Dan Coats: “I want to make it clear that I fully understand the Senator's intent is not aimed at defense. In fact, the Senator from…”

“I want to make it clear that I fully understand the Senator's intent is not aimed at defense. In fact, the Senator from Nebraska has been one of the stalwart defenders of our defense forces in our defense budget. The point I was trying to make is that the inevitable result of this, despite the Senator's best intentions, in this Senator's opinion, is that we will end up taking from defense rather than other discretionary programs, because we will be faced with what we are always faced with: An amendment saying either support the Head Start Program or support the F-22 modernization; either support the WIC Program or support the V-22. The inevitable result will be that since there is no firewall, the cuts will come from the defense programs in favor of other discretionary programs. I know that is not the Senator's intent. But I think that is the result.”