Joe Manchin actually said...

"We should avoid policies that make their jobs harder or fail to reflect the importance of their work."

"I think as it pertains to this, the objective of maybe revisiting the relationship between the service secretaries and the Service Chiefs and the Secretary may not be as related to the question of whe..."

"The thing is, I think, from your perspective as well--not to be presumptuous about this--but it is much easier to retain a capability than to have to rebuild it."

"What all this translates to is risk: risk that problems and contingencies once addressed in days will be addressed in months"