Gerry Connolly

Russia attacked the United States. Putin meddled with American democracy.

It is very remarkable to me that rather than dealing with the very real, very immediate threat of Putin's aggression, the administration is instead taking aim at our intelligence and law enforcement agencies.

This bill would sanction anyone who interferes in an American election from overseas.

A 9/11-style commission, along with a special prosecutor appointed by the Justice Department, is the only way to stop the drip, drip, drip of information.

Given the, you know, unceasing war on the IRS and the constant drumbeat about Lois Lerner...

The tax gap is estimated at about $450 billion, and that's just ----

Maybe we could make a smart investment in IT to make the IRS more efficient

Well, that is a lot of people. And your budget has gone down almost by $1 billion.

Well, that is a number worth GAO's attention.

May I inquire how much time is remaining? The Acting CHAIR. The gentleman from Virginia has 2 minutes remaining.

I have an amendment at the desk. The Acting CHAIR. The Clerk will designate the amendment. The text of the amendment is as follows: Page 26, after line 16, insert the following new subsection: (e) Exemption for Independent Regulatory…

I just want to associate myself with the underlying intent of my friend from North Carolina. He is right. At our hearings, we did discover flaws in OIRA's process. And I think that his amendment is designed to try to address that and to…

The budget proposal issued by the President is not the responsible federal budget that my constituents expect and deserve.

Cutting billions of dollars from the EPA is dangerous and would gut the agency focused on preventing the next Flint water crisis.

Cutting domestic programs like the NIH and other medical research is reckless, wrong and would set us back as a country.

I just have never seen the United States quite so blatantly, in the matter of 1 month, contradict itself so profoundly with respect to something so important, namely, our relations with China.

We just contradicted ourselves and, frankly, handed an enormous victory to the Chinese that will be very long-lasting.

Doesn't that create a vacuum for the Chinese?

We have seen, or we are seeing policies that contradict each other with respect to this region and China.

Being able to have the kind of worker protections that unions provide is most vitally, vitally important.

We feel the same way.

The problem is these vacancies, and now we've got on top of that a hiring freeze that's going to make it, I think, doubly difficult to fill them.

I'm certain we don't intend to disadvantage whistleblowers, I know we're committed to them, but the effect of their concerted attacks on unions and civil service protections sometimes would be to strip whistleblowers of their advocates in…

It's not enough to pass these laws, however, and pay lip service at occasional hearings.

Attacks on Federal employees can do harm to whistleblowers.