Unfortunately, it's just a fact of our life and necessary to defend America.

Russia is embarked on a major buildup of their nuclear arsenal.

The history of all government agencies and even the Defense Department, which, in general, does better than most government agencies, is that sometimes it has to be kicked upstairs.

When I have asked questions for the last decade and others have, they say the Europeans are getting better and they are going to do better.

The deal was, Senator Sullivan, that North Korea proposed a threat, and we decided to accelerate the process to actually get these things in the ground.

I think maybe more so now in recent years than in the past, push to make sure that we do the things necessary for real defense capability.

Would you agree that additional response options are needed?

We need to keep the pressure on Europe to do more financially. We are now at 75 percent paying the costs of NATO.

What I want you to know, Department of Energy, is that, for $1 billion, we can maintain 10,000 soldiers.

without additional billions in the years 2018 through 2021--5.2 billion, in fact--the budget will lack credibility with Congress.

We wish that things were continuing to go down, like we hoped and saw for quite a number of years.

General Klotz, a modernized weapon would be more effective, more secure and safe.

Well, sometimes it has to be done, and it has to be spent, but--just briefly, again, so the 5.2 billion was not in the last year's FYDP.

If we do it in the right way, perhaps we can have congressional support for that.

Today, the United States lacks a sufficient range of response options to signal, compel, and defeat nuclear adversaries facing our allies and, by extension, to inspire confidence in the U.S. nuclear guarantees.

There is a growing feeling that our allies need to contribute more to the mutual defense of what used to be called, I guess, the free world.

It goes beyond even money. It goes beyond how do you have a right to demand that we defend Europe when Russia is not on our border?

We've done--we were--have been the only nation that hasn't been advancing our systems.