Chris Smith

Mr. Pascrell, I want to thank you for your eloquent, very eloquent remembrances of Senator Frank Lautenberg and for your wonderful insights, especially as the former mayor and someone who has known him so intimately and so well for so many…

Thank you, Mr. Stutzman, for your eloquent remarks as well as those of Chairman Franks', who is compassionate and courageous like you and like our next speaker, who is also eloquent in the defense of the most defenseless. I would like to…

The problem with the mere passage of a law without effective implementation is exactly what Dr. Baer mentioned earlier about the guarantee of a lawyer, a defense attorney for those who have been accused.

Saudi Arabia is a CPC country because of their terrible crackdown on religious freedom and their persecution of people of faith.

There are 650 in the northern part of Vietnam, churches, house churches that would love to be registered, and they are not.

I met a number of people who are engaging seriously in this comment process on the Constitution.

Genuine advocates for democracy and rule of law are not allowed independently in Vietnam.

If you are going to have engagement, it has to be real and robust.

I agree with my friend from Virginia, there will be huge opposition to this in the Congress, as there ought to be.

Human rights is not a single stovepipe issue; rather, it is an issue that permeates our entire policy approach and engagement with Vietnam.

TPP will not pass, in my view, this Congress absent significant metric improvement on human rights.

This is not a democracy, it is a dictatorship.

The Vietnamese dictatorship is in a race to the bottom with the Governments of North Korea, China, and Sudan concerning human rights abuses.

I would appreciate it if you would.

Frank Lautenberg will be missed. As you could hear from my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, it is a great loss for the State of New Jersey. We will have a Special Order next Tuesday to speak even more to his legacy. With that, I…

The message to the Government of Vietnam was very clear. The U.S. cares more about trade and, I would add, profits, than human rights.

It is beguiling and disappointing that the administration has not used existing law to really aggressively push the interests of American citizens.

The idea is to really hold this country and this government to account in a very calibrated and focused way.

I think it's important that when they come here tomorrow they have a concrete idea of how to explain the agenda.

You know, I would say to Dr. Aikman, I know you were talking about a very swift transfer of power.

It is incredibly important to finally push back hard and clearly.

It is very hard to know that.

We need to have a more muscular human rights policy.

When American officials... speak precisely, transparently, but boldly about human rights, they beat us less.

President Obama should raise the cases in the meeting.