Gerry Connolly

There are a lot of us in Congress in the same position.

I wish I could say everybody remembers that, but we are not cattle, and we are citizens.

In a democracy, frankly, it seems to me we ought to be arguing about this all the time.

Yesterday by one vote the Republican Budget Committee passed a fend-for-yourself budget that gives Darwinism a bad name. It breaks a bipartisan compromise not even a year old. It voucherizes Medicare, in effect jeopardizing health care for…

We can't frame this as an either/or. Either we pursue our self-interest very callously and turn a blind eye to all this human rights stuff, or we pursue this high moral ground at the expense of our self-interest. That's a false choice.

We can't be delusional about how much, but--and maybe it had counterproductive impacts, as well.

It is a horrific example of the worst kind of totalitarian justice, frankly, and it needs to be singled out and condemned.

He had the gall to actually try to practice law and represent a defendant falsely accused on trumped up charges.

President Obama was trying to protect the security of our troops.

A reversal, I might add, of the Bush era policy, which certainly favored secrecy led by the distinguished Vice President, at the time, Dick Cheney.

The President issued the Executive Order... directing agencies to err on the side of disclosure rather than secrecy.

A lot of our economic competitors in the world don't have FOIA.

That takes a little time which could add to the backlog not because anyone is trying to prevent information from getting into public hands but because actually we are trying to protect the innocent and sensitive material?

First of all, Congress provided for that?

Agencies reduced the FOIA backlog, this is a fact, by 40 percent, eliminating 55,000 backlogged FOIA requests.

I actually believe there is a record of enormous transparency that is unprecedented in the Obama Administration.

I personally find the comparison invidious, and upon any examination lacking in any serious comparison.

Do you believe that there is some lesson in that?

A Member of Congress from the State Virginia, Opening Statement.

I want to see a more robust documentation so that the narrative, the story is out there that is a good story.

A great power must reject the false choice that we can deal with our debt or we can deal with other obligations but we cannot do both.

So it went up, not down, under President Obama?

Did we not also put some money into advanced battery manufacturing?

So would you say that the program funded by the Recovery Act was a success, in your view?

You can't take credit for that which you are deterring just because you are being overcome by the private sector