Gregorio Sablan: “My bill would do the same for America's National Wildlife Refuge System, which has an operations and maintenance backlog…”

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.

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

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.

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