Richard Blumenthal

The budget actually requests an amount of funding that would reduce the number of full-time positions, which I think is unacceptable.

As I outlined earlier, Secretary McDonald, the Choice Card Program basically seems to be not working.

To leave this funding stagnant, in my view, again, is unacceptable.

That delay, in my view, is inexcusable.

Your injuries may be stabilizing because you are not recognizing them.

I think there is a sense of urgency in the Committee.

The 40-mile rule may be a cause.

The Clay Hunt SAV Act was a proud achievement of this Committee on a very bipartisan basis.

The Choice Act has been shockingly underutilized, as you and I have discussed.

What is really necessary now is better data and stronger information.

It is important to honor that lived experience.

I do not believe that we should make excuses for the situation.

We have laws that can be applied to the demand side. They simply have to be enforced.

Thanks, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for having this hearing on a very, very important topic. I am co-Chairman along with Senator Portman of Ohio of the Human Trafficking Caucus, which has done a fair amount of work in this area, aiming…

But since that story aired, Connecticut's Democratic U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal has written a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder mentioning our report and asking him to take immediate federal action to investigate.

If consumers know, number one, and number two, if they can make informed decisions among products that actually offer this kind of protection.

We are going to have to have a law on which to sue.

And notification is kind of a basic minimum common denominator of what all of us should favor.

I am very interested in the security issues, some of them raised by Senator Markey so far as automobiles are concerned.

And imposing the costs of a breach on the one responsible, the one who can do something about it, also seems pretty basic.

Longer term, the success of Afghanistan as a country is really dependent on the political factors and the social and economic factors that are hopefully supported and promoted by the American presence there as well.

The first day that President Ghani took office in his inauguration speech, he talked about bringing in the Taliban, you know, that you have to be part of this peace process.

Afghan women have made tremendous gains following the collapse of the Taliban regime.

I am not satisfied because we have not got to it. So I mean, I think there is a lot more that can be done by both Afghanistan and Pakistan and the Taliban, quite frankly.

Would you agree that the primary source of those ingredients continues to be Pakistan, and that they have done less than they could and should to stop the flow of those bombmaking ingredients across the border?