fighter jet 22 and our lift capacity and the c-17, the future combat system and the inaccepter to base in poland. since that time he has taken $487 billion out of our military. now we are look at sequestration which will make it to the point where we are in a weakened condition. i carry around quotes by the chair mafnt joint chief of staff dempsey. he said our military will be so unready it would be immoral to use force. while this doesn t go back to rebuild our military, it doesn t solve the immediate problem in the ukraine, but it send a message we are not going to maintain this weakened condition that we never experienced before. martha: you are expressed concern about this for a long time.
announcement today. america is now cutting the military, he is proposing the administration is, to help make us a super power since levels not seen before world war ii. joining me now, chairman of the house armed services committee. mr. chairman, good to see you. and so your reaction to the announcement. we re about 570,000 wartime troops we had at its peak. we were expected to take a cut down to about 490,000. and now chuck hagel announcing today it will be more like 440 to 450,000 in terms of the level. thank you for having me on, megyn, you know, this is not news. i ve been saying this for three years, the cuts that we establish and the budget agreement act we cut $487 billion out of defense. sequestration cut another $5 billion out. we knew it was coming. it was just a matter of time. this was the result of cutting a
concerns about sequestration and several other things leading up to this point, haven t you no question. i think i ve been talking about sequestration now for a couple of years, right after we passed it, we held hearings in the armed services committee and we had all of the people that were involved in defense, we had the chiefs, we had secretary, we had former secretaries, everybody said that sequestration was shooting ourselves in the head and we ve had the opportunity of seeing that now. you know, people forget we got $487 billion out of defense before sequestration. and, you know, we ve done this in our history after world war i, after world war ii, after korea. we always disarm, we cutback the military so we won t be prepared for the next one. seems to be in our dna. we go into the next conflict unprepared and lose people needlessly. in the past when we ve done this
talking and negotiating with the very person who has been giving all of the resources to syria in the first place. i hope that some time people will pay attention to the real problem with intervention is that we have a degraded military now. no one understanding this or believes it and yet i ve been saying for 4 1/2 years. in his first budget he did away with our only fifth generation fighter, future combat system, the ground base interceptor. that was just one budget. since then, he s taken on his extended budget $487 billion out of the military. so i m not the only one who knows that that is the big problem that we cannot get involved in a war in the middle east. well, most americans don t want us to get involved in a war in the middle east and that s not what the president would say he s talking about. he s talking about the limited
and ground-based interceptor in poland. that was just the first budget and since then he s taken $487 billion out of the military. aren t these two separate issues. one issue may be whether or not you agree with the way the defense budget is handled and there s another question about whether or not the u.s. military is capable of making the kinds of strikes that you had talked about. do you doubt that the u.s. military is ready, willing and able for that? no. that s a great question. we can send in cruise missiles and that s not a problem. if that precipitates an act of war which they said it would be in the middle east and we have to follow up with the crisis and that s what we can t do. we re not in a position and this isn t just me talking. you ve heard me quote general dempsey who is the head, the head of the joint chiefs of staff. he said we re putting our military in the path where the force is so degraded and so unready that it would be immoral