Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, the Democratic Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, says he advocated stronger sanctions against Russia, even before a passenger jet was shot out of the sky over a Russian-backed area of Ukraine:
"So, for me, I think that the West, including the United States, has to have a far more significant response than we've seen to date. It's what I thought before the shoot-down, and certainly this is a despicable act that needs to resolved by the West.