not only coming but coming in fairly short notice and nearly two and a half weeks before the presents budget will arrive it's a bit unusual to hold budget hearings before submission of the president's budget but it's necessarily our case because we're on a tight congressional budget office defense spending is substantial and always comparable more so this year because there will be three pieces of defense spending in the mail totaling between six and seven hundred billion dollars these include the regular two thousand and eight defense budget request approximately four hundred eighty billion dollars in two thousand and seven war supplemental reported to be nearly one hundred billion dollars in two thousand and eight war supplemental which the administration estimated last july in the mid session review to be fifty billion dollars the size of these requests individually and together compel us to understand how expenditures of this kind which are called emergency exempt from usual budget strictures should be treated and our base budget the purpose of this hearing is not to press our witnesses for details of what will be in the zero seven supplemental or the budget request by the way we understand that the president's budget is not yet found allies but we would like to get a better grasp of the cost of the iraqi war the global war on terrorism the way of accounting for cost to date and projecting calls to come we want to explore ways to budget these calls avoid to avoid if we can recurring supplementals and the usual dispensations that we accord emergency spending which complicate our efforts to balance the budget we need to know how to project these costs over time and we know that difficult but we typically run our budgets out five in ten years in defense spending is a major element we need to know how defense spending is likely to unfold over least a five year period of time i sister two thousand and one by our calculation we provided more than five hundred billion dollars for military and reconstruction operations in iraq and afghanistan virtually all of that five hundred billion dollars was provided for supplemental and emergency funding measures using supplemental appropriations has been a problem for several reasons one is require the military to divert funds from regular accounts to pay for war calls until a supplemental is inaccurate with adverse effects on re is allowed the administration and the congress to circumvent test choices in the budget by keeping emergency spending and affectively off budget the result larger deficits here in the past this created the federal government r deficit of two hundred forty eight billion dollars the prospects for bringing that budget back to bounce are bleak but a first step is to better camp for the cost of the wars in iraq and afghanistan by including those costs in the regular budget troops high as one hundred seventy billion dollars we need to account for the impact of these operations on the budget bottom line obviously this committee is not alone in advocating the inclusion of war calls in the regular budget congress enacted time that we budget for war cost in the annual base but you the cost of war beyond the budget year will also be significant and should be considered we think in the budget process because i said we typically run out of budgets five to ten years so far the administration has resisted calls projections because of the uncertainty of future deployments clearly there's some uncertainty about future broun's but there's one thing we know and that was certain the future cost will not be zero for example thousand servicemen and women have died in iraq twenty three thousand have been injured or wounded in action the call summaries seldom include veterans health care and disability benefits but they are directly related costs and they are substantial projected war spending but not too young this is an encouraging son first time in the that the presents regular budget will recognize cost beyond the budget year but the administration budget we believe i believe should go further and take into account that our commitments are not likely to end in two thousand and the projection should go forward for the room if the president's budget proposes to bring the budget back to balance by two thousand and twelve and that's what he says it has to include a realistic way for this to me to begin the hundred tenth congress than to make a good look at the way we have and the way we will budget for the global war on terror a clearly we're at a turning point in iraq and when you give it some thought as both congress and the president acknowledged we have a lot to do last week the president laid out his plan for proceeding in iraq with an increase in troop levels one of the key components members from both sides expressed wrong opinions both  for against that plan and whether or not you agree or disagree with the president there are still large bills that need to be paid to support our troops both at war and here at home and it is the responsibility of this committee to help make the choices and determin the plan on how we're going to pay those bills i hope we're at a turning point on this front the attacks of september eleventh are now more than five years behind us the liberation of the iraqi people from saddam hussein is nearly four years behind us yet we still find ourselves largely funding the war on terror through emergency supplementals several years ago this committee took the lead to correct this by including in our budget a funding  placeholder for the war to their credit the administration last year began to follow suit a trend i fully expect to see repeated and hopefully built upon in the budget the president sent to congress next month this committee is also taking the lead  cleaning up the emergency war supplemental this is an issue i expect to go into in more questioning i think the chart can show kind of speaks for itself by including in our f y o seven budget language a clear definition of what constitutes an actual emergency and what must go through the regular checks of the budget process the whole idea here is real emergencies article in the supplemental and the things that should normally be in the base budget should be in the base budget i understand that some members may want to choose to use this hearing is a forum to voice their thoughts on what a policy clearly that's one of the most critical debates in congress are going to have this year but funding this war piecemeal serves neither our soldiers nor the taxpayers and it is the obligation actually acts but as a chairman a comment in his letter to me he wanted to stage so it would be helpful frankly not only does to this committee but also the congress that when you get the budget it will be better understood how we have put the budget together with the primaries are with the theory is in terms of how we have proceeded so hopefully this will be helpful to you today and of course we're always pleased to come back when we have detailed numbers and talk about of the supplemental and i appreciate everybody's views on this because there are some conflicting requirements in terms of the budgeting first the base budget we have in our base budget is the cost to quote man organize train and equip and that's what's in our base budget we do that for all of our armed forces all the services all over agencies are in that budget and we balanced in that we make the trade  also throughout the year of sustaining the force and the investment for the future so there's a that's what we do every day in the base budget other way the base budget we have been working all of two thousand and six preparing  a budget it gets turned in hero in february early february of two thousand and seven is then as the baby did in the congress hopefully passed late in the year and we spend that money then in two thousand eight so it's prepared in two thousand and six debated and approved in two thousand and seven is spent in two thousand and eight so by definition it is looking ahead somewhere between one and two years so it's literally more of an it's an estimate because we're looking ahead but since we've been doing the base budget we actually have a pretty good feel for what those costs are and we can project those recently