Much has been said about this guidance, and no doubt we will hear from some of our witnesses today why they believe the Department's guidance on this matter was not in line with their interpretation of the law.

Sequestration would be a disaster for this country in terms of having, again, an indiscriminate mechanism go through the domestic budgets and national security budgets of this country.

Since 1988, the WARN Act has ensured the protection of our workers by requiring covered employers to provide affected workers with notices of impending plant closings and mass layoffs 60 days before they occur.

It is way too early for employers to be giving these notices.

I thank you again for inviting me to testify.

I want to thank all of our witnesses for coming to share their experience and expertise on the Worker Adjustment Retraining Notification Act (WARN)...

the most important subcommittees in Congress, which is about making sure that people who get up to work every day come home safe and sound and are able to actually support their families.

that really should be what we are focused on.

Nobody wants the sequester. It doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

I have a concern about that.

I personally think at this point we need to stop torturing the discretionary portion of the budget.

the objective of Gramm-Rudman was to have the threat of the sequester force compromise and action.

the President called for a drawdown to 34,000 troops by the end of this year.

I am hopeful but I am not optimistic that we are going to avoid this.

We can't continue to run a trillion-dollar deficit every year and not have it impact every aspect of our society.

this is not stuff that, you know, again, you can just sort of eat with a flat line from last year's CR.

And obviously it has a ripple effect on the workforce when you cancel repairs, you know, planning for having folks in the shipyards obviously takes a hit when that happens.

Last Wednesday the Congressional Budget Office came out with their new budget projections and analysis of last year. What it showed was that the Medicare program grew at the slowest rate since 1965 when the program was created. As this…

the fact is is that Congress still has more work to do in terms of the CR and its impact in terms of keeping a fleet that is ready to fulfill its mission.

And that is our job, that is really how we fix this, not sort of finger pointing about whether or not people were doing planning for the indiscriminate cuts which Secretary Carter described those I think about two or three times before…

it was never the objective of Gramm-Rudman to trigger a sequester. The objective of Gramm-Rudman was to have the threat of the sequester force compromise and action.

the fact is, though, that the Navy has other issues here in terms of CR's impact on your O&M account, repair and maintenance.

In 23 days, by law, an indiscriminate chain saw is going to go through all quarters, all sectors of the American Government. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta on Sunday, along with General Martin Dempsey, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs…

The fiscal uncertainty that is out there right now is what I am hearing when I am back home.

the fiscal uncertainty that is out there right now is what I am hearing when I am back home.