Jack Reed

I am grateful to Senator Shelby and Senator Vitter for raising the spectrum of this particular question.

Today's hearing builds on those and reflects our work with Ranking Member Richard Shelby.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Do we know anything about it?

I understand--and correct me if I'm incorrect--that the Chinese were not aware beforehand of this attack.

I think we are all coming to the conclusion that they don't believe we are serious.

I think the only way that we will begin to be viewed more seriously is if we start moving legislation here in this Congress that has more teeth.

For the record, Mr. Chairman, I would like to follow the Corker rule.

As you pointed out, the President signed the financial reform bill this morning and there are many that thought we could not do it, get it passed.

The unconditional extension of the Bush tax cuts would add further to a structural deficit that is much too high at the moment, is that your opinion?

But it is a tribute to Senator Dodd's leadership, actually, the collaboration of everyone on this committee, including many of my Republican colleagues.

Until we have a solid growth in employment that is sustainable and recognized by people, not here and on Wall Street but on Main Street, then we haven't done the job.

But for the thousands and thousands of unemployed Rhode Islanders, nothing has changed much and we have to keep our eyes focused on unemployment.

I just think these are programs that have so much further potential and benefit that we have to get them right in terms of deploying them effectively.

How are we going to keep this going?

The ARRA money will run out.

Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

We also have to prepare to care for the conditions that may not manifest for 5, 10, or 15 years after a deployment.

In what ways do you coordinate with your Reserve component counterparts to ensure that our guardsmen and reservists are receiving the mental health treatment they may need following their demobilization?

The other aspect here, too, is that some of our concerns are actually protecting our installations and our systems from unwanted intrusion.

Let me pose a question again to both of you that arises consistently, and that is if the failure to ratify this New START would create a situation in which there are no essential limits that are enforceable.

If the Russians were, today, able to deploy an effective defense of Russia, our warhead requirements to maintain a deterrent would rise astronomically.

We both have the interest in, on one hand, allowing people to inspect and verify the relevant data, the critical data on numbers of systems.

Another way to look at this, if we deploy a very effective missile defense, the Russians might decide to use bomber forces.

If the Russians were to deploy missile defense, it would depend on the capabilities of those systems.