Gregorio Sablan: “The Compacts give the U.S. responsibility for the COFA nations' defense, and provide the United States with the…”

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

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

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.

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.