Angus King

The support that the Taliban have from the average Afghan is not favorable.

I think it's important that the Presidents come to us and ask for an authorization.

In my view, this document is trying to strike a balance between presidential authority and congressional authority in the area of, particularly, warmaking.

I think that's just part of the reality that we face there. Plus, we have--for the first time in, I don't know, living memory, have a real partner that we can work with who has a chance to make Afghanistan work.

It would be a grave mistake to withdraw from Afghanistan on an arbitrary timeframe not based upon conditions on the ground.

I think there is a question, here. If it's entirely open-ended, in terms of time, in terms of enemy, in terms of geography, then we've written the war power out of the Constitution, as far as I'm concerned, and the Congress has no role.

Do you seriously believe Putin cares about agreements?

I think we have to think about it in terms of the moral obligation to do that.

If we had the Gates budget of 2012, the defense budget this year would be somewhere around $612 billion.

First I wish to associate myself with the comments of the Senator from Maryland and my senior colleague from Maine. I know this industry is growing in Maine. It is entrepreneurial, exciting, energetic, and they are adding jobs and only…

If we're going to decide to close the facility and--or if, collectively, the United States Government's going to decide to close the facility based upon that, we'd better know that it's real, and not just a perceived threat.

The question that bothers me is, okay, if we decide it's been in the National interest to close it, there still are some people there that are very dangerous.

It is also that political solution that is desperately needed so they have the will to fight, so they believe in their government.

If the government in Baghdad had been more inclusive starting 10 years ago, we might not have had the rise of ISIS.

It does not appear to have been all that effective. I would hope that this might be a focus.

I hope that you will pay particular attention to, A, the potential for catastrophic overruns in new programs, and B, the challenge of building a new platform that is modular, if you will, or modifiable so that we do not face technological…

I would urge you to pursue that aggressively because it seems to me that is one of the serious problems.

My understanding is that all of the heroin that comes into the United States is coming from countries just to the south of our border.

What is it you need in order to interdict more of those ships? Is it intelligence? Is it ships? Is it manpower?

I just plead with you to be aware and try to find areas of overlap and duplication where we can save the taxpayers some money.

I tell people in Maine that we cannot audit the Department of Defense, and their jaws drop. We got to fix that.

I hope that you will focus very intensively on time and risk. I think those are the two factors.

The United States is an Arctic nation, and the security environment in the Arctic is changing as navigation passages open and access to natural resources, you know, opens up.

Well, in fact, because we're not members of that treaty, we are in--we are literally losing ground in the Arctic, isn't that correct?

I think it's a serious problem that we're going to have to really put some attention to.