Ben Cardin

We want to see the country that hosts the chairmanship make the advancements.

I would hope that what we have learned from that experience is that we have to set the bar higher when we have opportunities to advance human rights.

The United States must be in the leadership in this regard.

We do not seek to impose our system on anyone else and change within Russia must be internally driven.

We are committed to engaging with, strengthening and modernizing Russian civil society.

We can deny him the opportunity to showcase his newfound wealth in the United States.

We are absolutely clear that more needs to be done.

Congressional calls for travel restrictions against officials responsible for his death have helped keep global attention focused on this case.

Terminating the application of Jackson-Vanik to Russia is, as I have suggested, critical for United States business and foreign policy interests.

One thing I really want to see the administration do is to make an active effort to persuade the European Union to adopt similar measures.

It's important that we support the people of Russia in their pursuit of free, fair, and transparent elections.

Secretary Clinton has characterized the December 4 elections as neither fair nor free, and I agree with her.

It is about jobs here in America and we can compete and we need to make sure we do everything we can to have a level playing field.

Excellent suggestion. But if we can reduce the leakage by 25 percent, think about the energy savings, think about the efficiency factors, think about the chemicals that don't need to be used.

Explain to me how we can leverage that more effectively, particularly the green infrastructure, which is jobs that can't be exported overseas.

We do need to get predictable funding.

I think that would be very helpful.

That would be helpful, if you could get us the specific concerns you have on the reporting requirements.

Because on a level playing field, we will do just fine.

One of the keys to the success of the SRFs is the considerable flexibility that States have to decide how funds are used under the varying State-specific circumstances.

And of course, under the current financing, there is nowhere near that type of capacity to get those types of projects moving?

We are concerned as to whether the status of our water infrastructure in this country is one that will guarantee in the future that that in fact will be the case.

Water infrastructure, unlike harbor maintenance or unlike our transportation program, does not have the dedicated revenue source.

If we have more modern water infrastructure, we wouldn't have the leaks, we wouldn't have these problems to start off with.

I want to welcome you all to the Subcommittee on Water and Wildlife of the Environment and Public Works Committee.