Gilbert R. Cisneros

I will close by thanking Mr. Conaway, Mr. Downing, and Chairman Williams for their work on ensuring taxpayer funds are protected from fraudsters. This is a commonsense measure to rebuild public trust, and I encourage my colleagues to vote…

I will close by thanking the chairman for his commitment to working on behalf of small businesses to open up avenues of financing for small businesses hoping to contribute to the reshoring of manufacturing. Mr. Speaker, I support this…

He basically bought himself the presidency of the United States.

That sounds to me like an attempt really to dodge accountability, and the American people, that is not what they ask us to do up here.

How can anyone expect the companies that make these technologies to do business with the Pentagon when it cannot even adopt a relatively simple piece of software?

I believe it's important to recruit a force that looks like America.

I believe diversity does add strength to our military.

I would say our readiness of our forces is the most important thing. This Nation is ready to be defended by our armed services.

We do not support racist tweets. We do not support racism in the military.

Eventually one day, we're going to be a minority-majority nation.

The hardest thing we have to do sometimes is stop doing something that isn't working.

I think DEI is going to give us a larger pool to recruit from.

Ma'am, we want to make sure the environment is inclusive for all of our service members and all those that want to join the service, whether they're AAPI or any racial or ethnic background.

They do enhance our readiness. And I think women are an integral part of our military service today that serve in the military.

If we are saying we want recruitment numbers to go up, we have to acknowledge that we want a broad pool.

We do not take this mission lightly. We know this is about protecting our service members.

It's going to take leadership at the top and we have that leadership at the top that is dedicated to making this change.

Every individual that sends their child away to serve their country should be expected that that child is going to be treated with respect and dignity.

That starts with leadership and it's going to start with leadership from the top.

We need to build trust in our service members again.

One of the things that we continually hear from the chain of command is they want to do the right thing but they don't have the tools.

Your legislative accomplishments, passion, and constant dedication to work with the Department has made us better and improved lives of countless service members.

I, too, was very disturbed by Vanessa Guillen's death.

I urge the Committee to direct lenders to prioritize PPP loans for small businesses owned by minorities, women, veterans, and those in underserved and rural markets.