House Armed Services Committee Chairman Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.), along with GOP committee members, urged Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to bring a plan to the Senate floor without delay to resolve sequestration. “The time for rhetoric has passed,” wrote McKeon and the Republican committee members in their June 29 letter. Resolution cannot wait for “a lame duck session, or even the next Congress,” they stated. They added, “If you have a solution in mind, it is incumbent upon you to bring it to the floor of your own chamber, pass it, and allow us to move into a conference.” The House lawmakers told Reid that he would “bear responsibility for a morally unconscionable outcome that breaks faith with our service members and their families” if he does not allow a plan to resolve sequestration to come to the Senate floor. “We must resolve sequestration now,” they wrote.
The defense intelligence community has tried three times in the past decade to build a “common intelligence picture”—a single data stream providing the information that commanders need to make decisions about the battlefield. The first two attempts failed. But officials say things are different today.