Jerry Moran

We will very carefully manage the reduction in Active-Duty end strength from 202,000 to 182,100 marines by the end of fiscal year 2016 in order to keep faith with the marines and their families to the maximum extent possible.

I want to associate myself with the concern registered by Ranking Member Dicks over the idea of mothballing 18 new Global Hawk Block 30s.

So even though we appropriated the money, you are not going to spend it?

You are not going to deal--and, frankly, as a result of that, we balanced the budget.

But should the pilot have been blamed?

the F-35 program is not on track to meet operational effectiveness or operational stability requirements.

they simply changed the goalpost.

So why would the Navy certify a major upgrade to the Aegis system, saying that it is combat-ready without testing the system's ability to perform both air and ballistic missile defense?

You have got to be able to look at every area if you are going to be serious about getting the deficit reduced.

I think you are getting very close and it should be of some concern, and I trust it is.

What are we going to sacrifice in terms of our expedited withdrawal from Afghanistan?

the committee has been given justification to put all this money into the Global Hawk. We do so, and then all of a sudden, well, wait a minute, we are going to mothball 18 of them after the committee has spent taxpayers' money on it.

It is worth putting out there.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I do not think Maliki or anybody else that serves in the government is interested in having Iran dominate or try to influence what happens in Iraq.

Well, I do not want to interrupt, and we do seem to be repeating ourselves, but it is 65 years now that there has been a consensus that we ought to combine our military medical services because the mission of healing the body is the same…

If you want to get out of that hole, you have got to do exactly what history tells us.

The Afghan army is much more effective operationally.

It does not make sense to have separate medical care among the services.

When you made all the tough decisions you had to make when you put this budget together, are there risks that you recognize that we are taking because we can't do everything necessary in terms of our national security strategy?

Well, we can't help but have confidence and trust that you are on top of it.

The problem is back at home here where we are trying to implement something that we have known was going to happen for some time, we are not necessarily doing it because we do not have the personnel and the line authority, et cetera.

Why cannot we do here what we have to do in Afghanistan and actually do quite well when we need to?

I think that would be helpful.

The commitment to sailors and marines and their families is there whether they serve 4 years or 40.