Bob Menendez

I do not get a sense that there is one, and that worries me.

Ultimately we will not succeed in fully destroying Daesh until we resolve the civil war in Syria, which remains a powerful magnet for foreign terrorist organizations.

I think we had a lot of missed opportunities when this committee passed not unanimously but a strong bipartisan vote to train and to assist the vetted Syrian rebels.

Russia is guilty of war crimes for bombing a humanitarian aid convoy.

I am not confident that Iraqi leaders are sufficiently engaged to respond to the humanitarian crisis coming when hundreds of thousands of civilians flee Mosul.

I reject the utterly false narrative that Iran's and Russia's activities in Syria constitute counterterrorism.

The outburst yesterday from the White House over what happened is remarkable when they would not even sit down to meet.

Secretary Kerry could not even get the White House to call a meeting.

The clearest example of why our foreign policy has been such a failure was this weekend.

War and chaos are in my mind equally the same to some degree.

I am all for persuasion, if you can achieve it, but when you cannot and North Korea continues to advance its nuclear program...

You have sanctioned no Chinese banks at the end of the day, and they are probably the major financial institutions for North Korea.

So if that is the case, then the onus is on the administration, not on Congress, to provide you additional authorities that you obviously do not need based upon your answer.

Well, I would like to know whether you have all the authorities you need to go after Chinese banks that are engaged in dealing with the financial transactions that North Korea would ultimately need because it seems to me that if we are…

It seems to me that we are reticent to pursue the type of financial transactions because they would largely lead to Chinese banks.

I appreciate that that is one of the vehicles that we are using to try to push back against North Korea's not only promotion of its nuclear weaponry but also my concern of proliferation as well.

If so, we are determined to show him that denuclearization is the only viable option available.

We will not reward bad behavior and we will use all the instruments of national power to defend our homeland and our allies against threats from North Korea.

Our strategy has ensured that Kim Jong-un has nothing to show for his intransigence.

Together with our partners in response to the latest nuclear and ballistic missile tests, we will develop a new U.N. Security Council resolution that squeezes North Korea even harder.

I will just close by saying, in my own experience, there are communities that were, at one time, depressed, in terms of their situation, and then they gentrified and became the Gold Cost, as we say, along New Jersey.

Thank you for your answer.

I appreciate that answer, and----

Can we rely--people who are elderly, families, people with disabilities--if we, quote, rely only on market mechanisms to achieve the social goals of providing affordable housing?

I grew up poor, in a tenement, and it was not a tenement with HUD subsidy, so I know what it is to live in a place that stinks.