So believe me: I'm a strong advocate for the United States military. I champion more money for the United States military. I want the men and women to have the most resources to protect and defend this Nation.

I hated the President's budget. I got a lot of respect for Mick Mulvaney and President Trump himself, but I thought his budget proposal on this category was pathetic and inadequate.

I recently introduced H.R. 1001, the Veterans Federal Hiring Protection Act. This legislation would simply exempt veterans from the hiring freeze.

by instituting a hiring freeze in the Federal Government, we're blocking out, we're freezing the opportunity of returning veterans to go to work.

we didn't want it to get mired in a political battle like the Benghazi Committee did

this was such a serious attack on our democracy, and our election process, that it deserved that kind of attention

So if anyone has any specific suggestions, any particular numbers, because that is what policy boils down to. If you are not for this, what are you for? You can't just be against something.

I also share your concern about fudging on the cap, manipulating things so that you don't bring your Army aviation maintenance crews with you or keep your medevac folks outside of the region.

It is relatively easy to beat up on troop caps, or FMLs, as a flawed device.

I share the chair's concern about the arbitrariness of any troop cap.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but lest we be more critical than we are forward-focused, I would challenge the members of this subcommittee, if they don't like the current FML levels, and as Mr. Russell suggests, it is likely that FML…

I share the concern that when we fund contractors to do the same job we are paying twice essentially for the same work, and also undermining our readiness and Active Duty forces.