Gerry Connolly

In hindsight, we are awfully glad Seward's folly took place and that we banked this huge piece of land.

So in the legislation that the chairman was talking about, maybe one of the elements we could have is to toughen up reporting requirements by the agencies to you, maybe even toughen up your coordinating role so we actually at least have an…

Preferably in Northern Virginia.

I absolutely pledge to work with you on this subject; I think it is a very important subject.

We will work tirelessly in partnership with our citizen watchdogs to deliver the facts to the American people.

The public has a right to know what the government is doing and what they get from their hard-earned dollars.

We have to hold government accountable for the taxpayers.

Americans have a right to know how their money in Washington is taken from them and how it is spent.

Americans deserve an efficient, effective government that works for them.

I thank my colleague.

I am very worried about that expression because presumably it means more than deterring pirates.

The emerging relationship that did not exist heretofore between the United States and India it seems to me is definitely in our mutual best interest.

Well, what about Ms. Romero's criticism that you have yet to adopt clear criteria that all of us can then measure and see whether you are abiding by them reasonably or not?

Well, that is what you say, but here is one of the special masters of all special masters saying, well, first of all, there is conflicting statutory guidance here, and the special master has to try to navigate his or her way through this…

TARP has been a great success, so it is very difficult to answer that question.

Count me skeptical on that question.

To me, the real question is can the Muslim Brotherhood evolve to some level of acceptable democratic governance.

But you made a very good point from my point of view which was that for 30 something years, we supported the Mubarak government.

The fact of the matter is Morsi won an election, whether it was 51 percent or 80 percent, he won.

I think it is very dangerous business, frankly, when we question the legitimacy or implicitly question the legitimacy of an election.

So unless we see a willingness on the part of the Morsi government to revisit the constitution, to reopen the process and change some of these very problematic provisions, I think that would be a very, very troubling indicator.

An amendment by our colleague, Mr. Van Hollen from the Budget Committee, to replace sequestration was also rebuffed by the Rules Committee just last night on a partisan vote. To make matters worse, the House is about to go into recess…

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'm sure you're aware of the fact that there are some, even here in the Congress, who don't even go as far as you do, however, who still are denying the science and are denying there's a problem.

There are many of us here who think it's an illegal act. And this is a nation of laws, and even the Postmaster General of the United States has to follow the law.