Richard Blumenthal

Without a background check now, do you have any effective way of enforcing that law, the prohibition on ammunition purchases? No.

I want to thank both you and the President for your leadership on gun violence prevention and particularly his and your personal commitment to the people of Newtown.

I am looking for ways to modify this proposal so as to perhaps make it voluntary and give licensed dealers the access that they need to the system.

If we are serious about these gun violence prevention laws that keep ammunition and firearms out of the hands of criminals, we need to strengthen and bolster that NICS system.

And I want to make clear that my asking for your assistance is not to in any way disparage or denigrate the good faith and efforts of Secretary Hagel and the Joint Chiefs and all of the military leadership to making this system work better.

Does the Air Force Inspector General treat the SAPR program as an item of special interest?

Given all these moving pieces, what are the necessary infrastructure projects that will facilitate a seamless changeover in aircraft type?

I think it also undermines the credibility of the convening authority to make prosecutorial decisions in the first place.

In the U.S. military, in DOD over the last 5 years, there have been five sexual assault cases where a convening authority has reversed the decision.

I want to commend the Air Force on a very well-structured request for proposal (RFP) that emphasized the best capability and the lowest operating cost for the taxpayers.

I want to join my colleagues, Secretary Donley, in thanking you for your excellent service to our Nation.

I commend you for being so forthcoming to many of us in your efforts to combat sexual assault in the Air Force.

Putting people away, putting them in prison, giving harsh, significant, but fair punishment.

I think the submarine program, as you and the Secretary observed, is absolutely essential to our continued undersea superiority, which in turn is vital to our national security.

Thank each of you for your service and most especially the service of the extraordinary men and women under your command.

I think the BRAC process has shown itself to be cost-ineffective rather than a means of saving money.

The way to get more reporting, the way to make this system more effective, the way to give confidence to the men and women under your command, is to increase the conviction rates.

My hope is that sequestration has no effect on the submarine program, because I think it ought to be clearly excepted from any of those cuts.

I think the investments we've made in Afghanistan in combating IEDs will pay off in the future.

Do you note any progress in either protecting troops on the ground or stopping the Pakistani sources of the fertilizer and other components of the bombs?

I think it is a weapon that the enemy will continue to use. It's cheap, it's inexpensive, and it gets them the effect that they want.

The difficulty of withdrawing that equipment from Afghanistan is far, far greater than it was in Iraq.

I deeply appreciate both of your views on both submarines and the JSF because I strongly share the commitment to those programs.

I want to turn now to an area that I think is very important to our national security: our submarine building program.

The urgency of that recommendation is all the more prescient now in the world with the increased building of those submarines by other countries.