Gregorio Sablan: “We cannot suffer cuts like that and continue to deliver services.”

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

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

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

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