WASHINGTON - U.S. Senator Roger Wicker, R-Miss., Chairman of the Senate Seapower Subcommittee, today chaired a hearing to review the readiness of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. Wicker spoke on the need to promote military readiness and to avert a potential return to sequestration-level spending caps.

Wicker said, “There is a provision in a statute that has not yet been repealed. And if it should be allowed to take effect it would put us back in sequestration – an unthinkable result, an utterly irresponsible act that I feel sure this Republican Senate and this upcoming Democrat House will avoid.”

Wicker asked each of the hearing’s witnesses to describe the impact a return to sequestration would have on military readiness.

“This would just knock us flat down. If you look at what sequestration does, it is a $26 billion cut to the Department of the Navy,” U.S. Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer said. “It is devastating.”

Commandant of the United States Marine Corps General Robert Neller added, “If we were forced back to a sequestration level, it would be more than just the Blue Angels not doing air shows and people not going to conferences. It would be units getting ready to deploy later. It would cause us to look at our force structure and have to make ourselves a smaller force. This means we lose capacity, we have less presence around the world. It would delay almost every single acquisition program we have underway, ground and air, to not just modernize but to create future capabilities for the force that we think we need to defend the interests of this nation.”

Under current law, sequestration-level spending caps would be reinstated beginning in 2020. Wicker has called for bipartisan action to remove the threat of a return to sequestration.

Secretary Spencer also confirmed the Navy will meet deadlines to implement needed reforms required by the “Surface Warfare Enhancement Act.” Wicker and the late Senator John McCain, R-Ariz., sponsored this legislation to improve the combat readiness of Navy surface ships and their crews following a series of deadly collisions in 2017. Eleven provisions from this bill became law after being adopted into the FY19 National Defense Authorization Act.