Gregorio Sablan: “I hope that this hearing will bring further attention to those ideas as alternatives to the status quo.”

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

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

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.

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