he was mentioning clear-cutting tricare and military training. i wonder when they are going to cut the [indiscernible] budget. the president and his wife, almost daily see where they are taking flights which cost the taxpayers multimillion dollar. mrs. obama going overseas. they take all their friends, guests, and reporters with them. the biggest percentage of their flights are for political purposes. do you have any comment on this? guest: in the pentagon and dod as well as other federal agencies, they are curtailing travel for employees for state conferences and stuff along those lines. that stuff has already been frozen. sequestration, there are waivers that have been approved. there have been some major military trade shows in the last two weeks down south. it is yet to be seen whether those will continue if the cuts go into effect. host: senator john mccain was on the talk shows over the weekend. here is what he had to say. [video clip] >> we have already cut undersecretary gates. we are on track to cut another $487 billion out of defense. n

they wanted to talk about budget uncertainty and tricare benefits. your testimony goes into the deficits by figure and. a guard man whose full-time civilian job as a dod civilian job wanted to talk to me about what furlough men and others that were facing eminent medical retirement wanted to talk a little bit about the work force they might be coming back into to the potential effect on the economy of drastic cuts that would make it harder for them to get traction back into the civilian life. this was a hearing i expected to be talking about medicine but what i heard and ended up talking about is the effective budget uncertainty that follows the testimony of secretary panetta and general dempsey last week and i wanted to just ask a couple of questions focusing on some issues the announcement i know one of the priorities you're focusing on is trying to make decisions that are in fact reversible should congress do our business and get this right. some of the decisions that you already announced how can we persist down the path before the decisions star

. >> the tricare or the va before him or any service connected to see a private psychiatrist. >> i don't know all of the specifics but if he is 90% disabled, she should be getting treatment from the va and if he is medically retired which i assume he is because you usually are a few get 30% disability, then he is eligible for tricare so she could see a private psychiatrist. if he does see a private psychiatrist, try to find one that is experienced in this area. i'm going to put in a plug right not to any civilian a psychiatrist or psychologist. there is a lot of good training is available on the web, much of it for free for how to treat the post-traumatic stress disorder and of course it isn't all ptsd. we tend to lump it all together the business depression and anxiety attacks and it's important for the therapist to know about the culture of the military. to know to ask what kind of jobs somebody has to don't treat this solar or sailor as something done to them. they are proud of the service. talk to them about their service. so these of william world you are a part of the solution. we

tricare is what you mentioned. people will still get benefits can be seen by doctors.host: a big fight in washington over the defense aspect. what else should we know about the defense area? guest: there will be an impact. they say we need to cut sequestration. if sequestration continues in 2014, they get hit with a $50 billion cut, it will probably be more manageable because they will choose where they will make the cut. >> homeland security, an editor. what is going to happen beginning this friday? >> cut to almost every agency, you were talking furloughs of 12-14 days for workers. you are talking cuts to border patrol and customs agents. if you will see lines early increase both at border checkpoints and that customs lines at the airport. for tsa, this is one of the agencies were the federal government interacts with the public. the department said that you could see lines increased by up to one hour. they have said they will have to decrease disaster relief, and immigration and customs enforcement has said they will no longer be able to maintain the number of bids

might not have enough funds to pay for tricare for health care coverage for our veterans through the end of the fiscal year, and as we saw on the front pages of the paper this week, the department delayed the deployment of the u.s.s. harry truman, the carrier strike group that was headed to the persian gulf. if sequestration goes into full effect, the navy will shrink by about 50 ships and at least two carrier groups. by the end of the year, the navy, if we do nothing, will lose about 350 workers a week or 1,400 a month from our civilian industrial base. that was have a huge impact in new hampshire. i know it will in maine as well. so there are real significant impacts, as you pointed out, on the defense industry, on this country's national security and on the domestic side of the budget. it's already starting to have ramifications on our economy and job growth. we saw in the last quarter of 2012 that our economy contracted for the first time since 2009, and much of that decline was due to sharp reductions in government spending in anticipation of the sequester coming into effect. we

tricare is more than doubled in last decade last decade and an fytotal will exceed more than 50 million unchanged preemies. we can modernize the program maintain the premise of health care coverage for the men and women who have served our country. significant savings can be found throughout physician contractor form. the pentagon as the government's as the government's largest buyer and many contractors rely on the government for their business. we are concerned that the tube .0 version of dod's that are buying power turns away from the fixed-price contract. congress is not one-size-fits-all but losing billions of dollars should be sufficient incentive to control costs. the national nuclear security administration's nuclear weapons laboratories and production plants are operated by private corporations. these government-owned contracts have in some cases increased with inflated overhead cost security breaches and construction cost overruns. on the positive side lawmakers appear ready to uphold the cmr project at los alamos laboratory. acquisition is a major challenge across federal age

