Richard Blumenthal

Thank you for holding this hearing on a really critical issue that is unappreciated by a lot of the public.

The damage can be long-lasting and hard to reverse.

I would like to thank the chairman for his constant and relentless focus on this topic.

Congress has yet to do anything meaningful about it.

You spoke very cogently in your testimony about the fragility of the maritime industrial base.

The President's exercise of discretion does not permit case-by-case decision-making.

Thank you for your courtesy and your deference.

I applaud your meteoric rise--within limits.

Loretta Lynch, I think yesterday, clarified that she does not believe there is a Federal right to work for immigrants who are not in a lawful status.

As a U.S. Attorney, as a State Attorney General, if I had decided I was not going to enforce any law, rightly I would have been criticized.

And I think you have just really hit it on the head. You just really hit it on the head, that the proof will be in the pudding as to what actually is done.

I hope that the public appreciates it and that, as Attorney General, you will work with Congress to try to educate and make the public aware about the tremendous challenges they face day in and day out and the courage and strength that…

I led an effort to pass during the last session a statute relating to death in custody.

The President has done nothing wrong and you do not have to run home and look up the statute.

I have advocated a public advocate to defend and advocate constitutional liberties in the course of this secret proceeding.

I want to ask you, finally, in the time that I have, about one of the criticisms that has been made of the Department of Justice in its allegedly too-lenient treatment of certain corporate defendants.

I would hope that you will continue to focus on those issues relating to post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injury.

I would welcome that priority very much as the Co-Chairman of the Human Trafficking Caucus in the Senate.

So the question on my mind is, why should the public--us, all of us--provide all of these very substantive benefits, but insist on only very limited consumer protections?

The FCC is supposed to protect consumers so they do not have to----

The Attorneys General can do it sounds good, but the attorneys general are so limited in resources.

The notion that there is no law here protecting consumers is a myth. It is an absolute myth.

I think there are questions that need to be answered, and in my own mind the best approach may be to wait until we see what the FCC does.

My concern is that we are removing potentially authority that would prevent the FCC from confronting disparities in access among consumers of different incomes or in different geographic areas.

I think all of us share the goal of protecting consumers, which are your customers.