"I encourage you, just in recognition of sort of maintaining the integrity of our effort, that we do everything we can to help the Afghans who have helped us, especially those translators."
"I would hate to see us walk away--or be seen as waking away from those gains."
"We want to deny Al Qaeda the ability to return to Afghanistan and use it as a safe haven."
"We cannot be a permanent crutch. We have to transition."
"We have put the Afghan National Security Forces in the best possible position to be able to, at a minimum, hold, to stop the Taliban from taking back over the government."
"We cannot stay in Afghanistan forever for a wide variety of reasons."
"America buys, people buy insurance for a reason, as a hedge against the unknown."
"And although at least there was some partial response by getting the continuing resolution [CR] passed, clearly what we are hearing this morning is that you still have unacceptable risk, that you are ..."
"For the record, I mean since 1985 when sequestration was first enacted after Gramm-Rudman-Hollings, Congress never let it go this far."
"I also want to congratulate or complement both you and the Secretary in terms of getting the 2014 second submarine in the Virginia-class program protected through the CR."
"Again it was at that point projected to be 22 days of furloughs. The last reports I have seen is it is down to 7."
"I hope that people will continue to look at that again."