Bob Menendez

This hearing is about helping vulnerable developing nations adapt to the worst effects of climate change, not helping oil-wealthy nations get a windfall.

Truly shocking that a country that as the head of OPEC, an organization designed to artificially raise the price of oil, would actually ask for compensation for reduced demand for that product.

Well, you cannot have a universe of people saying that Fannie and Freddie are the cause of the crisis because they were the entities that created the mortgage collapse and because they got largely involved in subprime mortgages and not be…

If you could get that for the Committee, I would like to see it, because my understanding is that they held a rather small share of those subprime mortgages.

But those are not subprime mortgages.

Sealing the border in that region is an enormously tough challenge.

It seems to me that the central question is how do you strike at the core of al-Qaeda in a way that does significant damage?

The Iranians can either negotiate in good faith or they can face increasing international isolation and pressure.

I firmly believe, however, that use economic pressure is far superior to the other alternatives which we might have to consider in the future if we do not act now.

The clock needs to stop ticking.

We are near the end of 2009 and the clock is ticking.

If, in fact, we come to December and those four items have not been achieved, is that satisfactory?

Their first day of talks seemed to produce a potentially positive first step that Iran's agreement supposedly to ship most of its low enriched uranium out of the country.

Current engagement efforts must not be an open-ended process. We cannot weather endless rounds of fruitless negotiations while the Iranian regime surreptitiously advances its nuclear ambitions.

I am concerned, first of all, under all of these programs, that we have not seen lending be realized.

There clearly were incentives on the positive side to induce and help the servicers to do what we would want them to do in loan modifications.

There has to be some action upon servicers that consistently have this MO.

Plenty of people, plenty of entities I know, they have the confidence in their business and their business plan to borrow. The only thing is, when you have rates that are almost usurious, it is pretty difficult to borrow.

My patience is quickly dissipating, so I look forward to seeing what we are going to do in that respect.

Public disclosure without consequence means nothing.

I want to express my alarm with the prospect of a significant buildup of U.S.

I believe Afghanistan is a critical issue in our overall foreign policy.

The question now is not how to achieve our goals in Afghanistan and Pakistan--we know the answer to that question.

Isn't it something to consider that an effective and objective audit of Madoff would have quickly revealed his scheme?

So we will look forward to seeing what the SEC is going to do here, because the first thing you have to do is clean house.