00:00The supplemental funding request is not a substitute.
00:15The witness will suspend until order is restored in the committee room.
00:23I know that individuals feel very passionately,
00:27but we must have order in the hearing room so that we can proceed.
00:33We're now going to move forward with our hearing,
00:37and Secretary Higgseth, please proceed.
00:41The supplemental funding request is not a substitute
00:44for the president's full $1.5 trillion base budget request.
00:48$1.5 trillion.
00:52Stop bombing our children in Iran and Palestine.
00:55This is illegal.
00:57Mr. Secretary, please suspend until order is restored in the hearing room.
01:05We will begin the timing clock since you've been interrupted twice.
01:17Please proceed.
01:19$1.5 trillion is what the president seeks and what we need to defend the country.
01:24The members of this committee understand better than most
01:27that long-term strategic dominance cannot be funded through one-off supplementals.
01:41We will have order in the hearing room.
01:50Mr. Secretary, please proceed.
01:54Collectively, the budget proposals submitted under President Trump follow a simple logic.
02:06I would ask that the Capitol Police, whose professionalism I admire, remove those who are seeking to disrupt the hearing.
02:20Please proceed.
02:22President Trump's following a simple logic.
02:24The military requires a generational investment to deliver on peace through strength.
02:30We know the best way to create peace is to prepare for war, to deter it.
02:35And that's exactly what the Department of War is doing,
02:37building a force so capable that it would be absurd for anyone to challenge it.
02:42Like most Americans, I've had a lot of trouble following this administration's contradictory statements about the war.
02:48On April 8th, you said, and I quote,
02:51their missile program is functionally destroyed,
02:54launchers, production facilities, and existing stockpiles depleted and decimated and almost completely ineffective.
03:02Mr. Secretary, Iran has been firing at U.S. military bases in the region and ships for the last week.
03:09How is it possible if their capabilities were, quote,
03:12functionally destroyed three months earlier, as she claimed, for them to be doing this now?
03:18Senator, Iran is at the weakest point militarily it has ever been in, in the past decade.
03:23Certainly, maybe in 47 years, as they've gathered effectively a terror army.
03:28And that terror army was built to try to create conventional capabilities to defend against a pursuit of nuclear weapons,
03:34which meant thousands of ballistic missiles, many of which we have destroyed,
03:39others of which they have put inside facilities and hidden in underground facilities.
03:42That's what terror regimes would do.
03:44So I acknowledge they still have capabilities, no doubt.
03:47But the amount of damage that we've done to them over the course of these series of operations
03:53has put them in the worst place they've ever been.
03:54Okay, well, let me move on.
03:56On May 5th, you claimed that Iran doesn't control the strait,
03:59and you said that there was a, quote,
04:01powerful red, white, and blue dome over the strait.
04:04If that was true, how did Iran shrink ship traffic in the strait to a trickle again last week?
04:11We pushed almost, I believe, between 400 and 500 million bearers of oil under the nose of Iran
04:17over the course of Project Freedom, which went underground,
04:19which I acknowledged after we did so covertly,
04:22because it was more effective to do so quietly than to do so publicly.
04:26So we've been in control of moving traffic through there for quite some time.
04:30Will they retain the ability to recklessly shoot at commercial shipping?
04:32And that's what happened.
04:33We had a ceasefire, and then they shot at commercial shipping.
04:36Well, you also said at that same press conference,
04:40and I'm going to quote you,
04:42you urged Iran to, quote,
04:44let innocent ships pass freely.
04:46These international waters belong to all nations,
04:48not to Iran to tax toll or control.
04:51Last week, President Trump said the U.S. would charge a 20% toll
04:55to each ship to pass through the state.
04:57So based on your opposition to tolls,
05:00did you talk to the president out of that idea?
05:03Or did someone else?
05:06Iran's not charging tolls,
05:08and they're shooting at ships right now.
05:10But Trump said that he wanted to charge a 20% toll.
05:14We have a blockade right now of all Iranian ships and Iranian ports,
05:17and it's effective.
05:20My time is out.
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