well in the base budget are requiring the size of the budget  the budget is very large i mean defense spends a lot of money we understand and we also understand that we have a fiduciary responsibility as you do to spend it wisely and all this money is earned by our fellow workers all of you all of us paying our taxes every day i'm so we take that very very seriously if you do i don't want to comment on defense as a percentage g d p defense is expensive no question about of course a lot to protect in the fende our country and our way of life in were to defense was about thirty five percent of the budget in korea it was about twelve percent of the budget in the prox we nine percent of the budget desert storm about for the half percent of the budget during the reagan buildup it was about six percentage of g d p and today it's about three point nine percent including the supplemental war costs so as a percent we're actually considerably lower than we have been in any other conflict in modern times in the country so fortunately frankly the economy has gruen to the point of defense is expensive it's also more affordable in terms of our national capital now supplementals the supplementals are financing the or ongoing cost of the contingency operation and our and our global war on terror and the vast majority is iran i mean iraq and afghanistan that's where most of the money goes for those two war efforts now there's a fundamental i mean this fundamental question you raise mr chairman it is is sort of the crux of this that is the supplemental have a much shorter timeline so that is when we turn in a supplemental it's a more real time i mean we actually know we quit meant damaged equipment to be replaced we know how many troops have been deployed but we know what our read is every month or so so when it comes to the we're cause we actually have a much higher degree of fidelity doing that in the supplemental than if we try to project a year ahead i mean sort of by definition are always better projecting something near term and you are trying to look into the future particular war and that's always been the tradeoff now frankly that's has not our decision i mean we don't make that decision a deity that's a decision between a congress they know and the in terms of how the package that but it's always the question of greater fidelity in terms of supporting the numbers versus a projection of numbers further into the future serving less fidelity along you go out better fidelity closer in and id is frankly to extraordinary professional we're open we're transparent we provide all the data to the congress and we are pleased to discuss it in all detail and whatever detail anyone requires of the books are open and available and we send reports regularly to the congress and i'll let tina jonas trust that in more detail i do want to comment regarding of budget we do have a lot of active programs within the department of defense to continuously improve our processes and methods within the department i'm movie do warn a full accounting of calls we do want to make sure the money is spent wisely obviously it's not a perfect process because this is an extraordinarily large and complex enterprise but we do work every single day to make that better and we are making considerable progress within the department of having better more timely more accurate data so with that we are pleased to take your questions we do have a written statement one written statement for the three of us mr chairman but we are pleased to help you in any way we can to prepare your committee for receipt of the president's budget here early february ok ten year period of time namely two thousand and two through two thousand and eleven which would be the budgetary period that was mostly determined by policy decisions made in the bush administration you can see from the top line if you took the c baseline for defense spending ofeibea as we call it out ten years from two thousand and two to two thousand and eleven the baseline n o one when the bush administration came to office was about three point six the total increment over that ten year period of time is one trillion seven hundred eighty billion dollars so that makes defense spending it's imperative it's compulsory you've got to defend the nation it's a first response for the government but still a one point seven trillion dollar anchorages has to be of concern to those of us who put together budgets and try to make them balance the next chart is a layer chart a layer graph which shows you the different components in a layered form of the budget we're talking about and as you can see the increased cost of defense over the period two thousand through two thousand and eleven has gone from about three hundred billion to about six hundred billion dollars i believe those are nominal malas it's a substantial increase to accommodate a budget that you're trying to put back in balance and one of the factors if we look to next chart accounting for that increase is shown here future war costs in the dark layer the upper end of this particular chart of the cost of iraqi freedom enduring freedom in afghanistan the noble eagle which is north american enhanced security since two thousand and one don't know for sure what the coming supplemental be but this includes seventy doesn't include the balance to come we would guess then that operation iraqi freedom at the end of next year would be well above four hundred billion dollars it's been an expensive venture seventy five billion dollars they went up the next year the next year the next year and could go up two hundred seventy billion dollars in two thousand seven we like to ask why the big jump in apparent out lies between zero six and zero seven and how do you account for the fact that the cost of the war keeps going up and up and up even though the intensity avenue is varied over time and even though we actually have fewer troops there than we did two years ago by about twenty thousand i believe and then finally krisher budget office in projecting likely expenditures it's typically in the past had to carry forward any supplemental as if it would be an reenacted reenacted reenacted which is unrealistic but that's where the conventional routes call for them to extrapolate from that based on they finally said we need a better way to do it for the cost of the war in iraq and what they did was they came up with a set of assumptions that next year the next fiscal year two thousand and eight we would begin to reduce our troops such that over a five year period of time to go from where we are to fifty five thousand troops in iraq the theater and afghanistan the theater not necessarily in country is assumed a gradual build around to that steady state of fifty five thousand troops for the next five years over that ten year period of time they estimated future war calls to four hundred thirteen billion dollars if we have to accommodate four hundred thirteen billion dollars in the next five years on budget next ten years our budget is going to be that much harder to bring into balance and what we are asking today is would you take a look at these numbers and tell us if they comport with your experience your accounting your records and if so are we basically all more right track and what we've estimated is the task before would you care to comment upon any of these charges these calls projection frankly that we started putting in the supplemental what we call the reset cost that is until that period i think it was just sort of agreement in the past that supplementals did not have  cost meaning to buy equipment to replace equipment at the last in combat well in your october the twenty fifth memorandum did you read the fine and expand the definition of what some urgency then to include procurement even though the items might not be directly related to the theater of operations to two subjects if i can this is scott crossed into two thousand and five we were not in the shop right now those were cost of replacement of equipment damage worn out excel rated where was not showing up in the budget so we were accumulating basically a cost and by the way we're also accumulating equipment back then because it wasn't getting replace and it wasn't getting repaired into the two thousand and five