Rob Wittman

Has the Secretary of Defense assessed whether excess infrastructure exists in the Department? What empirical support can the Department provide to support a request for additional BRAC rounds?

Considering the significant variability associated with the budget and the resulting force structure, why does the Department feel that it is an appropriate time to request an additional BRAC round?

How will each of your services achieve the headquarters reductions ordered by Secretary Hagel and at the same time ensure critical functional capabilities are not lost?

What readiness challenges does the Navy face if sequestration persists beyond FY2015?

How would your overall readiness be affected by the elimination of OCO?

How confident are you in the adequacy of this year's OCO budget request?

Can you articulate the impact of cancelled training that occurred over the last two years as a result of sequestration?

Much of the $26 billion Opportunity, Growth, and Security Initiative (OGSI) Fund is aimed at mitigating short-term readiness shortfalls.

The Army in particular has faced cuts in force structure (depth/capacity) and deferred much needed modernization (capability).

If funded at the budget request levels, what additional readiness shortfalls are present within the Army?

What level of unit readiness does the President's Budget Request assume?

We either have two choices. We either say we are not going to send them, which in many instances is not a choice, or if we send them, at increased risk to them and few of them coming back from the battlefield under that scenario.

But if sequestration comes, that drops back off, and then we will only be able to focus on a smaller number.

If we don't have that time, you are still going to expect us to deploy these soldiers and they are going to go at more risk.

The budget request funds only 65% of facility sustainment requirements. What is the impact of this budget decision?

How much excess capacity does the Air Force currently have with respect to installations and facilities?

If Congress fails to grant the Air Force authority to cut A-10s, do you anticipate implications for force readiness?

Please describe the readiness challenges the Air Force faces if we revert to sequestration level funding after FY15.

The threat of sequestration is not over. If sequestration persists, if we continue to hack away indiscriminately at our DOD budget, our readiness will erode to levels that will take decades to fix.

We understand the challenges with this Nation's budget. We understand the deficit and the debt. Those things are very important, too. But we also understand our constitutional responsibility under Article I, Section 8.

At the end of the day, it is about the brave men and women that volunteer to put themselves into harm's way, and that that increased risk does mean for them potentially, if we don't get this right, higher casualties, issues with…

So, in the future, if we don't have OCO to reset the equipment that we need for any of these contingencies, that risk would drive up even higher.

As you know, in 2013 with sequestration, because of the issues with OCO, we had to figure out how we could pay the war-fight.

Do you believe that the Atlantic Seismic PEIS balances environmental protection, including mitigating marine mammal impact while promoting a better understanding of the available resources in the study area?

I have a deep concern about that.