earlier this afternoon, I convened a meeting of the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee as its chairman. We had noted an agenda to act on the nomination of Dilawar Syed to be the Deputy Administrator of the Small Business…

Lessons learned, as I see it, is that we have to have a strategy to make sure that our engagement does not reinforce the greed of corrupt leaders, and that was, I think, absent in Afghanistan.

I have been to Poplar Island many times.

The Chesapeake Bay is a national treasure.

I look forward to working with you.

We are desperately in need of wetlands restoration.

Yes, beautiful area. Of course, that area right now is starting to get developed.

Thank you for your public service, and thank you for your willingness to serve in this critically important position.

the COVID-19 pandemic continues to take a tremendous toll on our Nation. Healthcare workers have valiantly served our communities throughout the crisis. Still, we face unprecedented challenges, and this moment calls for historic action…

There is a cultural problem within the State Department and this committee, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has the responsibility of oversight, of establishing the correct policy.

We are getting very close to passing legislation that will set up a tier rating system.

I thought you might, because I have heard numbers as high as 2,000 that are needed.

I support the President's proposal to increase the budget of the Department of State and USAID by 10 percent.

Senator Hagerty's observation as an ambassador has been reinforced by a lot of what I have heard as I have traveled to different missions around the world.

This is exactly what the Senate Foreign Relations Committee should be doing on oversight.

My observations over the years, and we have had committee testimony to this effect, is that other nations are now investing more in their sort of Foreign Service professionals than we are.

I think it does raise questions as how you make those decisions.

I wanted to ask you first about the Foreign Service Institute as an institution and whether there are lessons to be learned...

It would have been much more effective if you would have used the Naval Academy as the example rather than West Point.

I rise to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the creation of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's--OSCE--Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights-- ODIHR--one of the world's most preeminent and comprehensive…

We are optimistic. We are working very closely with the Biden administration, and we are together in our priorities.

I would just underscore the summit. We all support the summit being held and the President's leadership on that.

We, in Congress, are looking at following President Biden's leadership to advance these values but we need to have in country the capacity to deliver on that.

The policies championed by Senate Democrats in the Paycheck Protection Program made later rounds of the Paycheck Protection Program more equitable and accessible for underserved communities.

We are going to make that one of the major centers of our Build Back Better budget that we are working on right now.