Dempsey confirmation hearing becomes venue for vents on defense cuts

Dempsey confirmation hearing becomes venue for vents on defense cuts
The hearing, however, provided an opportunity for senators to discuss the issue that has dominated the hill for weeks: budget cuts.

"What concerns me most about our current debate is that the defense cuts being discussed have little or no strategic or military rationale to support them," Republican Sen. John McCain said. "Our national defense planning and spending must be driven by considered strategy, not arbitrary arithmetic."

Across the aisle, Sen. Carl Levin, the Democratic chairman of the committee, said, "The fiscal realities that confront the nation will put tremendous pressures on the Defense Department's budget. Those fiscal realities require us, when considering defense planning and programs, to take into consideration historic budgetary constraints."

Dempsey testified that this budget debate is an anomaly.

"I'm a student of history, as you know, and I've studied the post-Vietnam period, I've studied the post-Desert Storm, Desert Shield period," he said. "What makes this period different is we're doing all this while we're still actively engaged in conflict and we have young men and women in harm's way. And that -- that adds a degree of complexity and a degree of uncertainty that I think we can't discount."