Gary Ackerman

I strongly support what you are doing in simplifying mortgage disclosure forms because if you look at my district in South Queens, we have the highest foreclosure rates in New York City.

I don't know what any of this means. It is like in the previous administration and the administration before that, the only thing that we would do when bad things happen is say this is not acceptable.

And the underlying point is, if we pounced on every sanction on every organization and every individual--and I have given you a list of some additional targets--what then?

Let us be clear. Sanctions have to hurt. If they don't hurt, they are not effective.

I would implore some of you to visit a place like the DRC, where people live on volcanic rock, and women who have been raped...

The motives of protesters in Syria and their predecessors in Iran are fundamentally the same as those of people everywhere; they want democracy, freedom, dignity, jobs, and respect for their human civil and political rights.

Ayatollah Khomeini is not a cleric, he is a butcher. Bashar al-Assad is not a political leader, he is a mob boss.

The strategic partnership between these two criminal regimes has produced instability, terror, and violence in Lebanon, Israel, and Iraq.

These two disgraceful, blood-soaked regimes must, and I believe they will, end up on history's trash heap.

I must confess, I am not totally amazed. As with almost anything Madoff, nothing is really what it seems.

The main reason why nothing has been happening on the Six-Party Talks front for a while now is that North Korea has refused to act as a responsible member of the international community.

I think that we need to be focusing on the human rights issues in our policy but, at the same time, doing everything we can to support the kind of creative things that the defectors themselves are doing in radio broadcasting and these…

I just want it to be known that there are those of us who have been in the vanguard of supporting a two-state solution and promoting the just solution that the Palestinians are entitled to, with safeguards for the security of Israel.

I wish we could all be that passionate about people who are already born as we are about people who are yet to be born.

If we don't have debt forgiveness, we are competing with the Muslim Brotherhood.

The question isn't who is going to be left holding the bag, but whose bag you would prefer holding.

A lousy $75 million or $150 million is not going to pull them out of the doldrums that they have been experiencing.

Debt relief could help leverage Egyptian reform efforts and be done before the back of the hurricane hits, without the bureaucratic delay and parasitic contractors that so regularly plague even USAID's debt efforts.

Instead of us playing small ball at the Holiday Inn, leading a global effort to eliminate the debt accrued by Mubarak's Egypt would show real commitment and real friendship.

If things go bad in Egypt, the consequences for the Middle East and for the United States will make the Islamic revolution in Iran look like an episode of Sesame Street.

We will not get another chance to help Egypt in this critical and formative moment in its history.

I think what happens in Egypt is absolutely critical and may determine the future of the entire region.

If you have got a runaway, you can't fix it unless you help drive.

I disagree very strongly very often with some of the things the U.N. says and does and often doesn't do. But I remain even more concerned that we not withdraw into a cocoon, bury our heads in the sand and become an isolationist nation of…

My attitude is, if the American taxpayers that are putting that money out there, if people don't want American aid, if they don't want USAID and our programs to be there helping them, then we won't be there, but if they are going to take…