A return to sequestration would force Navy to degrade current and future fleet readiness, significantly weakening our ability to respond to crises and project power overseas.

What additional legislative authorizes do you require to allow your Services the flexibility needed to avoid hollowing out the force?

If we do not have the resources to train and equip the force, our soldiers, our young men and women, are the ones who will pay the price, potentially with their lives.

Given sequestration's impending return, what is the Navy's near-term contingency plan to help protect and preserve the U.S. shipbuilding industry?

The return of sequestration is the law of the land.

Bottom line--stable budgets at a higher level than BCA are critical to long-term strategic planning, meeting the DSG, and protecting the Homeland.

General Odierno, Admiral Greenert, General Welsh, and General Dunford, are each of you prepared to execute a budget that incorporates sequestration through at least fiscal year 2016?

It is astonishing to hear that this is the smallest Air Force ever in the history of the United States.

The reason that people like Senator Warner and I would be willing to embrace chained CPI is it is deemed by economists to be the most accurate measure of the inflation rate as it affects consumers.

I think everyone is in agreement, if you are receiving a Federal retirement benefit, that benefit should not be eaten away by inflation.

the program will be broke if we do not fix it.

I think Senator King also mentioned that we should be looking at the mandatory spending side of things.

I do think that we need to have an honest discussion, a frank discussion on the revenue side of the picture.

So is sequestration going to negatively impact our ability to engage in these military-to-military programs?

I'm concerned about space governance in the Department.

Seeing the level of experience at this single table, it highlights something that I think is worth mentioning just so that the public understands why these recruitment and retention issues are so incredibly important.

I introduced with Senator Lee from Utah, who may be still here today, a bipartisan measure with 32 cosponsors, in an effort to take a look at the reality that not only does the United States have more prisoners per capita than any other…

I find it ironic and painful that at this moment in our history, as we celebrate with the movie 'Selma' and talk about the 50-year anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, that States, many States, on a systematic basis are making it more…