I think the points you gentlemen make about the challenges to the Department of Defense budget and the missions we have asked our uniformed military to perform is correct, but there is also a big huge budget challenge.

But all this talk about dollars doesn't translate well into actual impacts on the force and risk to our Nation.

If you accept for the moment that we need to balance that budget and that we are not going to bring in any new revenue and we can't touch defense, basically what you would have to do is you would have to cut everything else in the budget…

The unintended consequence is the signal that you send to our adversaries because they measure some of our actions as our resolve, our national resolve.

the proposed cuts in the defense budget are a big risk, particularly if we do not make the cuts necessary to prevent sequestration.

Our budget is 40 percent out of whack. You know, the amount of money we raise is 40 percent less than the amount of money we spend.

I remain concerned that our Nation is slipping back into the false confidence of a September 10th mindset.

It is imperative that we focus our fiscal restraint on the driver of the debt, instead of the protector of our prosperity.

if we are going to be able to transition our troops home we need to make sure that there is a reliable security force left behind

So if you don't deal with those other issues, as I have said repeatedly, you wind up being the person last in line at a buffet where the food is running out.

Let me tell you, everywhere in the budget, every little piece of it, the people who advocate for that piece of it have an outstanding argument for why their piece of it isn't the problem.