Gregorio Sablan: “It is critical that fishermen are involved in the earliest communications of the ocean-planning process.”

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 want to commend Chairman Westerman and Ranking Member Grijalva for creating this Indo-Pacific Task Force to provide for a bipartisan process.

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.

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