I hope in your meetings with the President that you will urge him to sit down with us and see if there are ways that we can avoid the effects of this.

I think my personal military judgment is that would be a mistake.

At some point, Congress and the President have to address that larger issue.

I think we've reduced our force, our capability, to an unacceptable level, and to bring our infrastructure down to meet what I consider to be as a member of this committee an unacceptable level, I think, is something I would not want to do.

I look at it as the forgotten command.

I had occasion to go down to Fort Worth and see the progress, what's happening right now with the F-35.

There is additional $3 trillion in deficit reduction above the trillion that has already been taken.

That Strait is extremely important to free commerce and to shipping and to the shipping lanes.

I think clearly counterterrorism operations is one of those missions.

it not only adds another $12 trillion to our debt, taking it up to over $25 trillion.

I share a lot of the concerns that my colleagues have expressed about some of the cuts in the budget, particularly those that affect shipbuilding and the size of our fleet.

we create the right protocols and the right ability for women to be able to report such incidents and to be heard on those issues

We're paying two to three times more, and we're paying two to three times more than we were paying the average soldier.

Senator, you've raised a very important point, because as we go through these additional drawdowns we absolutely have to make sure that a support system is out there as our men and women come back from service.

The idea of containing a nuclear-armed Iran is not the way to go; the idea is to prevent them from doing it.

It's hard to ask those who've done the most to secure our freedom to give more, but I'm willing to do it.

Senator, you've provided tremendous leadership on this issue, and it is of great concern to me personally because it is an area that has expanded dramatically.

If these reports, public reports, are accurate, we're talking about individuals who, senior-most Taliban commander in northern Afghanistan, someone who is an alleged war criminal in his role for the massacre of Shiite Afghans.