Gerry Connolly

I would ask everybody to forbear civility and acceptance.

I don't want to see fellow citizens hurt. I want to see tax cheats brought in.

I mean, there was actually a problem identified, which was rather substantial tax evasion in the billions of dollars.

Thank you for having a hearing. And maybe there's a slightly different point of view about the issue while acknowledging there are problems with the act and with its implementation.

We are losing, as a county, millions of dollars in Federal support because of the State's inability to support the expansion of Medicaid.

Richmond has a very different political philosophy than Northern Virginia in terms of our Federal partners and how these programs trickle down at the local level.

A lot of us talk loosely, especially those of us who have no experience in local government, about 'let's just block-grant everything, send it to the State, and their tender mercies will see to it that localities do well.'

And, in fact, recently, this administration, help-on-the-way administration, actually withheld Department of Transportation funding for lots of other unrelated transit projects throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia because of an…

So the Federal Government, as you pointed out, has a big stake in the future of Metro since a third of the Federal workforce uses Metro to get to work every day.

That's a pretty expensive mandate to try to clean up the Chesapeake Bay.

Maybe that's a welcome message in Kentucky. It's not a welcome message in Virginia.

Just remember, if we go online, Ms. Villalobos, it will be read in Moscow and Beijing.

Imagine the morale over there, with a 31-percent cut.

I always felt in management in the private sector that productivity at the end of the day is what I care about.

Uncertainty is the most corrosive of all in terms of diminishing, you know, capability.

It's a very juridical environment that seems to stifle sometimes creativity, seems to minimize performance with all the protections.

I want to know what brand of whiskey he drinks, and I'm going to send a barrel of it to all of my generals, because he wins.

If we start changing the baseline against which we measure best of work, you know, we all become one happy paradise in the workers', you know, republic.

I was pleased, recently, to be the coauthor of the letter reaffirming that as the basis for U.S.-Middle East negotiations.

I think it is vital that this committee speak out and that the Congress be heard.

I think that this committee needs to be heard from on this subject.

I commend Congresswoman Torres, who introduced this timely and bipartisan piece of legislation.

I want to thank Representative Bass for House Resolution 187, highlighting the deadly famine underway in South Sudan.

I next want to thank Representative Cicilline for introducing House Resolution 137.

I also want to recognize Representative Torres for her work to advance House Resolution 145.