if he is medically retired, he is eligible for try care -- tricare.you see a private psychiatrist, try to find one that is experienced in this area. i will put in a plug right now to any such bill and psychiatrists or psychologist. there is a lot of good training available on the web, much for free, for how to treat posttraumatic stress disorder. we tend to lump it all together. it is depression, anxiety. it is important to know about the culture of the military. now to ask what kind of job somebody had. do not treat the soldier as a victim or as something that done to them. they tend to be proud of their service. talk to them about their service. you are part of the solution. we need to know how to treat our returning service members. host: when they talk about percentage of disabled, how does that determine -- how is that determined? guest: disability is complicated and controversial. in the past, when some of the military, they would have an exam that would determine whether they were disabled and what their disability would be. they would go to th

you could have thrown that on to tricare. that would be affected also, correct? >> everything is going to be affected, if sequestration goes into effect. that is a guarantee. everyone will be impacted by this action. it is incumbent upon us to try to ease that where we can. so, yes, 40% of our medical providers are civilian employees. a couple of things. the war has changed. there are fewer uniform providers in the war zones. more within the confines of medical treatment facilities. that is one benefit. it is incumbent upon us to review the plan of the doctor, surgeons, and services to decide how we will best provide care and access to care. so, we will do that. i would like to be able to give you more specifics, but until i see those plans, though -- that would be speculating and that would not be fair. march 1 i will have a better understanding of how we will provide the access and care to our beneficiaries. >> even if sequestration comes in, we are all talking about just going through september 2013. what happens next year? does it get better? they said that t

by the end of the summer of, the department of defense stays it will be unable to pair its tricare billsit will be in a position of having to deny that service, that critical health care service to military members, families, and retirees. our men and women in uniform need a secretary of defense to lead them through these difficult challenges. they need a secretary of defense to defend their interest in the budget battles that we no are about to come. they need a secretary of defense to speak out and ensure that congress and the country understand the consequences of sequester and if a sequester cannot be avoided, to help them avoid the worst of those consequences and to end the impacteimpacts as quickly as po. so now, as much as any time in the recent past, now is not a time when we can afford to leave the department of defense with leadership that is in limbo. now, information has been requested, appropriately, by colleagues about the nominee. information has been provided to the best of the nominee's ability. this information falls in two categories: requests for senator hage hagels s

are entitled to their health care by causing the pentagon possibly to have to reduce or eliminate tricaren the issue of blame that gregory kind of gets into, washington post poll out today asked about a thousand people about where they would assign blame in this sequester issue. 45% assigning it to congressional republicans, 32% to the president, another 13% assigned it equally between the two. about five more minutes of your calls, and we'll be back to the u.s. senate at 2:15 eastern. in california, rodney's on our democrats' line. >> caller: yes. i question the legality of the sequester agreement, because to my understanding sequester is to hold property by judicial authority. the property we're talking about here is the taxpayers' money. since congress has no judicial judicial -- since congress is not a judicial branch of the government with nor do they have judicial power, i don't understand how could they even implement the sequester? >> host: here's a tweet that says the sequester was obama's idea, but it backfired. now let him eat the law he signed. pack to calls. -- back to calls.

and other times you can actually throw that on to the care, but tricare is going to be effective also, correct? >> everything is going to be affected should the sequestration going to affect. that is a guarantee. i think that everybody will be impacted by this action and it's incumbent upon us to try to ease that where we can. so yes, 40% of our medical providers are civilian employees. a couple of things because the war has changed, there are less of our uniform providers that are in the war zone and more uniform providers that are within the confines of our medical treatment facilities. so, that is one benefit. it is incumbent upon us to review the plan of the surgeons and the services as they come in in march to decide how we are going to best provide care and access to care. and so we will do that. i would like to be able to give you more specifics. but until i see those plans, i would be speculating and that would be unfair. after march 1st, i will have a better understanding of how exactly we will provide the access and the care to our beneficiaries. >> this gets us in the seque

army corps of engineers, the military retirement fund, the defense contracting audit agency, and tricare's contract management activity, have received clean audit opinions. as g.a.o.'s director of financial management and assurance, asif kahn, recently said, "secretary panetta's directive as resulted in a -- quote -- "change in tone at the top that has reset the department's efforts to achieve an unqualified audit opinion." how would exactly senator hagel, if confirmed, further secretary panetta's efforts here? this is not an academic question. as the department of defense's deputy inspector for auditing, dan blair, recently noted, for the department to achieve an auditable statement of budgetary resources by 2014, it must run what amounts to -- quote -- "a big checking account, with thousands of people being able to wright checks. and that capturing an auditable universe within it will require reconciling between a general ledger and subsidiary ledgers. a big problem is ongoing delay in implementing very expensive computer systems called enterprise resource planning, or e.r.p.'s, which pe