Secretary of state Rex Tillerson testified before a Senate Subcommittee about his departments budget request. Sanctions against russia, cuba policy, and the north Korean Nuclear threat. The hearing was chaired by South Carolina senator lindsey graham. Subcommittee hearing will come to order. The hearing today is on the president s fiscal year 2018 funding request and budget justification, department of state. Like to welcome our witness, secretary of state tillerson. After Opening Statements from myself and Ranking Member we will hear from the secretary. Well accept your written testimony and anything you would like to tell us personally. So this is going to be a little bit longer than normal. This is a very important issue for the country, a passion of mine. Number one, secretary tillerson, i like the way you represent our country. I think you have a style thats pretty good for the world as it is today. You are a man of few words. I think when you talk, people listen. Your view of qat
Let me just say that today was extremely important in terms of the pledges that we saw and felt. But this was a political conference. This was a conference that was designed come in my opinion, to invest in the security and stability of the region and consequently, the security and stability of many countries. Not least of all the security of europe and rest of the world. That is truly a global issue that we are dealing with. So having said that and having mentioned to many in previous discussion, has to be a holistic approach to the crisis in syria, and everything that is related to the crisis in syria. Weve seen this week and this week only these usually important conference, i discussion also on our continued effort regarding extremism and terrorism and how to fight them in combat and effectively, but also we saw the launch of negotiations in geneva. Suspended for now but a collective effort and determination to have resume as soon as possible. Ladies and gentlemen, there is no huma
Debate that. You know, weve had the for 52 Consecutive Years and this is going to be the 5rd consecutive 53rd Consecutive Year weve been able to pass it. But it seems each year its always hard to do. Because at the last minute, there are always other people that want to get things in the bill that were not there. But you have to keep in mind, and i want to say in defense to the bigfour approach to this, we came down we passed this bill. We passed it out of the Senate Armed Services committee on may the 23rd. And weve been wanting to get it on the floor since may the 23rd. Senator levin and i have come down countless times and begged our colleagues on the democrat side and the republican side to get their amendments down so we can consider their amendments. And we had a lot of amendments that did come down. And of the amendments that came down, im very proud to say that we incorporated almost all of those, 47 of those amendments are a part of this bill. So its not as if the amendments w
We cannot negotiate with the evil that is isis. We cannot talk them down rejuvenating to stop their brutality and murder of are all those ago under the same ideology but we can attempt to inoculate ourselves and seek to destroy them eventually. If we dont i guarantee we will call ourselves into a space dozens of complacency to forget about post nine levin frantic ness and just go back to sleep i guarantee we will wake up to a very nasty shock down the road if we dont open to competition. Thank you. [applause] thank you ann. When putting together the panel i decided deal other component we needed was someone to your talk about how this drop of oil prices will be viewed and embraced by the new g. O. P. Congress. Thought the person that could give us the most insight into that and also the way the new g. O. P. Congress looks at Energy Issues generally, that person was mapped. Matt for the u. S. Senate g. O. P. Policy committee basically the policy Steering Committee that thinks through th
Can you remember when you first knew an audience would listen to you at all . I do. I was working for senator william proxmire, a democratic senator from wisconsin. As was his custom he was a man of incredible discipline he committed to the United States ratifying the Genocide Convention. To that end, he gave a daily speech on the senate floor in support of it. I was tasked, that is a word you do not hear often, at least with me my responsibility was to write a daily speech, which i sometimes did under great deadline pressure. Much to the consternation of the senator. Word got out that i did this, and i was asked to give a speech, to speak on the Genocide Convention at a luncheon. I did, and the crowd seemed to respond and like it. I said, wow, that was fun. After that i accepted opportunities wherever it was to speak. Within reason. What have you learned about audiences over the years, and when they start to respond to you . How many times do you speak a year . It depends on the year.