[captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] >> if cuts under mr. bush were

going to expire, this would solve the problem, republicans would not have to vote for a tax increase, and you guys could march forward. what do you think? >> i could try. adam is a good friend. we work together on this. we work very closely. our committee is bipartisan. we really try to work -- we look at our responsibility as protecting the men and women in uniform and defending the nation and the country. however, i have had many hearings. i have discussed my opinion, he has expressed his. my opinion is that the representative of the armed services committee is to ensure the people have all the training and equipment and what they need to carry out their missions and

return home safely. i don't think it comes under my jurisdiction to worry about taxes and revenue. there are people at higher pay grade that worry and work on that. >> given your strong interest in avoiding defense cuts, would you be willing to not vote and let the tax cuts expire? >> like i said, i look at my responsibility in protecting the men and women in uniform. and back to the sequestration problem in particular. i have a bill that would address that issue. i don't think we should wait until december to fix that issue. we were elected a year ago in november. we should have been working on this all along. and we haven't. the super committee's job was to work on coming up with the other $1.2 trillion and savings through entitlement programs. if we eliminated the whole

discretionary budget, we would still be running a half billion dollar a year deficit. we can eliminate the pentagon, we could eliminate the defense department, the department of education, and everything right down the line, and we would still be in serious problems. we can't fix this on the back of the military. >> your leadership has not indicated they would bring something to the floor before december. do you know differently? >> i have a bill, approaching 70 co-sponsors. my bill pays for the first year of sequestration. and it does it by reducing the federal work force over time through attrition. i think that to me is the solution we should all be looking at. because right now people are -- they have buried their heads in the sand thinking this is a

problem that will hit in january. i say it has already hit. we have leaders of industry, the ones that build the equipment the war fighters use, who have having to freeze jobs and lay-off people because they don't have the liberty of what we have around here of saying, we'll fix it later. they have boards of directors that require them to be physically responsible, and they can't say, if you don't fix it december 31, then we'll take care of it january 1. it hits january 1. all the contracts that the defense department have become null and void because they have to go through and cut everything across the line. 8% to 12%. >> regarding your bills, secretary pa -- secretary panetta said you are looking at 70,000 federal employees who work for you. >> it was 10% the last couple

years. >> he's concerned that targeting federal employees hits him as well because of his 70,000 employees there. >> but that's attrition. >> he doesn't see it as a starter because of the elements of going with the federal employees. >> it sure beats the alternative. i think when people start understanding -- like we had the secretary of the armed forces a couple days ago. people are starting to understand how serious this is. they are just starting to come to grips with the $487 billion that's being cut out of the president's budget that we're dealing with right now, we're just starting into. then you add another $500 billion to $600 billion on top of that, that is just across-the-board cuts. no thought, no planning, no nothing. in fact, when we had the secretary of the navy and the c.n.o. and the marine

cammendante in last weekend's hearings, i said what are you doing, the plan for sequesfration. they said o.m.b. has ordered us to not even think about it. i think this is totally irresponsible. >> mr. panetta did say come summer he would consider planning. >> well, somebody better. in the meantime, i am. like i say, i think it is irresponsible to know that this is out there but not pay attention to it. like i say, the leaders of industry who represent hundreds of thousands of jobs, both people are going to be laid off. maybe not hundreds of thousands, but many. i mean we're looking at the budget this year, the $487 billion and then the $500 billion or $600 billion in

sequestration. we're look at uniformed military. great cuts to the national guard. a couple bracs they want us to engage in, and then the civilian defense people that will be laid off, and then all the sinch civilians that work for the defense creditors -- contractors. we're looking at 1.5 million jobs. >> let me ask you again, do you think your bill will pass? >> i think when i get 80 to 100 co-sponsors, i will talk to them. >> we should note that for our viewers watching us on sunday, we are talking on thursday. >> and you are saying in the obama budget, there are divisions within the past g.o.p. conference as to whether to go with that number to cut it.

some of the tea partiers favor that, or to increase that amount. would you increase the amount in the budget? >> i think in the first round of cuts that we're now dealing with , the $487 billion. you know, what we have done, the defense department accounts for 20% of our overall budget. and we've taken 50% of the savings out of defense. that's been our history. and for every war we prm brought down the military so we are not ready for other attacks. if you read history and you see how many people we lost at the start of world war ii that were going through northern africa with inadequate equipment, training, leadership, we lost a will the of people that should not have been lost. we weren't prepared. we weren't prepared when the

north koreans and the chinese came in to south korea. you think would -- we would learn at some point from history. i gave the same speeches that neville chamberlain was giving when hitler went through europe. we had a meeting with secretary rums felled a couple months ago. he said on the morning of 9/11 he had some of the members of our armed services committee for breakfast, and he said i told them, because we had just gone down the clinton-bush drawdown for discipline, which ever. he told those members at that time something bad is going to happen. i can't tell you when, where, what, my study of history shows me something bad is going to happen. well a couple hours later, they

