I appreciate you holding this hearing and this series of hearings that we have had to discuss the impact of defense cuts.

The industrial base of this country is critical to our economy and obviously defense spending is part of maintaining that industrial base.

the Economic and Fiscal Impacts of DOD Spending on the Commonwealth of Virginia in FY 2008

Like many, if not most, of our members here, I share the view that large, immediate cuts to the defense budget would have substantially negative impacts on the ability of the U.S. military to carry out its missions.

The U.S. military is the modern era's pillar of American strength and values.

If we go to sequestration, every line item in the defense budget, and frankly, every line item in all discretionary spending has to be cut by the exact same amount, which is, frankly, insane.

I thank the Ways and Means Committee for their excellent work on the trade agreements and, most importantly, on Trade Adjustment Assistance; and I agree with the comments of my colleague from Wisconsin about why this program is so…

They need training. That's the other critical piece of these trade agreements that I want to emphasize. For the first time--not the first time, actually we did it in Peru-- thanks, actually, to the leadership of the gentleman from Michigan…

I agree with the chairman, that the cuts that we are facing in our Department of Defense budget do place national security issues at risk.

I would strongly urge this Congress to pass appropriations bills so that we can fund our Government in a responsible and reasonable way.

We need to make decisions. We need to put everything on the table and make a comprehensive decision for how to get the deficit under control long-term.

I hope our witnesses today can help us understand the lessons we learned 10 years ago and give us recommendations about how we might avoid repeating the same mistakes.