Jeanne Shaheen

Energy is a critical issue in Croatia, in the past few years and going forward.

Congratulations to both of you on your nominations and on your willingness to serve the country.

My question was really, what kind of a message does that send to the rest of the world when we are not willing to accept people fleeing religious persecution in the United States?

I think it is probably more important now than it has been in the last several decades, perhaps since Yugoslavia broke apart, to have countries in the Western Balkans who are offsetting some of the influence from Russia.

I appreciate the work you did in the Senate to address religious persecution.

We have a group of Indonesians in New Hampshire who have been here fleeing persecution from Indonesia, religious persecution.

I think we have got to shine the light on this situation more.

We do not currently have someone in charge of heading up these efforts.

The need to counter those efforts, and, at the same time, the need to look at places where we can work with Russia because we have mutual interests.

I voted for the 51.2 billion in funding for the State Department, which... is significantly more than the proposal submitted by the President.

One of the jobs that we have is to try to figure out how to make them more effective and make sure they have the resources that they need.

I understood you to say that, if you are confirmed, that you will work to protect this budget and make sure that the expenditures are made as Congress directed.

You are going to be serving Europe at a very critical time, when I think the future of the EU, of NATO, and of the transatlantic alliance is really at stake.

I take this very seriously. As Secretary Tillerson has said, Russian attempts to influence democratic political systems have been well documented in the United States and elsewhere.

If confirmed, I will strongly advocate for continued U.S.-EU unity in maintaining pressure on Russia through sanctions.

There have been some suggestions and concerns raised about the administration using impoundment to actually not spend monies that have been appropriated.

I thanked him for his leadership.

I think that we should continue to support that in every way we can, especially in those places where we are seeing famine as the result of manmade conditions.

I appreciate your commitment to that.

But this administration has reduced the ability of refugees to come to the country, particularly Syrian refugees who are fleeing violence and a horrible situation in their own country.

I hope that it is the will of this body to do some repair on the budget, so that the message that we send is not one that we are reducing America's traditional commitment to those issues.

I think we do have some shared objectives in Syria. We face a common enemy in ISIS.

I look forward to seeing your ongoing efforts to continue to work to empower women because I think that is a critical piece of what we need to do and what we need to do if we are going to provide economic opportunities around the world.

I think is absolutely critical, and as we look at how do we raise the economic prosperity of countries around the world, we know that empowering women is a very important piece of that.

I hope that you will continue that role as the head of OPIC and with Mr. Bohigian that the two of you will preside over an expansion of OPIC in a way that helps small businesses in this country create jobs because that is our goal.