Elijah Cummings

It is not unusual when I go back to my district... for me to hear young men... say, Mr. Cummings, can you help me find a job?

African Americans are incarcerated nearly six times the rate of whites.

I have seen them as a Congressman representing a district where finding balance between law and order and crime and punishment is a profound concern to my constituents.

Criminal justice is personal to me. I have seen the problems that plague the system through many lenses.

What kind of justice system is that?

We have spent a phenomenal amount of time talking about conservative groups, and certainly I'm concerned about them, but I'm also concerned about all Americans.

I am very glad that we are having this hearing.

We're here today because foreign cyber spies are targeting millions of our Federal workers.

Some people in your shoes might have merely criticized the agency without looking at the whole picture, but you agreed to my request to bring in the contractors.

I have been pressing for our committee to investigate these cyber attacks.

I believe USIS and its parent company may now be obstructing this committee's work.

The United States of America is under attack.

I have discovered from being on this Hill for 20 years now almost that you almost have to--we have to set deadlines to get things done.

Some kind of way we've got to close this gap.

It's easy to say that we are scoring excellent in this dot, dot, dot, dot that ain't true, folks.

You do have a critical responsibility, which is to make Federal records available to the American public as effectively and efficiently as possible.

We're going to sit down and try to improve the bill that we have so that we can accomplish something.

I just wonder when you have that, do you really get to the people who are truly responsible for what Mr. McCraw called a little earlier the culture.

In the face of doubt, openness prevails.

The bill does this by creating a legal presumption in favor of disclosure in response to FOIA requests.

We have got to do better.

On February 2, Representative Darrell Issa, our former chairman, and I joined together on a bipartisan basis, introduced a FOIA Oversight and Implementation Act.

Congress cannot continue to slash agency budgets, starve them of resources, cut their staffs, and all the while expecting them to tackle the increasing number of FOIA requests.

And again, I want to thank our witnesses very much for your testimony. We do have challenges all over the country.

But I just want to make sure you were clear that we want you to do what you need to do, but we also want to look out for all those other children, too.