When Secretary of State John Kerry testified before the full Foreign Affairs Committee on the State Department's Fiscal Year 2015 budget he failed to even mention the Western Hemisphere, our hemisphere, in his opening remarks. The Obama administration needs to come up with a coherent strategy for the region, one that considers U.S. national security and commercial interests, and one that celebrates and supports the aspirations of individuals seeking liberty and the respect of democratic principles. The Secretary's failure to even mention the Western Hemisphere is particularly disconcerting when we consider everything that is going on in the region-the fact that Cuba continues to repress its people and and has been caught violating U.N. sanctions and shipping weapons to North Korea through the Panama Canal, that Venezuelan President Maduro has been violently crushing legitimate democratic protests, the wave of antagonism to U.S. interests emanating from Ecuador, Bolivia and elsewhere that our strategic adversaries such as Russia, Iran and China have taken of note-taken note of our absence in the region and are establishing footholds right here in our neighborhood.