Mark Meadows

Well, if I did this in the private sector I would go out of business.

I would be interested in hearing from each one of you the matrix of which we are going to be measuring it, the goals that we are going to do, and how we incentivize you to do that.

It is very troubling when I sit there as a business guy and say, well, how do we know if we are making great progress when we are not even really accurately measuring it.

I look forward to hearing your testimony today on how we can start to really make progress.

I have an amendment at the desk. The Acting CHAIR. The Clerk will designate the amendment. The text of the amendment is as follows: At the end of the bill (before the short title), insert the following: Sec. __. None of the funds made…

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 have an amendment at the desk. The Acting CHAIR. The Clerk will report the amendment. The Clerk read as follows: At the end of the bill (before the short title), insert the following: Sec. __. None of the funds made available by this Act…

But every little girl that is trafficked is someone. They have a dad. They have a mom that cares individually about that person.

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 world.

It comes down to political will.

If Members of the Congress have to be heavy, we are willing to do that.

A Tier I is not a perfect score.

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.

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.

We are having to spend major economic dollars to go into these countries in Africa and Central Asia and other places, that we could hopefully reduce our long-term economic support if we increase that ability.

That is huge because there are those that will sign on to a piece of legislation based on the humanitarian aspect of it, but there is another group that will sign on based on the economic benefit.

The chairman has been a strong, unflinching voice for those that, many times, never have a voice here on Capitol Hill.

But I want to just say thank you for highlighting this. And the chairman is correct; when we highlight things, it may not pass in legislation, but we do see a difference, truly, in terms of other programs that are discretionary in terms of…

We can't sit idly by while the Chinese government... continues to perpetuate theft on a grand scale.

China simply doesn't play by the same rules as we do.

Let the message be one that we will not yield until this is dealt with.

I have been in a number of hearings where we have heard about human rights abuses in China and as it continues.

How big does it have to get before you see a concerted effort on all parts to come together and to address it?