hit the towers. we should know what's happening in iran right now, china, korea, the whole spring over there with egypt and libya and tunisia. those things were not on our radar scope a couple years ago, and boom, they happen overnight. if we keep drawing down and cutting back our military we will ask them to do more with less. we just had admiral willard in this morning, the commander to talk about the pacific. well, you know, we're going to put more emphasis on asia and the pacific but we are not giving him anything more to help him. >> will he get more money? >> if there is anyway to get

more money for defense, i will do that. >> let's talk about the navy. the navy is cut down from $313 -- >> $313 is what we say we should be at, and we are at 285. they are hoping to be able to stay at 285 over the next five years. no, we have the smallest navy we have had since world war i. granted the degree of power that we can produce now compared to than then it is magnitudes of difference of our power. but numbers also count. admiral willard said, again, there are importance in numbers. a ship, as good as it is, can only be one place at a time. >> which ships do you think need to be preserved? any of the high-speed lifts?

do you want to pull programs the ohio class back the two years they pushed it out? >> you know, we have a subcommittee that will be going through the house that will be getting those details. i am not prepared to argue one ship over another. i do know we will cut back in our production, and we are going to be mothballing ships ahead of their planned lifetime. i think as we gow go through that subcommittee, welcome up with better responses. i think it is overall cuts and then expecting them to do more that i'm discussing right now. >> let me throw out one more hardware question. the e-model have been taken off your committee.

the administration has kept its commitment to the full buy of almost 2.5 thousand joint strike force fighters over the next five years. might this be a way to save money? >> the b-2 was built in my district. i saw that frux production line. a building that was built for it. $40 million spent on r & d that was going build 130 planes. we would have had one cost. we ended up with a different plane. we actually got one more plane. 21. that's been trashed and now we're back to 20. now they say we need long-range bombers. if we had built them, i guarantee you it would have been cheaper then than what we're talking about now.

the 22's were going to be 825, now we have 178. it's not in this discussion right now of cutting back, but they will be proposing cutting back, because that's what we do. we propose a number based on a need, and then just when we can't come up with the money, we eliminate the need. i understand this. like i say, we did it after world war i, world war ii, korea, vietnam, and then it ends up resulting in increased loss of life. we always talk about the cost to do things. we don't talk about the cost of not doing something. generally the cost of not doing it results in greater costs. >> blocks are built in your district. >> they are. >> they cut the blocks.

is that going to be overturned? >> i don't know. you could have said the thing they are going to replace it with is the u-2. which is also built in my district. to me it is not the one or the other. i have some concerns, how do you take a 50-year-old plane, granted it's been updated, and new ones have been built, but that technology was 50 years old, and compared to an unmanned , up-to-date plane. i will not look at it based on whether it is done in my district or not. in fact, we have a subcommittee that will be looking at all of those things in detail. i'm going to try to just look at the overall. i will not be involved in trying to force something because it is

best for my district. i'm going to be looking at the overall defense of our nation, what's the best way to make sure we have the best possible use of -- i understand defense beyond the table just like everything else. all i'm saying is why take 50% of the savings out of 20% of the budget? we need to get to where the real problem is. the defense department is not the problem. i think when you look at $487 billion and some that would even go further, there are people that would like us to just be growing flowers in the pentagon, just limb -- eliminate defense. just get along with everybody. i'm not there. >> the question of afghanistan. you have introduced legislation that would bar private contractors and afghans from

bribing security. would that legislation require then more americans in afghanistan while we are looking at a time table from withdrawing forces from there? >> we had a hearing on this. this came to the forefront of my attention. we had a young man in our district who was killed by an afghan security guard. this was a young man on a base with the rest of his -- they had disarmed, broken down their weapons to clean out their weapons to go out on patrol. and this afghan that had been hired by security came on the base, saw that they were unarmed, killed two of them and wounded four before they were able to kill him.

the tragedy those parents had to deal with, the young man was from ohio, they should not have had to deal with that. it's hard enough, war is bad enough that we put our young people out there at risk. they shouldn't have to worry about security within the base. now, how do you handle that? i talked to a friend of mine that said, we hired veas that protected us on the base also. this is something that's been done for a long time. i was down in fort hood last week. as we entered the embassy, i asked the general, i said who is the security at the gate here. there are 17 gates entering into fort hood. he said, well we had to bring some of our own people out.