supplemental so we literally have a backlog that we have been putting in the budget in terms of of our repairs and replacement and so you are seeing an increase and some of that increase is a reflection of the fact that it wasn't cost  supplementals etc we do have a cost model that we use we plug in the actual deployment orders which is why the deputy alluded to that more accurate we are less sophisticated with respect to the types of scenario charts if you recall last year our budget resolution r f y o seven budget resolution h congress three seventy six for the first time we've put new emergency spending definitions in rules and processes in place we refine the designation for any spending outside the regular budget and we distinguish between defense emergency spending and non defense non emergency defense spending by saying that quote contingency operation is directly related to the global war on terrorism and supported defense operations are appropriate for overseas contingency operations secretary england take a look at the chart if you see sort of the you can see early ninety's we had a couple supplementals and then we had sort of what i guess i'd call the peace dividend and then we ramped up especially you know after after nine eleven for take a look at how big the supplemental is grew particularly not  particularly after the actual invasion of iraq and the administration sent us a number of budgets that seem to continue putting non emergency items in the supplemental jim we saw a growing trend of non emergency spending items creeping into the supplementals it's obviously no way to run a railroad it's no way to predict things but now we're you know we're number years into this if you go to try to please  a my question is basically this we started to try and put plugs in our budget resolutions here in the house i guess it takes a second for the stars to come up but fifty and we kept doing fifty last year for the first time only to be actually put out you know matched us and put fifty but our supplemental was one hundred seventy billion dollars here's the question i want to know is this are you did you look at our designation of emergencies or definition of what emergencies were in our last year budget resolution this definition is now i think you carry this will over number one number two one controls and processes do you have in place to make sure that no emergency stuff don't creep into the supplemental for instance you know if a helicopter goes down in a in a combat environment you need a new helicopter and that's probably unforseen and you need that for an emergency but if you are already planning on buying a bunch of helicopters why would you put those in you know emergency supplementals what assurances can we get and what controls do you have in place to prevent these things from creeping in these emergencies from now on post actively we pretty much know what we need and  but those have been on the front lines to get refurbished but meanwhile these will cost you know about already you know what you're going to spend on the war next year and so many of these categories you don't know what helicopter going to go down but you know how many how come you didn't need to begin with you know a lot of these things ahead of time detail supporting data because we actually know a helicopter went down so we know that helicopter went down and that replacement cost is in the persian if you look out a year then we estimate what's going to happen and remember we've been putting a budget now you can do that but when you turn the numbers in you will have less certainty and support for the numbers because it will be an estimate in the future as a close to a work cost that we can quantify quite precisely and that's been a trade off and a decision has been a part of the way between the congress and no in the in the pay as you keep that in the supplemental and that's how we've been doing it so that's that's how we've differentiated i see my time that i had some follow ups but maybe questions the secretary i think you put a very good face on a very murky situation i don't know anyone in congress democrat or republican who really feels that the pentagon is a transparent institution  we know where you stand financially take for example the head of the general accounting office he repeatedly year after year points out that the pentagon is the single biggest offender and not having autoblog numbers being the largest federal agency that's really opaque untransparent now i know in your testimony you point out that your large and that in a few years time you'll do a better job but those of us who've been around the sensation for a long time have heard that for so many decades we get tired of waiting and i know you're as big as i b m wal mart exxon put together but the rest of federal government is even bigger and eighteen of twenty four agencies are audit of all now we want to give you slack during wartime but even in peacetime things like distressingly little progress is being made so i don't want to hurt morale or float tino's wonderful efforts but this really needs done so that we know where the numbers are in it and also question about what's in emergency french or what's not none of us knows what's going to be in this year's emergency supplemental but the newspaper rumors are they're going to be to joint strike fighters which aren't even going to be fielded for years so how is that an emergency sixty two million for ballistic missiles which are fine but they're not going to use afghanistan or iraq three point four billion for new and repair navy aircraft when we really don't face an air threat at least so far in iraq it's amazing what gets added into these bills and there's a great deal of bipartisan suspicion that the pentagon has been playing fast and loose with the definition of emergency so can you give some reassurance i would be pleased to first of all clean balance sheet i mean it has been issues been issue for a long time and i can just tell you that this now you can teach me working very hard we have teams in place and we are making progress and we do have knowledge stones we measured against them so we're making progress and we will get to a clean balance sheet takes a long time but we're working and we're working aggressively and we take it seriously so we'll get there as you just can't fix overnight but there is a process and a methodology and people dedicated to the task in my judgment doing a good job and we review a periodic with them to see where the r s in the meantime however that's a clean balance sheet we do know how our money spent every year i mean and we we do spend those reproach we're going to congress whatever money is spent every year that is open is transparent this and i don't know if it was things you mention there's been a lot of things in the press about all sorts of things and i rather wait until the budget comes out and we talk to protect but let me talk about the theory of the case of you going to cases if we lose an airplane a plane goes down in iraq and we lose that there are plenty then there's a value of money associated with that in a plane that we recapture mincer loss we recapture depend on a model airplane we don't go back and buy an o a plane we buy whatever airplane is being processed for the military maybe it would make no sense to go buy something or so for example in our combat vehicles and harm the use that we're not protected early the old model from the if we lose one today recover the cost and then we apply it to whatever it is that we're buying in the future so it's not a question of fine it's a question of recovering the cost of the equipment is being worn out or damaged and then we apply it to whatever the future product is but i don't think the issue congressman is we're fine i think the issue is from a budgeting point of view how do we recover the costs and are we doing that  accurately and i believe we are doing that accurately in terms of recovering the cost so that's that's what we do that's how we do it again it's very transparent and and we're pleased when those numbers come out and all the details of a i would have to not have what i call a clean balance sheet that's different to know what our expenditures are every year so one is a balance sheet issue