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

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.

I did not support the debt ceiling agreement in large part because all of the cuts were lumped on to the non-entitlement portion of the budget.

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 by roughly half.

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.

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

I hope the witnesses here today and at future hearings can help us think through our national security strategy and potential changes.

I think it is one of the most important challenges that we face on the Armed Services Committee and certainly in our national security Department of Defense strategy, to figure out how we deal with the budget deficit we face pending cuts.

if we feel very, very strongly that those proposed cuts are going to do irreparable harm to our national security strategy, that they should not be made, then we also have an obligation to come up with the money so that we don't make them.

I look forward to this discussion. I think it is the most important thing we are doing right now because it will form our national security policy in the years and decades to follow.

If there is one iron law of American history, it is that those cuts have made future wars more likely.