we did have contractors, baw because of contractors we're having to use some of our own people. i'm thinking we can't use our own people in afghanistan because it is cheaper to hire contractors, but in fort hood we can't hire contractors because it is cheaper to use our own people. it doesn't quite ring true to me. i went out on this lieutenant colonel battalion and i asked him, would you ever have all of your men unarmed at the same time? and his first sergeant was standing there, and they all said no. we would always keep two men fully ready to go. so i think they could work that

out some way where they could provide protection. i introduced the bill today, and we can move forward and see what we can do. it is a problem. i think the president, my personal opinion, is bringing these 20,000 troops home this year too soon. i know there is disagreement on that. my feeling is, i would like to see them stay in theater through the fighting season. they don't fight through december 1 and head on a plane. there is a decompression time. so they are pulling them out, but the original plan was, northeast sent the 30,000, which was less than the general asked for. the original plan was that they would be there longer and make it better or achieveable when

all the troops come out in 2014. the troops would be better ready to protec tect their own complection. >> do you think the administration is handling the situation with iran publicly correctly or do you think we should go further in making aware? >> no. there are ways to let them know without going out into the public. i think that should be done. in our bill we tightened up sanctions in our bill last year, and i those think those are bearing fruit.

i wish it had been done a few years ago. we probably would not be in the situation we are right now where they are getting very close to having the capability to having a weapon. my concern is that we're resolute enough to make sure that when we say we aren't going to allow them to have a weapon, that we're not. it is kind of like -- i hope this isn't some wink and a nod thing. >> you are not questioning the administration's resolve on that? >> i said i hope that we're not, that we're really serious about it. >> nuclear technology underground is vulnerable. is there a way to go into iran

to take out the different types of technology? if so, what do you see? >> i don't know if i can talk about all of this. i probably can't. i had a briefing on this yesterday, and i'm hopeful that we'll be able to take care of whatever needs to be done and that we will take care of what needs to be done. >> president obama issued some mant mandatory wavers. he seems to have had the last word. will you try to have the last word in the upcoming defense bill?

>> i think it would have bven more pursuedent to look athe this on a case-by-case basis to look at the security of the country. that was our intent in what we did in the bill. this was actually a provision that came out of the senate bill that we accepted in congress. it just seems to me, well, i can one-up you or you can one-up me. this is serious stuff we're dealing w the president already said when he signed the bill that i'm going to ignore this. he seems to be doing a lot of that. i'm going to support this, i'm not going to support that. i have a real problem with that. we don't pick and choose what laws -- the people don't get to pick and choose what laws. i don't think the president should pick and choose what

laws. if he disagrees with it, then let it go to the supreme court. but, just say, you know, when we vote on a bill, i have yet to vote on a bill that i agreed with 100%. but once i vote on it, i am committed to that vote. and the president in a signing ceremony can say, i don't like this. i'm going to sign it anyway but i'm not going to do anything about it, man, you know we learn in civics class that we have three branches of government and they all have different responsibilities, and the executive's is to enforce the law. >> we have time probably for one more question. >> i've got one. the d.n.i. has cut the geo-spatial spending on commercial energy by about half. the two companies involved

depend very much on that spending to keep going to build new stites. have you begun to look at this as an issue? the white house has a study they are doing. >> no, i have not. >> fair enough. >> and we'll leave it there. senator buck mckeon, thank you for being our "news maker." >> thank you for having me. >> and we're back with our few reporters. colin, let me begin with you. you asked the first question about sequestration. what did you hear the chairman say? what happened on this issue? >> not much. i think we're probably going to see him try to bring as many republicans onto the letter he cited, the 80 to 100 signatures. if the tea party folks sit in the back beating the drums, i don't think he's going to get

very far. >> no action before december? >> i would be surprised. >> what does that mean come december? donna? does sequestration happen? >> i think it all comes down to what happens on election day and what happens in lame duck. the inclination among members to address this issue after an election whening in something might be -- someone might be in their last few weeks of their term. >> i'm willing to bet something big happens on december 23. >> probably. in the meantime, the defense budget, he's trying to get more monday for the pentagon. is it possible that he can, donna? >> it is going to be very, very hard. there are divisions within the house republican conference about increasing the money. in particular, you have a lot of new freshmen, the tea party-backed lawmakers who want to cut the deficit.

they have said everything should be on the table, including defense. >> we're talking about 2013 spending, colin, right? >> yes. i was fascinated by the chairman's pledge that he would not try to reassert the global hawks u.a.v.'s that are built in his district for a billion dollars jobs, et cetera, and yet he said, i will not interfere. i will leave it to the subcommittee. i expected more pushback in an election season and from a man who is so committed to strong defense. >> so what's the expectation that people are committed to big-name military?

what are some of the big things that will survive and not survive? >> the f-35 will definitely survive. i think sometime in the next six to eight months we will see the size of the almost 2,500 planes size shrink. i don't think it will shrink by much because the allies who play a very important role in this program do not want that number to shrink because it means that costs will go up, and the administration, you know, actively signed their virtual treaties with these allies, committing them to certain prize yess. it makes it very difficult to shrink things. but there is no bigger target. >> you asked about afghanistan and his bill that would not allow creditors -- contractors to be procured in afghanistan. is that righar