the others expenditures and we do have reports of new jersey regularly to the congress so that it was available i mean years an systems which have been in place for many many years are based on the appropriations account structure which of course is based in law and in one thousand nine hundred the congress passed the chief financial officers act which then required us to to have clean statements according to the to the gap principles that generally counted generally accepted accounting principles so you've got two different types of purporting going on but as the deputy said we do have accounting reports they're known as ten o two reports that are that are tied to appropriations account expenditures according to them obligations commitments obligations expenditures and so we do have those but i appreciate your interest mr cooper because we've been working very hard to try to do the work that is necessary both on process side and on system side to be able to allow us to account for the expenditures of the department of defense according to gap so and i think we're making some progress right now we have a clean opinion on fifteen percent of our assets and forty nine percent of our liabilities close to a trillion dollars and but it is important work and we appreciate the support and interest of the congress growing anxious about the supplementals that are coming in and i specifically remember last year in one of them there were based improvements brick and mortar improvement for bases in the united states now granted somebody knew that a long time ago that that we needed to do that but to slip that into a supplemental that put it into a supplemental in the way you want to look at it i think is not keeping with the true spirit of a supplemental so take a look at a look at that and just know that there are some of us that are very concerned about that i don't want to beat you up anymore about that accountability secretary you talked about different ways that that you are accountable name a couple of specific areas of what you're doing for oversight to make sure that you guys are spending the tax dollars wisely that's question one question to you there's been a lot of talk about the troop surge the troop increase whatever you want to call it and i think there's room for agreement and disagreement on the number whether it's something we need something we don't need but i have heard a lot of my colleagues republicans and democrats talk about the overall force size and i'm talking about army navy air force marines increasing the size of the active forces we've been relying on our national guard army reserve and in other areas also on our citizen soldiers and i think we're almost to the stretching point what would be the cost of increasing the size of the active forces and well would be the cost of not increasing the size of our active forces over all forces if you take the surge cost out you know that a lot of the a lot of the experts are saying we don't have enough men and women under arms active service men and women to carry out the missions we have worldwide and my question is you know if that is true one of the costs of increasing the size of the active armed forces and one of the costs of not increasing the size of active armed higher number of volunteer forces versus calling more guard and reserves up over the years to fill what you think need more permanent injury forces how do you just oppose it to the cost of frances thank you exactly five at home so that there's a recuperation period in so that people can count on the fixed rotations so given that there's a limited size in terms of how many people you can pull out of the reserves in the guard or last sort of rotation basis and in fact you have to grow the guard or reserve obviously by a reasonable amount because you only get one out of every five as opposed to the active force the policy is in theater one and home for two years which of course we do not have today so that was a policy that terry gates has announced so that people can plan for a certain you know time at home in time in theater and to do that based on the requirements of the combatant commanders going forward looking worldwide at all the future potential threats we have the objective was to have a number of brigade combat teams which is how we measure the combat force adequate to that mission and to do that it would have required either a very large increase in reserve com ponens or it would have required  seven thousand active duty army and i believe five thousand active duty build up of the marine corps for a total increase of ninety two thousand people including those that are on some of which are already in the supplemental but you would have had basically a full time equivalent growth of ninety two thousand people and that was based on the satisfying the projection the combatant commanders for their troops the decision was made based on the demand schedule in recruiting in all those to increase the active force by the seven in five thousand over the next five years so so with  and i know my time's up mr chairman with the twelve thousand what's the discrepancy been between the twelve that you're talking about and the nine hundred twenty what the it's seven thousand a year for five years or the army and five thousand a year approximately for five years for the marine corps matches this is over the all volunteer force and we think that we can add those numbers of the base that we're recruiting for the active component right now and that's based on the estimate this is for about ten thousand troops in the active component is about one point two billion dollars per ten thousand are being pretty articulate i think about the fact that we are all deeply concerned about transparency about the way the war funding has been requested in supplemental can continue to be you said a few  things i would like to have shot into that you could have a couple things i'd like to get through but when i said is that there will be transparency as there always has been you know i had heard from the administration just recently i won't mention who said it not sure it was in a public situation imitation have heard that we are concerned about the lack of transparency and that this next supplemental well if you have more specifics in it in helping us understand and be more public about the cost of this war how the money is  ministration that we will see the greatest that's of this the in fact not true that we will see just the general kind of information we've seen before in this new supplemental so i mean there's always room for for improvement i'm not being defensive about this  and i don't think anybody should be looked at is open and transparent and there's always more more details that can be provided and so as people work more and more detail we will take the time and energy to do that to teach you so i mean some point it doesn't become useful and so but the information is there ever we do turn an extension of reports on why many pages but you know huge numbers maybe tina news but to the extent of people require more information  funding you can't anticipate exactly how do you actually not spend all of the money in the previous supplemental and therefore there is some excess there we might be able to put going forward our view is that in some other way so to let you answer a question first about the reporting what we do appreciate your concerns let me just talk to the justification material we do provide for the last we requested fifty billion dollars last year and of course the congress added to that amount we did provide to our oversight committees about five hundred pages book of five hundred pages of detail justification i agree that for those who aren't budget analyst so things are really designed for the committee staff and so as a result of that we're taking steps this year to make sure that it is more easily understood to the public and to the broader membership of the congress as well so we're taking steps there and we do provide monthly  almost one for one replacement so that if you lose a helicopter you put the cost in there does that because that's understandable but i one of the questions i have is going forward we've heard and expect that the will be going forward when this war is concluded