Kelly Ayotte

The best way to keep our country safe and prevent war is to be ready to fight one.

It is an honor to serve with you on the Readiness and Management Support Subcommittee and also to serve New Hampshire in the U.S. Senate with you.

Section 1724 of the NDAA for Fiscal Year 2014 (P.L. 113-66) requires each Service Secretary to ensure timely access to a SARC for any member of the National Guard or Reserve who is the victim of a sexual assault.

I think one of the things we will be watching carefully is just making sure that we are updated on how it is being implemented so that every victim can have access to a special victims' counsel.

Dr. Guice, regarding treatment for servicemembers with psychological health problems, the Institute of Medicine found that challenges still exist at both DOD and VA.

Also, if you can answer to me what you think the provider challenges are in terms of going forward, as we are going to have more people report, to make sure that we have adequacy of support system there.

We wanted to feel that people would be able to come forward, and we want more to come forward.

I think the other challenge we face is what is the situation in terms of providers? Are we facing a shortage of providers?

Immediacy is really important, that people are waiting too long to see mental health providers.

This isn't a male or a female crime. This is a crime committed against anyone could be the victim of this in the military.

Okay. If on the follow-up if you can let me know how long does an average person wait once the referral is made?

So, we are committed to remaining continuously engaged on this issue on a bipartisan basis.

I think that is an important aspect, too, so that we can further pass whatever needs to be done and also hold people publicly accountable, particularly for those who are leaders to understand that this is part of their responsibility to…

With what we passed in the legislation further emphasized that retaliation, in particular for these types of crimes, is a clear crime under the UCMJ to further give teeth to that crime under the UCMJ.

The good soldier defense has no place in determining the outcome of these cases.

This issue of special victims' counsel that Senator McCaskill and I and Senator Gillibrand and others on the committee have worked on is going to be a very important reform.

I want to thank both of you for being here and for your courage in coming before us.

This has been legislation that I worked on also with Senator Patty Murray

Commanders really do need to be more involved, not less involved in this process

General Dunford, on February 13, 2014, the Karzai Government released 65 detainees from the Afghan National Detention Facility at Parwan.

The American taxpayer would save $20 billion over the next 10 years. This is about protecting the American taxpayer. Let me talk about some of the fraud that was found. In Indiana, they found 4 workers were claiming 20 children living…

I have an offset that is pretty straightforward. We have two major refundable tax credits in our Tax Code, the earned income tax credit and the additional child tax credit, both of which, when you claim them, you actually get money back…

The answer is no. Of course we don't. We don't have to burden the next generation to fix what we should have fixed from the beginning, which was unfair from the beginning. That said, I have an offset----

Well, that is the irony of where we find ourselves. We have people who came to the floor, even though we warned them and said this is really unfair, why are we doing this to military retirees, we should fix this now and we can find other…

I come to the floor to talk about an amendment I have pending to the bill pending on the floor to fix the unfair cuts to our military retirees. Let me remind everyone of how we got to this point. It was right before the holidays and there…