Ben Cardin

How will that be reflected? I understand that. I said that in my opening comments. How can we know that we are making that progress?

Cuba is an authoritarian state where elections are neither free nor fair.

There is no question that the December 17th speech by President Obama marked a watershed moment in our relationship toward Cuba.

That one area that I think unites every member of this committee and the United States Senate is that we all stand together in our aspirations to see the Cuban people have the opportunity to build a society where human rights and…

What leverage will we exercise over Cuba in regard to our expectations that they will make progress on these internationally recognized human rights standards?

I also want to emphasize the need for giving our local governments flexibility.

It is critically important that our local governments have the ability to keep their people safe.

It needs to be long-term. As has been pointed out, our States and counties cannot plan without the long-term commitments from the Federal Government as their partner.

We need to invest in transit and we have a game plan to do that.

I strongly support a robust reauthorization, long-term, of our transportation needs.

If confirmed, I will ensure that USTR continues to pursue an agreement with Colombia on accelerated tariff elimination.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I want to join the praise to you, Ambassador Froman...

We are looking forward to a very productive time.

Thank you. I will take that. That is 90 percent of what I wanted.

We hear frequently that the United States has some of the highest marginal income tax rates in the industrial world.

We look forward to working with Committee members on introduction of the bill this Congress.

Everything we are talking about has been tried in other countries, so nothing is new here.

I am not sure that just rearranging the chairs on the deck is going to make much difference.

How can we learn the lesson for how we impose sanctions for their nuclear activities and figure out a way that we can make our sanctions regime on ballistic missiles and on sponsoring terrorism and human rights violations more effective to…

We can certainly also acknowledge that Iran has been actively engaged in its proxy activities.

Sanctions were really having a major impact.

I think we all would acknowledge that prior to the nuclear agreement, Iran's economy was in pretty bad shape.

But if it is used to enhance their support for terrorism or to use it to advance a ballistic missile program, then obviously, that is a different story.

If they are used to enhance their economic fairness to its citizens, I think all of us would say that we should well support that type of effort.

I think that this is very illustrative of the need going forward in the new Congress and new administration to chart a holistic approach to Iran.