Kelly Ayotte

We are incentivizing hostage-taking.

This committee still does expect to be able to account to the people of this country for how this money was spent.

Were any TFBSO projects in Afghanistan transitioned to USAID or any other U.S. government entity? If not, why not?

Why could they have not stayed on base? Why was that decision made? Why is it justifiable for 20 percent of the money allocated for economic development for that purpose?

We are not giving up on standing up against their malign behavior.

I am personally skeptical of the Department of Defense as a natural home for [economic development during a contingency operation].

the most recent audit on the extractives industry portrayed a mixed record of the various projects in the energy sector

Please provide a list of all TFBSO contracts and all available details on how all $638 million was disbursed.

Do you think that was a wise use of taxpayer dollars?

In 2013 the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) issued a report saying the Afghanistan Government has levied nearly a billion dollars in business taxes on contractors supporting U.S. efforts in Afghanistan…

I think that's a totally inadequate response.

Is Mr. Sopko right when he said, using the gas station as an example, that there was no feasibility study?

So did we keep metrics or anything like that for this task force?

That RAND report by its own admission is not an audit and does not fully account for how dollars were spent and also a cost-benefit analysis of those dollars.

I fully support what Senator McCaskill and Senator Shaheen have said, that our IGs deserve subpoena authority and full access to records, which they are not getting right now.

I find it appalling that anyone would object to that legislation.

I thank the Senator from Tennessee. The Perkins loan is a very important loan program to people in New Hampshire and to 5,000 students in New Hampshire who are current recipients. While I know my colleagues who are on the floor who have…

a clear violation of U.N. resolutions.

NATO must bolster the security of its own frontline states, especially in the Baltics and across southern Europe but also in Poland, lest they be subject to intimidation and subversion. America must lead the alliance in this regard.

We've now been informed that Iran has made another missile test, on November 21st.

I think will be an area that many attorneys and prosecutors will be focusing on after this hearing.

I think it is incredibly important.

I cannot believe that when the CDA was enacted, the lawmakers who passed it could have envisioned a website like Backpage.

That seems very unrealistic when we are thinking that the item for sale here is a human being and potentially a child.

We have been 50th out of 50 for many years, and in 2014 I think we moved up a little bit.