Bill Keating

There is always a danger. And the longer those foreign terrorist fighters are on the ground in Syria, there is a danger.

I think trade and economic development are helpful. But the coronavirus has really, awful as it has been, it has laid bare some of the weaknesses we have in common.

We have talked repeatedly about the importance of working with the EU, the multiplier effect.

I think this hearing demonstrates more than any words just your commitment and your legacy and the involvement.

It undercuts our--the so-called peace plan, you know, where there is a political date that was put on this, Inauguration Day, for the drawdown.

The way the administration is proposing this drawdown is precipitous and it is disagreed with, I think, by virtually everyone that has spoken today.

My concern is that Congress was not notified in as timely a fashion to those changes.

Thank you for your decades of leadership and commitment here in Congress where you have worked so hard to preserve democracy.

Several bills today also focus on those imprisoned, poisoned, or killed supporting democracy and speaking out against authoritarianism.

What isn't consistent is getting a straight answer to questions and circumventing the will of this committee and Congress.

It is important in the beginning to stress the bipartisan support this committee has shown for this Agency.

The CEO who defies the rule of law here at home is in charge of an agency that is missioned with promoting the tenet of democracy.

He has violated a subpoena in an arrogant manner, a lawful subpoena.

It is clear from everything that we heard this morning. It is clear from the reality that we live in that the idea of decarbonization is one that is just not an environmental issue anymore.

It is clear to everyone, I believe, that this would be the largest recovery package in the history of our country.

We have to stop living in the past and having debates on how to treat it as an environmental issue, and realize where we are now and where we are going to increasingly go in the future.

There are opportunities to increase that dramatically and move away from this concept that we are just regulating out issues.

We cannot wait and it has already happened.

I commend Germany for reconsidering the Nord Stream 2 pipeline after Russia's assassination attempt recently. But we cannot rely on them to put the final nail in the coffin.

Congress must act and ensure that as long as Vladimir Putin and the Russian Federation continue to threaten the Trans-Atlantic partnership, Nord Stream 2 will never play a role in Europe's green recovery plan.

I am still amazed that the German government is willing to work with the Kremlin after they interfered in Western elections and invaded our allies in Ukraine and Georgia, shot down a commercial airliner, killing over 200 EU citizens…

Your team could do some work and find this because the answer is now up to over 16,000 pages for that.

Since the beginning of the conflict in March 2015 in Yemen it has clearly risen to a worldwide humanitarian crisis: 24 million people, 12 million children all in humanitarian need, 127,000 dead, 13,500 children targeted.

How many pages has the Department produced about the firing of this Inspector General that we requested a month-and-a-half ago?

How about our request for documents on the decision to withdraw from the World Health Organization?