that there will be high costs and just replacement of what we have lost are you saying there will not be any need for additional costs for the department fence because in fact you have already of questioning to the two areas that you've been questioned on today starting with mr ryan's mr scraps comments and also mr cooper's comments and these are comments that come not only as a member of the budget committee to quite quite candidly these are questions that originate from many back from my district when we have town hall meetings and what have you remember members of the service what have you they raise these questions in one framework or another and specifically on the first area on the supplemental like mr ryan indicated i'm pleased by the fact that we have at least begun the process of adding these dollars into the overall budget process back in as you indicate in the zero seven process we have the what we call bridge fund to try to carry it over through that period the interesting thing during that period of time is even though as we were going through the regular order process of that here in this house in the senate there was already news reports out that the administration was in the works of preparing their next supplemental to come down the line just a few months after we would be completed and i understand what you're saying is the normal bureaucratic elements of things in the time that you're looking in zero six moving to zero seven zero eight actually the spending and i understand also that you get a better  feel for the matter is that how much money if you're going to spend when it's right next to actually when the dollars are going out the door but we carry that finances next degree i guess we should do supplementals after the fact and then we know exactly how much money we spent and now we just have to reimburse those accounts that's not the way we want to do it we want to do it like every other line of government and also i like every other business you know i serve on the financial services committee as well and we're just debating the entire socks issue of what we require  major public companies to have to go through and i fear whether or not anyone in this administration and the d o d would be willing to have to sign off with the same legal penalties that we require of our top c e o s and financial officers for what we're requiring them there so  i ask you to comment on that and secondly and to specifically to weather as we go through this regular order of the budget cycle what we should potentially anticipate a force of supplemental when and where down the line and secondly the following is tr eight years i sent a letter to the secretary earlier last year in two zero six two thousand and six asking specifically what was going on as far as trying to expedite this matter and move things along and as it says in your written testimony as you testified here after the fact you have made some progress and you're looking at the numbers of accountability is around sixteen percent and forty eight percent the numbers are a little bit different from the secretary was around fifteen and forty nine percent but it's all in the ballpark there but then his secretary's comment was going to current two thousand and nine your comments going to two thousand and ten but even then we're only at sixty nine and somewhat eighty some odd percent there now sixty nine percent accountability you know if you were if we were grading this on no child left behind or any education format that would not be a passing grade for anyone eighty percent is pretty good and that's even going to be twenty years post one thousand nine hundred eighty financial aid x of twenty years post the law of the responsibility was laid on maybe you and your predecessors were still not going to be up to one hundred percent accountability so my question is why is it taking so long and when will we get actually to the point of full accountability that the law one hundred ninety that congress passed required of the concerted effort to have you know balance sheets all you know all over balance sheets so look i can't i can't comment on the past i can only tell you what we're doing now and we are working we do have professional people working first time job and it takes time to do it so i guess we can always we go through this we do we do have regular meetings on the subject we do review this progress with the people doing it i'll tell you they're  highly professional we've hired professional accountants with peace stuff to stay after so my view is you know we've done all those things prudent to do as a management of the department and we're doing that  tina the comment of people actually work for the comptroller but i will tell you there are there are magnificent people who work in this are actually very proud of what you're doing and and they will get there but i don't know how to show i don't know how t shorten our time so thank you for the question if you break down our problems and i alluded to some of the problems with the systems but if you took a look at our the material weaknesses that we would that we have you would find that there are material weaknesses because of business process and there are material weaknesses because of systems and we have an approach that has two plans and these have been briefed to congress and we have specific milestones on each but the plan that addresses the process issues of the material weakness is called the financial improvement and audit readiness plan it takes a very methodical approach rather than throwing an army of auditors at the department  finding out that we couldn't pass an audit what we've done is broken the problem down and has got a business set of rules that will make sure that we are actually ready for audit and it involves senior level management and so i think that's good on the system piece there is a plan for the department improve its overall business systems implementation which is the big problem for the financial community and that is called the andersen enterprise transition plan and as of last month our fire plan was ninety six percent on milestone or a little bit legging on the enterprise transition plan but that's all critical to get this done it is an enormous enormous job scepter thank you mr chairman welcome mr secretary manchin we'll be seeing you in another subcommittee at some point along the way i wanted to just go back to make sure i heard you correctly on page three in your testimony you state in f y two thousand and seven some war costs are being covered by the seventy billion provided by congress in the f y two thousand and seven regular appropriations act for  war costs for the remainder of two thousand and seven will be addressed in a separate request from the department to be submitted along with the f y two thousand and eight base budget and the f y two thousand and eight war request how do you it not in the base budget based on the stuff based on the supplementary funding are you referencing here with the supplementary funding we passed last year to cover the cost of the war will that supplemental just be so budget that the the money that was allocated last fall will run out this spring and so the remainder of the year for the conduct of the war will be included in the f b i owes seven spring the supplemental so that the money that was approved by the congress last year the seventy billion dollars does not get the department of defense through the year in terms of the cost of the work and so on february five there will be another request for the congress to carry the department through internal there is an appropriation f y o e on october the first do you anticipate that the rate of increase of spending is greater than had been projected last year in arguing for or against your supplemental i mean is that one of the reasons you're requesting the additional supplemental is the rate increased beyond what w april time period or as the chairman said what happened to us last year when we ran out of money then we have to start reprogramming when we start reprogramming we have to start that early because we also ca gives each department a discretionary number that they can use in their budget development o m b has given d o d a specific number upon or has only be given