Gerry Connolly

And one of the problems is, we've had bureaucratic inertia between two agencies that can't get their acts together on behalf of the men and women we are serving.

I would just note for the record, had FITARA been in law at the time, it would have required a cost-risk analysis to substantiate whether the current approach is, in fact, less expensive and faster to implement.

This really is so much more important than recordkeeping or how we deploy technology. This is about how we treat our active duty and military veterans.

Congressman Gerald E. Connolly Opening Statement

I just want to say, Mr. Chairman, rarely in the history of Congress is there a hearing that exhaustively, comprehensively addresses one discrete issue.

I have stated unequivocally, publicly as well as privately, that I don't believe that we should be in charge of all of secure credentials.

I hardly think the GPO represents an existential threat to the industry.

It is vital that we speak firmly and we back it up with sanctions and other measures.

We need to step up. We need our allies to step up. We need the Gulf state oil-rich nations to step up to this tragedy.

I think we are being a little too facile about the struggle we will face in this Congress.

I am skeptical. I am concerned. I helped write the last foreign aid authorization bill passed by a Congress.

Can one really imagine a Bob Dole and a George McGovern coming together in this Congress to support the new food aid program? Really?

The Food for Peace program is slow, it is costly, and it is not doing enough to get food to people who are hungry and dying.

It takes 4 to 6 months longer for food to reach hungry people than it would if we bought food locally.

Buying food and transporting it from the U.S. to a crisis zone costs almost 50 percent more than purchasing food products locally.

From your lips to God's ears.

Food for Peace is now showing its age.

This is about a conservative philosophy that says we are constitutionalists... except when it comes to women controlling their own bodies and making their own health decisions.

My colleagues like to say there is no war on women. Look at how you've been treated as a witness: Intimidation, talking over, interrupting, cutting off sentences, criticizing you because of your salary.

If you were really committed to that principle, surely you would agree to the expansion of Medicaid... 400,000 people who aren't currently covered.

Do you really want to align yourselves with the radical extremists who manipulate the facts?

As you know, on Friday I'll be funeralizing my mother-in-law, who was very dear to me, who died from breast cancer less than a week ago.

Planned Parenthood receives no Federal funding for fetal tissue donation programs.

Federal law authorizes fetal tissue research, and it expressly allows for recouping reasonable costs.

Republicans keep making this claim over and over again, but that does not make it true.