Chris Van Hollen

The more we can make it clear in advance that there will be consequences if we catch the Russians interfering in our elections again, and that they will be severe, the more likely we are to deter that interference.

The entire purpose of putting this in statute with some automatic types of severe responses is to take away the uncertainty...

Part of the reason they did this was not to deter Putin's action but to deter this Congress from moving forward.

The Executive order is like the DETER Act we introduced, except without the certainty and without the assurance of penalty.

I would think that you would all know about it given your work on trade.

I just find it astounding that the President of the United States has asked Congress to just pass this proposal that we have not even seen through here without Canada.

The President has said if Canada does not agree to whatever changes that we want, we should go forward without Canada.

DOD continues to be concerned about the negative impact on our key allies regarding the recommended options within the report.

If we do not take action and we do not make it clear what the consequences of action are, they are going to run all over us.

No bill is perfect as introduced, and Senator Rubio and I are very open to making those changes.

If you cross this threshold, you will face these penalties.

We have clearly not deterred Russian efforts to interfere in our elections.

Priority number one needs to be defending the integrity of our democracy and our election system.

If we cannot come up with a way to safeguard the integrity of our democracy in the next 80 days, shame on us.

Under the DETER Act, there is no getting around the penalties, right? That is the whole idea of deterrence.

The obvious objective is to influence Russian behavior.

The lights are flashing red.

The Department of Homeland Security focuses on defense, trying to harden our infrastructure, including when it comes to elections, our election information.

I think it was a bad idea to use the recent defense bill to relax waiver authorities on Russian defense and intelligence sector sanctions.

The President should call it that and forcefully respond.

We know what you are doing. It must stop. And if it continues, if you continue, you and your Government will pay a dear price.

The Federal Government has a very important role to play.

We're going to do everything we can to get that information to implement as many of these policies as we can and to do as much transparency as possible.

I appreciate that. I mean the FEMA commitment to date has been--it's been over a million dollars.

I have been trying to constantly push SBA to make sure that they do everything they can do as quickly as possible.