the odious specific number upon which you base your iraq afghanistan requests or do they make you absorb it within the total discretionary request and if so what are you giving up for that money no we can only go back to o m b and we tell them what our request are obviously they scrub it with us and we come to an agreement on what our actual costs are what we need to run the war so the number starts with us then we provide that number though and be in terms of here's what we feel our cost of war is so if you're rich  annual regular appropriation requested i understand you to say that it was the attempt to now fund the war through that knows what i said was we would have an f y o eight regular budget and then we would have f y o a war cost i don't know how the administration will package but i can just tell you what the department of defense says we have we have estimated for all of that oh wait what we feel the work also being i will have to say this since we don't know what the situation will be in no way to a few months ago we didn't know the situation would be today in iraq so basically not knowing if that's go d'eon we basically just straight line don't know it because we don't know what it will be but we because again you have to estimate well into the future what we have but we do have a number in addition to the base budget for all of  like to harken back to an earlier question of mr rhine because i don't think i heard an answer to his question and i think if i understood the question properly it was how do you draw the line of demarcation between what goes in to  the annual appropriation request and what is defined as something that goes into the emergency supplemental request i think mr ryan was using the example of helicopters and again  is our guide we have funded previous wars with some combination of the annual appropriation process in supplementals and i think your answer was consistently the supplemental is the cost of the war but the question now is cost to get our troops there is cost to bring them back i mean it's well i don't know i mean yes but is a sergeant ordering a pizza back at the pentagon who's in communication with somebody on the front lines as that is at a cost of when the services ask for supplemental requests we throw out a good portion of money and i'm we do a pretty tough scrub on things that belong in the base i mean for example if would not put the future combat system in the supplemental it just clearly is and we do have some real bright lines on that thing sometimes there are concerns and there's judgment involved in what is a cost the war and the secretary was just discussing and a big portion of our discussion internally has been what procurement would we ask the congress to put into the supplemental and our rule set has provided that if it's a co documented combat loss or there's accelerated depreciation associated with that i don't being used in theater then that is acceptable in the congress passes it i think i have a minute remaining on my time i would like to sleep in one more question but perhaps greater detail could follow in writing the next question i have is we on this committee and we in congress have a number of responsibilities we understand how your responsibility albeit the greatest responsibility that the republican has in that is to make sure that the people are secure but we have other responsibilities and what little budget discipline that we have around this place is of aid and any time you urgency onto a supplemental request and so my question is this how does it impact the pentagon's war fighting ability if we were to do the majority of the war funding through the annual appropriation budgeting process through supplementals how does that adversely impact your war fighting capability well ok ok let me read i wrote you but i would like as johnny comments because it is a question of timing but we're going to the election i was just going to say first of all in the operations and maintenance area let's just say fuel and maintenance costs for example we can estimate how many miles for example that vehicles are going to drive and how often maintenance can get done and how much fuel they'll consume we we have to make an estimate in an annual budgeting process if those estimates are wrong then what happens is we start cash flowing from other programs and the budget stability of other programs changes substantially if we get those early future estimates when they're further out incorrect for example we may not understand exactly how many troops we have to support so you wind up getting into a stability issue on the rest of your budget what happens to procurement programs and then cost starts by reeling in those types of things you must stop work in other areas so one of the reasons why if you can't estimate because it's so far in advance accurately you create a tremendous amount of sherman in the rest of the in the rest of the budget that's just been a very simple term and for us it creates quite a bit of problems with regard to how we do business and that of time thank you mister mr kind of fine just come in i mean look as long as there was adequate money there's no problem but if you estimate low then it causes us a huge problem because we can't pay our bills you can't project i mean so what you like to do is get the right number the way you get the right numbers the closer you are in time to closing get to the right number i mean this is what is not an issue in my mind of emergency and based budget it is a question of having greater precision with the numbers so that you know that you can indeed pay the bills you actually don't want any reach you don't want any under the close you are to the point time one congress maybe just the day after the fact you know exactly match true but of course they don't have money to pay the bills so this is the conundrum and i mean we can deal with whatever you know the congress and by the size but there is a tradeoff here but the pentagon does too and has for years a fillip future years defense plan program which is a current fiscal year and five more fiscal year so your custom is to are pretty well predictable cause whereas the war is much less predictable and much more dynamic and so that's the only issue i mean look you're absolutely right but there is a different dynamic in the war than there is in the peacetime budget but  understand let me let me just throw it out there one more time and try and give you an idea of what we're all trying to ask of you we have the impression that you are putting regular basis spending items in the emergency supplemental bill and we go back and set a whole bunch of examples but the question is are you do you marking or are you defining what is really an emergency that's unforeseen put that in  you saying this is something we know is going to happen we've been fighting this war for three or four years we know we're going to need this next year we know we're going to last year we're putting that in the base budget or are you doing the opposite and putting stuff that ought to belong in the base budget in these german thank you very much and pleasure to be able to serve on the committee to the witnesses thank you very much for your testimony your welcome secretary let me pursue that a little bit more you're saying that items must be directly associated with the war in order to be included in the supplemental would funding for two joint strike force fighters which will not be operational for several several years be  considered items associated with the iraq war so again let me try this if we lose two airplanes in iraq and we need to replace two airplanes otherwise by some point a future we're short  so when we lose two airplanes we recover the cost of those airplanes then we make the decision what should we buy to replace the airplanes we don't go back and buy old model airplanes i mean it would make no sense to do that we actually buy whatever is in development or production but us pushes does that mean that you're going to have that joint strike force fighter available next month no well if we have it available in neck within a year credit what it means is we have to recover the cost of what was damaged sector understand that ok and let me let me pursue this how long do you expect