Joe Manchin

Rushing to change the law, yet again, could prove counterproductive to our ultimate objective of providing a sound, effective, efficient, and fair military justice system.

I am opposed to any provision that would remove commanders from their indispensable role in the military justice.

The men and women of our military must often tolerate arduous duty, separations from loved ones, and loneliness. But they must not tolerate sexual assault.

The military justice system is the definitive commanders' tool to preserve good order and discipline, and nowhere is this more important than in a combat zone.

Sexual assault is an enemy to morale and to readiness.

These types of sexual assault and abuse have gone on for far too long, and for over 20 years, we have identified some serious, some serious problems that have happened, serious crimes, and have not gone answered.

I will just speak for myself on this thing, to making the changes and turning this completely around...

I would just say that I think that the Senate or Congress is more balanced with our Senators of different gender, if you will, who bring a balance to us and bring this, and you can see all the different aspects of what we are all concerned…

What is different this time? If we have a history of this repeating itself and nothing ever being done, what is different now?

It is almost intolerable that we can continue on this current path by allowing the commanders to be in charge at the level they are.

We do not support natural gas sanctions as it is not a significant revenue earner for Iran.

I am convinced that we have to do more on the sanctions, and along with Senator Kirk and many Members of this Committee, we have introduced a bill, which is the Sanction Loophole Elimination Act.

I am concerned about their advancement of natural gas in the pipeline, and that would give them a tremendous amount of security.

Has it gotten to the point to where these banks are getting so large that they are a protected class or species?

I appreciate your explanation, also why it has taken us so long to get Dodd-Frank implemented, because there is a lot of criticism about why are we sitting on our hands.

Government should be your ally and should be your partner, and I think people believe in West Virginia, Government has become the adversary relationship and it is basically not your friend anymore.

I do not believe that anyone is above the law and I do not think that there should be any acceptance of that principle.

I would like to, with your leadership, if especially the Treasury Department could work more as my partner.

You can understand the citizens' concerns, basically, that there is a protected--the people that caused the problem, and now the community banks and the regional banks are feeling the fallout of that.

This doesn't mean we should never use military force against terrorists.

I think we run the risk of doing what Donald Rumsfeld asked during the Iraq War which is creating new terrorists faster than we can kill them.

I also think it is unwise for separation of powers reasons.

I believe it is past time for a serious overhaul of U.S. counterterrorism strategy.

I also think that it is unnecessary to expand the AUMF.

The Navy proposed an alternative to the 14-day furlough for its 201,000 civilian workers.