Chris Smith

I urge Congress and this Administration to do everything it can--from leveraging access to our markets, trade negotiations, and WTO cases--to combat China's unfair trading practices.

I support a comprehensive, common sense, bipartisan approach to hold China accountable.

In December 2006, and then again in March 2007, my Human Rights Subcommittee... were attacked by a virus.

An unstable Ethiopia is going to be a very dangerous place but that's where we're heading.

I think it behooves us on this committee to redouble our efforts and I will.

Ethiopia was given a Tier II rating, which means that it has a serious problem with trafficking, but that it is making or taking actions to combat it.

It is very important, Congressman Smith, to realize that the Charities and Societies Proclamation is one part of a broader capture of institutions in Ethiopia.

In 2013 we're spending $351 million in total aid given to Ethiopia, $1 million of which is for civil society.

Yesterday the U.S. Department of State in a very, very important ceremony, and I was there with Secretary of State Kerry, released this year's Trafficking in Persons Report.

The U.S. administration wants to continue the relationship with Ethiopia. In order to do that it has to come to terms with this issue of a brutal regime that is torturing its own people.

The money that you quoted is simply a reflection of that. Everybody has given up.

Why is that? I'm baffled by it.

I've raised torture many times. I've written laws to combat torture, raised it in our Ethiopia Human Rights Act, as one of the conditionalities.

An unfettered press keeps checks on the Congress, on the President.

I announce today we are going to reintroduce the Ethiopia Human Rights Act with very serious benchmarks.

Allowing a healthy dose of political realism about our own interests and those of the peoples of Ethiopia to temper judgmentalist impulse and direct our energies instead where they can be most effective in encouraging, facilitating, and…

There are a number of things one might wish to see done differently, perhaps even better with respect to the ongoing social, economic and political development of Ethiopia.

If the United States Government could encourage American colleges and universities to become more engaged with their Ethiopian counterparts, there's the prospect over the long term of considerable return both in terms of consolidating the…

But on the education front, even in your testimony you say that Ethiopia has nearly achieved the second Millennium Development Goal to achieve universal primary education, but, then the big but, that it is inferior. The quality of…

I hope it has a bite. I hope it's not just a statement.

Since 2005 the human rights situation in the country has deteriorated still further with significantly increased restrictions placed on freedom of expression, association and other rights.

The administration, has been reluctant, in my opinion to seriously hold the Ethiopian Government to account for persistent egregious human rights violations

So over the course of the last several years, we have made an historic $6 billion investment in technologies to reduce the cost to capture CO2 out of the coal-fired power plants.

So when you look at our job in terms of evaluating public interest, again, the standard that is set in the statute is that we--there is a rebuttable presumption that exports are in the public interest.

Mr. Payne, thank you very much for your moving words and sentiments expressed today. General Leave