Sen. David Perdue told Newsmax TV on Friday that the U.S. faces many global threats — Iran, Russia, North Korea — but that he agreed with Defense Secretary James Mattis that "the No. 1 threat to our national security is our own debt."
"It doesn't allow us to rebuild our military," Perdue, 68, a Georgia Republican who is in his first term, told Newsmax TV's John Bachman in an exclusive interview.
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Perdue is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
"Our military is in a weak positon," he said. "Two-thirds of our FAA teams can't fly today.
"Only three of our 58 Army brigades can fight tonight. We've got nuclear submarines in dry dock waiting on major maintenance.
"This is a situation where we have allowed our military to get to a position of riddance," Perdue said. "It's not acceptable.
"So, we're right now in a phase where we're trying to rebuild readiness in the military."
But perhaps the biggest change on the global front is President Trump's leadership, Perdue said.
"I've been around the world meeting a lot of these leaders," he told Bachman. "Their first request of a new president was 'please we need America to lead again.'
"That doesn't mean we need 100,000 troops on the ground in Syria, but we need America to help form the impetus to stop Iran and to stop Russia."
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