Ben Cardin

Affordable housing is more challenging today than ever before.

Strengthening that tool will be the most important thing I believe we can do for affordable housing.

We need your leadership.

We recognize the budgets are tough, but we also recognize there is a bipartisan desire to increase the amount of money we put into infrastructure in this country, including water infrastructure.

Mr. Chairman, I just want to point out my reason for popping in and out is that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where I am Ranking, is holding hearings on important nominations.

The last point I would make is this also involves another one of my passions which is the Chesapeake Bay and our environment.

Mr. Chairman, I wanted to come by and compliment your leadership and chairmanship of this Subcommittee.

This puts us in a much stronger position when you have an authorization.

Thank you for conducting this hearing. Thank you for your leadership on this legislation.

I also want to mention support for the neotropical bird, which includes, as I am sure the Chairman knows, the Baltimore Oriole.

Having authorization puts it in a much stronger position.

I just would point out Senator Mathias started the efforts, the great Republican Senator from Maryland; Senator Sarbanes continued that effort, and I have his seat.

This bill is important for many reasons, and I appreciate each of the witnesses' testimony as to various parts of it.

I believe that the only way we can get to strong bipartisan tax reform is by having a public and transparent tax reform process.

The major concern we heard today is, will middle-income families pay more? That is something which I said I would not support.

There is no other way to get competitive marginal business tax rates in this country without bringing different revenues into funding government other than income tax revenues.

We have to raise the revenue that we say we are going to raise so we do not add to the deficit.

It has to be fair, which means middle-income taxpayers should not pay any more of the cost of our government percentage-wise than they are paying today.

Tax reform, in order to be successful, must have certain conditions met. One is an open process, transparency.

The functions of both the Bureau of Consular Affairs (CA) and the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM) are vital to the Department's mission to secure our borders and protect the American people.

I am pleased that Secretary Tillerson opposes this shift and believes this work is essential to the Department's mission.

We are a coequal branch of government. We expect the State Department to implement what Congress has done.

Tonight, there was a press report that the Secretary of State is considering the elimination of the special coordinator for Global Criminal Justice issues, which basically deal with atrocities and war crimes.

If we are going to try to work together on this... there are areas that I want to have special attention where I do not think you get it unless there is a point person within the State Department to deal with it.

I want to give the administration maximum flexibility, but where Congress has said that this area... it seems to me that we are the policy arm.