I think that a number of people here in the political process tend to, quite frankly, overreact to the word 'sanctions' in terms of lifting sanctions.

Just to be clear in our understanding, that conceivably could be done and still separate out the bad actors that you were discussing in your testimony?

I understand the administration's present policy.

Right. So they could be separated out if an Executive decision were made on these other areas you're talking about.

I think that we are pretty good at working with opposition groups, as well we should be, in many parts of the world in order to help create a better understanding of democratic systems.

My impression was this is not the situation you would have in many of these other historic evolutions, where you have the desire of the people on top simply to perpetuate a system of the past.

Secretary Yun, what's the position of the administration on the actions that the EU just took?

I think that the two most important factors right now from my own personal point of view would be to get as many people from the international community to interact with the average citizen on the street in a positive way...

I would say that we have zero tolerance for that. We are going to continue our audits and reviews to ensure, with additional training of scheduling practices, that this is not occurring.

Dividing budget cuts equally between nondefense and defense expenses as in last year's sequester will neither resolve our finances nor assure our security.

Is the continued drift toward a smaller and smaller Navy troubling? Yes, it is.

the Nation's debt is the greatest threat to our security.

this was likely a modern era turning point for the fleet.

I think they did a really fine job.

This is a particular problem in the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

We worked with them for months and they could not tell us where $32 billion had been spent in a specific way.

I would much prefer to focus on getting us out of Iraq.

I believe, and I want to acknowledge that the great majority of the contractors who participated in this process since September 11, 2001, are not only reputable, but they have really done a very fine job.

It has my strongest support and I thank Senator McCaskill for her untiring efforts here in order to bring good governance into this body.

I am here to basically express the strongest support possible for the movement of this legislation.

We do not want contracts that exceed 3 years.

I would say it has been one of the great pleasures of being in the Senate, to have been able to get this legislation into place.

Actually, if you will see the first line there, that is the lowest tier. Also, let us remember if somebody is on that upper tier, they are also paying Medicare again for the money that they are making.

We are probably going to end up with a similar formula as we draw down.

Medicare Part B is a very expensive program, and we do not count that when we look at the cost of TRICARE in terms of DOD funding.