Quotes from Michael McCaul

Terror threats to the U.S. homeland have reached unprecedented levels.

I would like to take a moment of silence to remember all those who lost their lives at the hands of ISIS, especially Americans James Foley, Steven Sotloff, and, most recently, Kayla Mueller.

I don't think we can afford to wait when it comes to cybersecurity. I think that every day we wait, if an attack occurs - and we're getting hit every day - but if a greater attack occurs, it's going to be on the head of Congress for not acting.

We pulled out of Libya. Now look what's happened: a safe haven, a vacuum, ISIS training militants to hit in Tunisia.

This policy of containment is not a winning strategy. We need a policy to defeat and destroy ISIS once and for all.

The head of ISIS called for attacks during the season of Ramadan, which is what you have seen both in Orlando and now in Istanbul at the airport.

One of the chapters outlined in my book talks about the Iranian influence with Venezuela, these terror flights that go back and forth that we don't manifests on, and then nuclear material smuggled across our unsecure southwest border from Mexico into the United States.

Our farmers and ranchers have never faced as many problems as they do today with drought, range fires, high gas prices and an ever tightening budget on agriculture subsidies.

We need to look at how we can better fortify our force protection at military installations. But also, how can we deal with these mental health issues with our returning veterans? And our suicide rate in the military is twice as high as the average population.

We do a very good job at fixing broken bodies but not such a great job at healing broken minds with our returning veterans.

Unfortunately, cancer is the number one killer of children in this country today, and it destroys not only these innocent victims, but their families as well.

Last week, the House of Representatives passed a resolution honoring the victims and heroes of September 11th. As we commemorate the anniversary of 9-11, we must also remember that the threat is still very real today.

We should be careful not to vilify encryption itself, which is essential for privacy, data security, and global commerce.

I think the effective thing is, I passed this bill to combat violent extremism in the United States as effective outreach to the Muslim community, so you can pull the religious leaders really on to our team, if you will, to protect us from radicalization from within those communities.

I'm over here with the French counterterrorism experts talking about the 'Charlie Hebdo' case, how we can stop foreign fighters from coming out of Iraq and Syria to Europe, but then we have this phenomenon in the United States where they can be activated by the Internet, and, really, terrorism has gone viral.

Violent extremism is going viral, but our response to it is moving at bureaucratic, sluggish speed.

We are ramping up security in the United States but also looking at visa applicants, visa waiver applicants - and looking at travel manifests on the airplanes trying to come into the United States.

In order to have greater visibility of the larger cyber threat landscape, we must remove the government bureaucratic stovepipes that inhibit our abilities to effectively defend America while ensuring citizens' privacy and civil liberties are also protected.

We must continue to pursue peace through diplomacy, but we must also not shrink from our responsibility through the option of strength. We must take advantage of internal resistance and change from within Iran to avert this path of mutual destruction.

Last week, the House of Representatives passed a resolution honoring the victims and heroes of September 11th. As we commemorate the anniversary of 9-11, we must also remember that the threat is still very real today.

Meth is too easy to make, and unfortunately right now all the ingredients need to make this highly addictive drug are legal and readily available to those who want to cook it up and sell it to our children.