this war in iraq to last miner standing the joint strike force fighter will not be available for several years if you're putting money into the joint strike force fighter because you're trying to replace an aircraft you're replacing an aircraft you're giving money to put in force or an operation aircraft  won't have for several years and either you tell us that we're still gonna be in iraq or afghanistan fight several years from now or are you telling me that you're pretty money to a plane that we will need the congress has already allocated funny for it but will not be right now we're talking about a supplemental appropriation which is an emergency appropriation off budget which doesn't have the typical oversight of congress to go through in detail what you're doing with the money that you say you need now i  don't think that the men and women in uniform for my district who are interactive day will see anything out of the billions that you're putting into the joint strike force fighter to the supplemental i think they'd rather see a plane over their heads today or next month but it's not going to help them to have the money which may be well spent but not through the supplemental let me ask on ballistic missiles ballistic missiles which are on this you're telling me you've changed the the pentagon's policy and you know start using ballistic missiles in iraq do ballistic missiles have a role in the supplemental emergency appropriation for iraq and afghanistan are activities i don't know what you're talking about if you have any funding or is with ballistic missiles funding for ballistic missiles be something appropriate for this supplemental appropriations there are different types of ballistic missiles if you're talking about submarine launched rice e v m's the answer is no they wouldn't be in there but if the packages for example which are short range if they're m l r s let's stick weapons which we use in afghanistan and iraq then the answer is yes there are so adventures i have a good point let me ask you this can you tell us today that you are going to limit any request in the supplemental emergency appropriation which will not go through the regular oversight of this congress to those types of ballistic missiles that are necessary and are being used today in africa afghanistan or in iraq that more correct because we don't want to find out later on money was expended for ballistic missiles that you're not going to use in iraq or afghanistan is necessary to protect our forces you're saying admiral that we will remain in this supplemental that ministration will meet in the supplemental any requests related to ballistic missiles that are related to the operations in iraq and afghanistan that you're needing here in need now for the battlefield to protect our troops voting i have to inject no i'm going my time is expired and i know where you're growing and i agree with you you've got to recoup your costs but you don't do that through a supplemental emergency funding request we can't go through and ask you in detail about all these issues because in a supplemental we have only a short amount of missions but you're not talking about long term you're talking about replacing equipment and soldiers today our troops aren't interested in knowing what it will be in the horizon five years from now they want to know what's going to be on the ground helping them today and destroy strike force fighter may be a great aircraft but it will not help the troops that are there serving their tour of duty today and so i think what we're trying to figure out is why are some of these items in these emergency supplemental request that don't go through the regular oversight process when we need to get back to fiscal discipline so we're not spending so much money if it's legitimate you'll get it but not through this emergency supplemental proper congressman i mean we today but those who are who will be in the future protecting our nation is to be able to recover the cost so we can replace equipment to secure i i hear you sounding the red alert that you are going to be including things that are not appropriate to be i've heard one thing and then another thing the question that we keep asking is whether we should be funding the war through supplementals or through the regular process obviously i seem to have heard you say that in  eight you were going to request the funding for the war effort up front and stead of through supplementals and then you expect i think your words where you didn't expect a supplemental to the zero eight budget even though we all know there will be one because the prediction how much is going to be spent thank you but that is going to but you are going to request this the funding upfront the majority of it for the entire year recognizing as you just said thank you mr congressman you're absolutely right how true those follow through with depend on the size of a supplemental in that it that you may have overestimated there may be money left over i mean we do not know but we don't know what will be you know a picture right we are going to turn in our best and i said before since you don't know if the numbers up or down which you normally do in my experience is just sort of a straight line because you don't know anything else to do so you do your best estimate you straight line but i can assure you you're absolutely right a year from now we will know right from wrong and he could be operate could be down and so it will have to be revised as we get closer to the a time period that pretty much seems to be told i mean that's what we really want to put the cost up front so that we have some the estimated cost up front so that's in the budget base because one of the things you don't realize is that when you're doing it all through supplemental rather than through the regular appropriation process and putting it into the base budget base is the effect that it has on the overall budget and consequently the budgets of every other agency that we have to deal with and when we're looking at those types of supplementals instead of anticipating what those costs might be let me mention memo and have you sponsored if you would that my good friend from texas here just gave me a memo of october twenty fifth two seasonal supplementals by this memo the ground rules for the f y o seven spring supplemental are being expanded to include the department's overall efforts to expand the global war on terror and not strictly limited to operation end freedom and operation iraqi freedom are we spending what the definition is in the zero seven budget including to include everything under the sun that we consider in the global war on  terrorism there are a few cost and i say a few cost that we show up in a spring supplemental a specific needs identified by the combatant commanders that otherwise are not covered so the vast majority is still in iraq and afghanistan we actually operate in places other than shells afghanistan and iraq so some of those cost as a way of again recruiting those costs are included in the spring supplemental could you tell me what some of those might be where some of those might be occurring i rather have that discussion when we actually have the budget and details and it will be better to do it that points are right if i can do that that time and we can quantify and be much more most important cost of this war in iraq is paid in blood but in looking in the dollars i want to be sure that the figures that we have here and what's called the burn rate or the monthly spend out right are correct that they began at about four point four billion dollars per month in iraq in two thousand and three they were up to about eight billion dollars per month last year and now that we have the first quarter end on this year they've already soared to about nine point seven billion dollars to those sounds about right i think they pretty much match what we saw on the board to just say that that's right all right and you would expect that they would continue to grow with about the escalation plan and what it cost we've had figures given five point six billion dollars for the cost of the troop increase of which two point four billion is for the navy does that sound about right  that the cost of that is about three point two million