Steve Russell

The Department of Defense is the only agency ever in the United States Government that has never been audited.

We are not going to see reform in saving or realize anything close to that by eliminating Mrs. Russell's ability to go buy a can of beans in the commissary.

That which is not inspected is not done.

Why should we pay and why should the Government be charged to collect something that was already theirs?

We can't fix everything, Mr. Chairman, but we can fix $16 fees that add up to millions of dollars that could educate more veterans.

If they were to fail, if the firewall in the sub-Saharan Africa were to break, it would have implications that we really can't fathom.

Every time we have seen an abandonment or have cared to abandon places, and especially places like sub-Saharan Africa, where we have actually worked for decades, then we will see disease, we will see famine, we will see human suffering on…

Whatever lives were spared in the U.S. military were more than compensated by human suffering on a grand scale.

We created the ISIS caliphate simply by our abandonment of what was a good strategy to win the peace in Iraq.

No factor was more instrumental in creating ISIS than doing just that in 2011 in Iraq.

Does that have an impact on how the Afghans see resolve and commitment from the United States?

The more that we feed this narrative that our Nation does not have the will and the resolve to get things done is part of the problem.

I cannot be one of those today. I just cannot. There will be follow-on testimony that we will hear from our colleagues, and I respect that. But quitting is going to have disastrous effects.

You know, if we try to promote human rights through the education of military officers, most of which will grow up to be major commanders and generals in that nation and, you would hope, would be trained in our values, you know, they can…

The only way we will be able to leverage and stay ahead is through our innovation.

Without changing this mentality of incentives we will never have reform occur.

I would hope rather than chase more money after bad practices that we would take these things off the market.

Nothing will recreate this mid-level experience that we are now diminishing, and 30,000 more troops cut--we won't replace that.

The Visa Waiver Program constitutes probably the greatest threat for infiltration if you were trying to enter the United States to do nefarious activities.

Do you believe personally that the harvesting of infant body parts to be moral?

Do you believe the President's policies in not enforcing Federal law on illegal marijuana States that violate the law promote or prohibit HHS' goals on emergency care reduction and drug abuse prevention?

I can't think of a time in our history, except maybe 1940, where we stand a greater risk.

We can do better. We look forward to working with the Committee in making that a reality.

One of our challenges here on this Committee is to get out enough to the field and to get people here that can tell us what they deal with every day in the heartland.