Political Quotes

“Mr. President, it has been almost a year since President Biden nominated Dennis Hankins to be the U.S. Ambassador to Haiti. In that time, Haiti has gone from a tenuous political situation into a security and humanitarian catastrophe. Vicious gangs, armed largely with weapons trafficked from the United States, have plunged the country into chaos. They have burned government buildings. They have attacked police stations. While the Prime Minister was out of the country to facilitate an international peacekeeping mission, gangs led a massive jailbreak, releasing nearly 4,000 prisoners. Mr. President, 15,000 Haitians have been forced to flee their homes. Almost half of the population is facing a food insecurity crisis. And this is within a very short distance of the United States of America. Thousands have been murdered, hundreds kidnapped. According to U.N. officials, gangs have used collective rapes to instill fear, punish, subjugate, and inflict pain. We are on the verge of having a failed state roughly 800 miles from our shores. Secretary Blinken was in Kingston this week to help broker a political agreement with other partners in the region--an agreement for a political path forward that includes the creation of a transitional Presidential council following the resignation of the Prime Minister. I am pleased that we are finally voting on Ambassador Hankins' nomination so he can start doing the job he was nominated for, but it has taken us way too long to get to this point.…”