GOP & Dems Fight Trump To Stop $8B Saudi, UAE Arms Deals

GOP & Dems Fight Trump To Stop $8B Saudi, UAE Arms Deals
GOP & Dems Fight Trump To Stop $8B Saudi, UAE Arms Deals

A key Trump ally, Sen. Lindsay Graham, bucks the White House on its proposed $8 billion arms sale.

White House, Pentagon Remain In Dark Over Syria Withdrawal

White House, Pentagon Remain In Dark Over Syria Withdrawal
White House, Pentagon Remain In Dark Over Syria Withdrawal

Republican Senators erupted in outrage, and there are some indications that Turkey pushed Trump to withdraw support from its traditional foes, the Kurds. The British government issued an equivocal statement, while the Kremlin applauded the move.

Sen. Cotton, 37, Wins Airland Chair; Sens. McCain, Reed Set New SASC Lineup

Sen. Cotton, 37, Wins Airland Chair; Sens. McCain, Reed Set New SASC Lineup
Sen. Cotton, 37, Wins Airland Chair; Sens. McCain, Reed Set New SASC Lineup

WASHINGTON: The youngest senator on Capitol Hill, and one of the very few lawmakers who can wear a Bronze Star and a Ranger tab, has stepped right from his one-term House seat to chairmanship of one of the most important subcommittees on Capitol Hill. That would be Tom Cotton of Arkansas, the new chair of…

Mattis: Keep 13.6K Troops In Afghanistan, Keep Talking With Iran & Keep Out Of Syria

[updated Tuesday, March 6 with Gen. Mattis’s remarks to the House Armed Services Committee] CAPITOL HILL: The US should keep 13,600 troops in Afghanistan to advise and assist the Afghan forces after American combat brigades withdraw in 2014, about a quarter of the current troop level, said Central Command chief Gen. James Mattis, giving his…

GOP To AOL D: Our Stop-Sequestration Plan Is NOT Last Year’s; Navy Delays Carrier Deployment

[UPDATED with details on carriers] THE CAPITOL: With the Obama Pentagon excoriating federal lawmakers for their apparent inability to avoid sequestration or to pass a defense spending bill, and the Navy going down to one carrier in the Persian Gulf for lack of funds, GOP lawmakers today defended the latest Republican proposal to stop the…

Delay Sequestration By Six Months; ‘We Need To Know What We’re Doing,’ Sez Sen. Feinstein

CAPITOL HILL [updated 12:40 with Feinstein, Inouye remarks and results of amendment vote]: Sequestration drama roiled an otherwise pro forma mark-up of the Senate’s defense appropriations bill this morning, with a precious flicker of bipartisanship over the need to avert the sequester soon overtaken by disagreement over the legalities of layoff notices. If the automatic…

Hill Must Craft Sequestration Deal By Fall, Says Sen. Levin

WASHINGTON: Congress must act by fall — before the election — and pass some sort of answer to sequestration, says the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Sen. Carl Levin told reporters that his colleagues are beginning to focus on the fact that layoff notices for hundreds of thousands of defense and government jobs…

Senate Appropriators Grill SecDef About Cyber, Pakistan, And, Yes, Sequestration

CAPITOL HILL: Apologizing to Pakistan, the economic impact of sequestration, and the possibility of a cyber-war “Pearl Harbor” dominated today’s hearing of the defense panel of the all-powerful Senate Appropriations committee. Sen. Dianne Feinstein — who also chairs the intelligence committee — asks Defense Secretary Leon Panetta why we couldn’t just apologize to Pakistan for…

McKeon Unveils New Debt Reduction Plan; Veto Threat Still Looms

CAPITOL HILL: A day after Senate Republicans announced their own plan to cut $1.2 trillion from the national deficit, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon unveiled a plan of his own. The “Down Payment To Protect National Security Act” calls for a ten percent total cut to the federal workforce spread over 10 years,…