Gregorio Sablan

Will you, Madam Secretary, will you commit to follow the law?

We cannot keep operating like this. So, I look forward to working with my colleagues here in Congress.

Thus, we come here under Chairman Westerman's leadership to regroup and confront together the PRC's threat to the freedom of the blue continent that stretches across the Indo-Pacific region.

I explained the path we are forging to fiscal, economic, and social stability in the Commonwealth.

I mentioned that the CNMI is facing financial conditions that make our commonwealth again acutely vulnerable to Chinese Communist Party exploitation.

There is no easy way that our nation will be able to maintain our influence in what is becoming an increasingly strategic, important, and contested area of the world without continuing our partnership with the COFA nations

Today is, indeed, a very important day, historic in some ways, because it marks the beginning of what I hope and I believe will be a successful bipartisan effort to renew the financial provisions of the Compacts of Free Association

Renewing the financial provisions of the Compact is essential to our nation's security posture in the Indo-Pacific region.

Today is, indeed, a very important day, historic in some ways, because it marks the beginning of what I hope and I believe will be a successful bipartisan effort to renew the financial provisions of the Compacts of Free Association.

There is no easy way that our nation will be able to maintain our influence in what is becoming an increasingly strategic, important, and contested area of the world without continuing our partnership with the COFA nations.

I want to commend Chairman Westerman and Ranking Member Grijalva for creating this Indo-Pacific Task Force to provide for a bipartisan process.

The Compacts give the U.S. responsibility for the COFA nations' defense, and provide the United States with the exclusive military use rights.

There can be no doubt that renewing the financial provisions of the Compact is essential to our nation's security posture in the Indo-Pacific region.

We are a part of the United States, a permanent part of the United States, because we chose to be.

I agree with you, sir. Yet, I don't think it strengthens America's position in the region if our population there is shrinking.

This inequity... started at first contact with non-Native Americans a long time ago.

This is the reason why democrats passed the largest single Federal investment in K to 12 education in U.S. history in the American Rescue Plan, to help communities and school districts return to in-person learning and to help students with…

I am not convinced the Department has been using this money as effectively as it could.

Unfortunately my constituents in the Marianas have been left behind, SNAP is a necessary part of moving my district forward.

It is unacceptable to be cutting food aid in the middle of the economic crisis caused by the pandemic.

The people I represent must be included in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, SNAP.

Ever since, the Insular Cases have been used to block territorial efforts for equal treatment in essential Federal programs from Medicaid and food stamps to SSI.

The explicit reasoning behind the most famous of the cases, Downes v. Bidwell in 1901 was that the new territories are inhabited by alien races that could not be governed by Anglo-Saxon principles.

Today's witnesses will be discussing H. Res. 279, which would place the U.S. House of Representatives on record as rejecting the racist reasoning of the Insular Cases.