran and North Korea, potentially other now or future nuclear states were to grow and our leaders determine that we need to produce more than that number of pits per year, with additional funding…

I think that is an important point. Almost all strategic discussions, certainly strategic arms control negotiations revolve around the bilateral threat between the United States and Russia.

Again, driven primarily by the threat that Russia has posed by both the rhetoric and the reality of their nuclear modernization.

It remains so today.

That threat is primarily driving the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review for our country.

This has been a continuing pattern of behavior that creates a threat to the United States that we have to respond to.

The aspects of the INF [Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty] Treaty that limit our ability to counter Chinese and other countries' land-based missiles, I think is problematic.

Ultimately, Senator--depending on the size of the shortfall, ultimately, it could mean we lose in war.

If you were a Saudi leader or an Emirati leader, you probably would not be very happy about those missiles being able to range your citizens. Would you?

Well, that is not very neighborly of Iran with its neighbor, Saudi Arabia.

How can anybody stand by and watch what is happening to those little children throughout Syria?

I want to add my voice to Senator Blumenthal and his concerns about what is happening in Syria.

Last year, the Senate ratified the Montenegro Accession Treaty to have Montenegro join NATO.

They are very concerned that there are a large number of Venezuelans who are being pushed across the border, that are being encouraged to vote in elections.

Colombia has, I think, a grave concern.

The situation in Venezuela, which is rapidly deteriorating under the brutal Maduro dictatorship.

No, sir. It is a continuity of our nuclear deterrent framework that you see.

There is nothing classified about my question or your answer, though.

Sir, every day Russia is in a position basically to checkmate us with what they are doing. It is urgent.

We are actually executing on the nuclear modernization, on the research and development phase of that faster than we thought.