Gregorio Sablan: “I am not convinced the Department has been using this money as effectively as it could.”

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.

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