Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey is getting an appetite for political controversy.

America is nearing a decisive moment.  Unless Congress acts to change current law, automatic sequestration cuts will slash future spending on national defense across-the-board by over $500 billion beginning early next year.

The joint statement released by the Defending Defense Coalition details the devastating impact that the upcoming automatic sequestration would have on the U.S. military and the consequent need for the House of Representatives to pass the reconciliation bill in order to defend national security strategy.

Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently said if sequestration stands, "we wouldn't be the global power that we know ourselves to be today." He's right.

Rep. Paul Ryan calls his budget plan the “Path to Prosperity,” but it could be termed as well a “Path to Security.” In reclaiming more than $200 billion of the nearly $500 billion in military cuts made in last year’s Budget Control Act (BCA), the House Budget Committee chairman takes national security more seriously than does our commander in chief.

When he was director of central intelligence, Leon Panetta earned a reputation as an energetic advocate for his agency. When he replaced Robert Gates at the Pentagon, it was reasonable to hope that Panetta would continue to play the role of a senior statesman.

In what can only be described as a first-rate senatorial butt kicking, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) took apart the two administration witnesses’ effort to explain why, after so much blood and treasure has been expended in creating a democratic Iraq, we’re now left with zero combat forces in country.

Unless Congress acts, this summer the Pentagon will begin making across-the-board cuts in defense programs — cuts that will eventually be so deep that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has said they will end the United States’s status as a global superpower. Yet there seems to be...