Chris Murphy
If you want to change our gun laws, the best thing you can do is find a group that speaks to you and get involved.
There's no denying that if I were designing a health care system from scratch, I'd build a Medicare for All system.
The most powerful force when changing people's hearts and minds is a person-to-person conversation.
I worry that there are financial ties between the Trumps and the Saudi royal family.
I don't expect everyone to agree with me. Frankly, I'd be shocked if they did.
I've never met a Democrat in Congress who wants open borders or who doesn't believe in enforcing immigration laws.
The world is a mess, and while there is no simple pill America can administer to fix things, what we know is that there is significant room for progressives to articulate a foreign policy vision that is truly our own.
We simply believe that we should lean into the world with something other than the pointed edge of a sword.
From the outside, Qatar and U.A.E. likely look like twins - small, oil-rich Sunni monarchies that are largely friendly to the U.S. But their philosophies on the region are very different - Qatar does not fear Islamism as does the U.A.E.
ISIL is a terrorist army like we have never seen - they cannot be ignored.
I would be a rich man if I had a quarter for every time one of my Republican colleagues on the Foreign Relations Committee utters some variation of the sentence, 'President Obama doesn't have a strategy to defeat ISIS.' It's their calling card on the committee - and on the campaign trail.
America doesn't have the moral authority or weight to tip the scales in this fight between moderate Islam and less tolerant Islam. Muslim communities and Muslim nations need to be leading edge of this fight.
The Saudis helped the U.S. ensure that the Russians never got a meaningful foothold in the Middle East.
The political alliance between the House of Saud and the conservative Wahhabi clerics is as old as the nation, and the alliance has resulted in billions funneled to and through the Wahhabi movement.
Congress should pass legislation that mandates increased information sharing for any country that wants to participate in the Visa Waiver Program.
Terrorist groups are working and communicating across E.U. borders - our efforts to track those groups must do so as well.
The United States has the best intelligence-gathering operation in the world. We should provide a greater level of training and assistance to the E.U. to help them develop a more robust counter-terrorism platform.
If we want our laws to change, we need to elect people who are willing to change them.
It can be frustrating that, despite widespread support for common sense gun safety measures, Congress is moving at a snail's pace. But remember that great change takes time.
I can't stand the idea of a veteran risking her or his life for this country, suffering the wounds of battle, and then being kicked to the curb as a result of those wounds. But that is exactly what has happened to tens of thousands of men & women who have fought and bled for our country.
Our veterans made a commitment to our country when they signed up.
Too many families know what it's like to have to choose between providing care for a family member and keeping their job.
Health care, whether I like it or not, is at the foundation of my public service.
I arrived in Hartford as a 25-year-old naive state legislator who believed in universal health care. I rose to become the 29-year-old Chairman of the legislature's Health Committee.
I served on the committee in the U.S. House that wrote the Affordable Care Act. I defended it back home in endless town halls. I got elected to the Senate, and when no one wanted to stand up for the ACA in its early days, I took up the cause, going to the Senate floor nearly every week to extol its virtues.
For far too long, Washington has denied the American citizens of Puerto Rico vital human services and adequate health care funding.
In 2013 and 2014, I traveled to Ukraine three times with Senator John McCain.
As I'm learning, Republicans seem to only care about deficits when a Democrat is in the White House.
Whenever I travel abroad, I try to visit U.S. troops just to say thanks.
One of my chief criticisms of U.S. international policy is that Congress has largely abdicated its foreign policy-making responsibilities to the executive branch.
There is just no substitute for seeing a disaster area firsthand and getting the chance to speak in person to victims and responders.
As lawmakers, our job is to listen to our constituents. If our phones are ringing off the hook with people demanding to know where we stand on an issue, we pay attention.
Creating deep and meaningful change in this country takes time - years and sometimes decades.
There is no doubt Assad deserves every missile we fire at him, but there's one big problem with air strikes - there is absolutely no proof it has any deterrent effect on Assad. To the contrary, history tells us these strikes will most likely quicken the pace of his assault on his own people.
Here's the problem - under both Obama and Trump, American military forces and assistance have provided just enough support to anti-Assad forces to keep the resistance going, but never enough help to actually dislodge Assad from power.
The most popular health care plan in the country is Medicare. It delivers the best care at the lowest cost - it's better than any other part of our health care system. But most people can only get it when they're over 65. I don't think you should have to wait that long.
The Choose Medicare Act will let people of all ages buy into Medicare as their health care plan, and it would let any business also buy into Medicare and offer it to its employees.
Connecticut farmers keep our economy running.
When I got to the Senate, I made overhauling our nation's mental health laws one of my top priorities.
The Mental Health Reform Act was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Obama in 2016. It was one of my proudest moments in Congress.
Washington can be a frustrating place.
Helping people get the skills they need to set them up for a rewarding career helps keep people in Connecticut, and it ensures that we have a workforce that's ready to fill the thousands of manufacturing jobs of the future.
One of the smartest investments we can make in Connecticut is in job training programs.
We have a long, proud history of making things here in Connecticut. We're home to large companies like Electric Boat, Pratt & Whitney, and Sikorsky, as well as their thousands of suppliers.
Unfortunately, the state of national security under the Trump administration is far from strong.
Saudi Arabia is an important country to the United States.
Our nation, in a short quarter-millennium, catapulted itself to global preeminence by solving the world's greatest problems and exporting those solutions to the rest of the world.
The gun lobby is certainly politically powerful, but it loses as many races as it wins.
America's reputation is based on its ability to deliver the world big, Earth-changing solutions.