Chris Coons

In the coming years, African cooperation will be increasingly essential in managing a wide range of global issues such as international terrorism, smuggling, piracy, migration, climate change, infectious disease, and food production.

If fledgling democracies are allowed to fail and undemocratic regimes are allowed to endure unchallenged, then people will lose confidence in democracy and free market economic principles.

Helping African countries realize their full potential and succeed as economically viable democracies is in our national interest.

I am grateful to the whole panel for your testimony today, for your participation.

We believe that Joseph Kony remains one of the most serious threats to stability in the central African region.

I think it is a good example of where U.S. influence and leverage played a very positive role.

I support and see real value in your work to build capacity to fight corruption across dozens of countries in the world.

Our dollars do help. They help us enormously promote democracy, improve economic development and prosperity.

America is the first great nation that became great not by what it took from other nations, but by what it gave to other nations.

I am pleased that recently both Secretary of Defense Gates and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mullen have expressed their strong support for increased resources for the State Department.

The Pentagon's budget is more than 10 times larger than that proposed for the Department of State.

I hope to hear from our four witnesses today about the implications for the long term of potential reductions in foreign assistance.

I would like to call to order this hearing of the Subcommittee on African Affairs of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

I was just interested in your particular views based on your own particular experiences about how we ensure equal access to justice for all Americans.

I would just like to take a moment and note that so far in the 112th Congress the Senate has indeed increased the pace at which district court nominees are being confirmed.

I think in voir dire you also have a role in making sure that they are being reviewed, judged as it were, by a jury of their peers.

I am confident that Nancy Torresen will serve the people of Maine and our Nation with integrity and excellence.

One of the areas I am most concerned about is intellectual property theft, particularly trade secrets.

And given the dramatic developments in the last decade in terms of the capacity for storage for e-mail...

The only concern for law enforcement, I think, is not just speed. It is also efficacy.

And at what point does the standard rise to requiring a warrant?

I am both humbled and honored to assume the chair of this subcommittee.

Africa is a continent of tremendous strategic importance to the United States and the world.

I only hope to bring to the table the degree of substance, direction, and drive which made Senator Feingold such a well respected chairman.

I hope to serve as a model for bipartisan cooperation on issues pertaining to Africa.