Chris Van Hollen

We need to extend the pause period, particularly during this epidemic and as we face new dangers.

We have got to turn that around.

We want to reduce the cost of description drugs by giving Medicare the power to negotiate drug prices.

If you were to actually not support raising the debt ceiling, you would wreck the U.S. economy.

Raising the debt ceiling is to pay for the obligations that the United States government has already undertaken, that are already owed.

This is a cynical and reckless statement he made today because, you know, when Republicans were in charged back in 2016 with President Trump, they, of course, cut taxes for the rich, they increase the deficits and debt by $2 trillion but…

That is like if President Biden banned the Republican Party for participating. Come on. Who in this country would believe that that is a fair election?

It would be an incredible action by Erdogan to ban the second largest party and in doing so those elections could not have validity, at the end of the day.

He does not care what you say, what we say, what the EU says.

We are really pleased to see the Biden administration return to a values-based foreign policy.

Turkey is regularly violating the territorial waters in the exclusive economic zone of Cyprus and Greece, and there is a real risk that some incident there could spiral out of control if they continue those provocative actions.

Turkey has locked up lots of journalists.

Chairman Menendez raised a litany of issues where President Erdogan's Turkey has violated its obligations as a NATO partner, violated international law, undermined our interests in the region.

One of the proposals that we have put forward, actually on a bipartisan basis, in legislation has been affordable housing vouchers that allow families with younger kids to move to areas of greater opportunity.

We are in the process now of looking at major investments in housing, both in terms of greater potential for first-time ownership but also more rental assistance.

Thank you for that proposal. I will take a look at it.

I want to second the comments made by my colleague, Senator Ossoff, about the importance of the infrastructure modernization plan that Congress is considering to include investments in resilience to protect our communities.

I thank you. I do not know if any of the other witnesses want to comment on that. That was my final question.

I think rather than rush to create alarm about inflation I think we should all be together in focusing on important increases in job growth and wages that we are seeing.

I think what is truly unprecedented is the number of jobs we have seen generated since President Biden took office, three million jobs, the highest rate of job growth of any President in United States history.

I am worried--and we have discussed this in the past--about persistent, long-term unemployment.

If you look even before the pandemic, though, in February before the pandemic, 3.5 percent unemployment, we had over a million Americans who were long-term unemployed.

I think a stronger economy will address that.

His nomination of David Prouty is more evidence of that commitment and the president's determination to restore balance to the NLRB after 4 years of relentless attacks on workers' rights.

President Biden has made it clear that he will be a champion for American workers and their right to organize and to pursue the American dream.