VIDEO: Army Chief of Staff Odierno Talks Sequester on CBS THIS MORNING

Mar. 01, 2013
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Army Chief of Staff General Ray Odierno said that sequester cuts "fall on the shoulders of our young men and women" in the military, who are "not prepared the way they should be" in an interview that was broadcast live today, March 1, on CBS THIS MORNING (7:00-9:00 AM) on the CBS Television Network.

Odierno told co-hosts Charlie Rose and Norah O'Donnell that because of continuing resolutions, the Army has "no certainty in what our money is going to be, so we're wasteful, we're inefficient, and we could become more ineffective with our dollars." Watch the appearance in full below!

Excerpts from the transcript are below:

CHARLIE ROSE: The Army's Chief of Staff General Ray Odierno is blunt about the fallout from these cuts. He told Congress without the resources to train and equip his troops, "Our young men and women are the ones who will pay the price potentially with their lives." Gen. Odierno joins us now, thank you. What do you mean "will pay with their lives," because of these cuts?

GEN. RAY ODIERNO: What's happening is we have this – several things happening this year. Right now the army has an $18 billion shortfall in its, we call operation and maintenance accounts, which helps us conduct training, which helps us pay civilian personnel. What I'm trying to tell everyone is we're not going to be able to train anymore this year for the most part for those units except for those in Afghanistan, or getting ready to go to Afghanistan. So what I'm worried about is that next year we might have to delay deploying people because they're not trained properly. Or if we're asked to do a contingency somewhere around the world, we might not be trained properly. Ultimately when we do these cuts, they fall on the shoulders of our young men and women because they're not prepared the way they should be.

ROSE: Who determines the cuts that you have to make? Do you determine them? Can't you find cuts somewhere else?

ODIERNO: It has to do with certain accounts. So right now I'm short $18 billion in all accounts. Because we have a continuing resolution, I do not have the authority to move money around in my budget. So it's not only the sequester, it's the fact that we've had a continuing resolution. I've been the Chief of Staff of the Army for 18 months and I've never had a budget. We've always had a continuing resolution. That limits us in what we can do in moving money around. So it's like a double problem that we have right now. So we need predictability in the budget cycle and we need to make sure that the cuts we get are managed appropriately so we can put a plan together so we can protect our soldiers, so they can do the job we're asking them to do.



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