"Today too much of Africa is really ruled by repressive and oppressive regimes that take those natural resources as an asset to leverage power and to stay in power and truly not to improve the lives of the people within their own country."
"That is deplorable. Human rights violations, as we have heard testimony a number of times before this committee, the human rights violations continue to happen over and over again."
"I want to say that every single one of those is an individual case and I want to encourage those to not look at budget cutbacks and anything else as an indictment on their work."
"As most of us in this room know, this annual Trafficking in Persons Report is one of the best tools that we have in terms of identifying human trafficking."
"Well, if you would take the message back to your staff and to all of those that are there that we appreciate the effort that they are putting forth on behalf of this unbelievable just blight on our wo..."
"A Tier I is not a perfect score."
"If Members of the Congress have to be heavy, we are willing to do that."
"It comes down to political will."
"But every little girl that is trafficked is someone. They have a dad. They have a mom that cares individually about that person."
"It's disturbing to note that we've got so much waste, fraud and abuse and yet, we still don't even really know the full extent of what happened there."
"The chairman has been a strong, unflinching voice for those that, many times, never have a voice here on Capitol Hill."