But to cut the budget to State to save money in the hopes of strengthening our presence and growing strategies...

Yet, here we are 20 years and we see it is not true.

I came up here, I was one of the guys that wanted to get rid of foreign aid.

The importance of East Asia to U.S. interests is beyond doubt.

I think that is a lesson to be learned. That is one of the ways that we are going to have to make these changes so that we can get a hold of our spending so that we are not forced in really draconian cuts that would be much worse than this…

I suggest that that is a dangerous and shortsighted approach to budgeting.

Access to the U.S. market should be dependent upon fair and balanced trade.

I think this is something, it is like anything else in life, if you have got a problem, if you ignore it it is not going to go away, it will get worse, and it is going to be worse to deal with and more expensive and more costly.

I am not willing to enter another conflict. I don't want to.

When it comes to countering China's growing influence, what programs do you believe give us the most bang for our buck in terms of empowering our partners in the region to defend their territorial claims against China's growing aggression?

We don't want to be forced to cut but I think sometimes we do need to shrink down some things.