I was up here on August 1st, which would make a very good diamond right in the middle of the chart that Mr. Forbes showed, saying just exactly what I said today.

the Nation's nuclear deterrent is, "the last thing that you want to do serious damage to."

Secretary Panetta and I have been using the word 'devastating' for 16 months.

The indiscriminate, across the board nature of the sequestration will have an adverse impact on the Department's ability to carry out cyber missions.

requires us to subtract from our budget for the remainder of fiscal year 2013 $46 billion.

The only good solution is to detrigger sequestration and pass appropriations bills.

We need to deal very quickly and broadly with our deficit problems in a balanced way that the President can support and Congress can support.

We need to detrigger sequestration.

the mechanism of sequester which makes us cut everything in proportion is dumb from any kind of managerial point of view.

we will provide that information.

Wounded Warriors are a priority for the Department and will be protected above all else.

Allies, partners, friends, and potential foes the world over need to know that we have the political will to implement the defense strategy we have put forward.

The cloud of uncertainty hanging over our Nation's defense affairs is already having lasting and irreversible effects.

the consequences of sequestration if it was to occur. Now the wolf is at the door.

sequestration will have devastating effects for national defense.

It is part of our strategy to maintain what we call, exactly as you said, light footprint presence in many parts of the world.

Rebalancing toward the Asia-Pacific region is a whole-of-government approach for the United States and a key pillar of the defense strategy.

I think revenue has to be part of that equation.

What I would like us to do is spend the time trying to make sure that we stop this thing that just about everybody agrees is bad policy from happening.

We know how much is going to be cut; roughly, we know what it is going to be cut from.

the design of the Budget Control Act actually incorporated the Gramm-Rudman Sequestration 1985 Act, which is sort of the basic structure of how sequestration would take place.

It is fair because it is the right thing to do by our troops in a time of war.

Our new defense strategy calls for exactly that.

Sequestration, if it is allowed to happen, would have a devastating effect on defense.

The continuation of the program is essential to national security and there are no alternatives to the program which will provide acceptable capability to meet the joint military requirement at less cost.