three point two billion for the year so that's practically christmas thank you now there's been some lack of clarity as to whether the department thinks it already has the money to pay for those troops to be there for a year are that will be included in the supplemental are in some other four norm what is the position of the administration as to whether whatever the the will of congress and the american people it has the money to dispatch those twenty one thousand five hundred troops to iraq and keep them there for years you have that vote in the existing a budget or do you need further action from otherwise not covered in the fall or will be in the spring supplemental arts another supplemental was coming yes again o f y o seven spring supplemental there is an again i think the chairman said that a very big in your we hope to get into that with you in a second but i want to be sure i'm clear if as far as the the cost of maintaining these twenty one thousand five hundred troops for the president's escalation plan in iraq it's about three forty two billion dollars and the department feels that it needs that three point two billion dollars in order to be able to have those troops added this next year well we are already paying whatever they're trying under that the army is echo's when we will pay that bill mean we won't differentiate those dollars are not different from other dollars are spent on other troops i mean those troops are not differentiated from troops other troops we have so we are spending that money and we will continue to spend that money as part of the total  effort and that money in total will run out sometime ne you're coming from congress necessary for you to fund this escalation for the money yes and it is but it required not just for this escalation but just for the entire war cost i mean again it's all part of just wrong one category of cost with regard to the last appropriations bill that this congress passed i know you're fully familiar with section one thousand eight and the responsibilities that it imposes on the pentagon to come forward with the justification to incorporate these war expenses into the budget is the pentagon fully and completely thousand and nine again we have projected two thousand and eight is just a straight line from two thousand and seven but i don't believe done anything for two thousand and nine s i mean that's a long way in the future to be very thick you work cause it's next year right two thousand to be a threat to americans and american interests around the world as we look at how we fight those folks that's a small unit close and hand combat kind of thing not kind of a sweeping war that some of our other platforms there then we've got an emerging nation twenty years down the road that we're going to have to protect this nation a nation from so you've got and i hesitate to mention any particular platform because it gets that contingent group all fired up and excited but as an example huge carriers aren't necessary to fight hand handing the industries bagot and so you guys have this tension between how do you continue to fight this fight over the next four five years ten years whatever it is as well as to prepare  continue to prepare continue to bring online an orderly page those platforms that will be needed to protect this nation from another nation state of equivalent might or power can you talk to us a little bit about how you go about that and a ten thousand foot look at the tensions between the two because there's not going to be enough money to do everything in spite of the small percentage of g d p that's being spent currently i don't know that that's we're going to get back to the world war two era or even the korean levels can you talk to us how you look at this conflict between big iron and mean people on the ground well it's the debate we have literally throughout the year congressman because that is the tension we have your aircraft carrier you mentioned of course we have three of them in addition we do have an objective to deter threats against america not just to fight and in the east but to deter future threats which is really what we obviously all prefer to do we do have that tension and i'll tell you sometimes that's very difficult so i'll give you a thought the joint strike fighter was mentioned turns out i mean that's the only fighter airplane multi role fighter airplane we have under developed united states american or some people who say well gosh why do we need a new airplane goes where we use it for the future but also it's the only industrial base we have and i'm not sure we want to shut down the only fighter industrial base in the entire nation we build one submarine a year and we still have sixty some and we're going down to forty eight so it's not that we're buying a lot in terms of long term the everything's pretty much a gene that we have so that's a tough trade off we have not easy but that's how we make the money accomplish what we need  budget was which is at least helped us you know address some of those needs that we have had increased dollars available i will also tell you that with the help of  lot of other people going back and we scrub requirements that we change our processes so we can reduce our cause to be more effective and all those things we've actually reduced the size of the navy and you know we're now reducing the size of the air force  increasing the size of you know the army and the marine corps so these are tradeoffs we make every day between what are our current needs then which the future including our research and development there's no magic good this is  people good faith to have a lot of knowledge background experience we have a firm in the pentagon where we debate and discuss openly with our military and civilians and we shouldn't be together make all these decisions i don't think any sample answers to this and i'm sure you concluded that a long time for me thank you my question is we're told are were over again that that our active military units in the states are not ready that they don't have the equipment in the training that they need to be deployed if it was necessary for them to be deployed and that our national guard and reserve units are not ready and i know that that a brigade that was deployed to my state after they retire iraq they still haven't had their equipment replaced and and and they some significant needs that have not been made understanding not to put that kind of money in a supplemental so for man time we did and we built up a backlog then once we started getting the funding it took a while literally to fill the pipeline so now we do have  that we have the funding and things were flipped but there's a time lag now to get it out of the system so part of it is you know shame on all of us we didn't get the money early enough and then there's a time lag to get it but it will come out the pipeline and that will help the situation i think considerably when the other side of this from there's a question we have all this equipment deployed to fight the worst so does everybody also get a first set of equipment while they're home i mean  sort of a fundamental question because you can go over and fall in the equipment and also frankly as we've learned a requirements of going up on our military in terms of their needs so their readiness has been a moving target because we learn and we quit them differently and more fully and so that's also part of the issue i mean this is not a static environments a very dynamic changing environment and we try to manage this in a dynamic way and so you're right there are no very i think the deputy said it pretty darn well if you try to look at the replacement time for a humvee for example to set up armor humvee it's not as short as we'd like it to be although we've ramped up production rates tremendously with the great support we're getting here but if you look at also the time to replace a helicopter we've lost some ssion ups we've lost c h forty seven sea nights you look at these types of things it takes a while to get them now some of these units that you're talking about simply did not have all of their equipment in the first place ok they just simply didn't have it all in the first place and so we are in fact putting in a we've got the funding in for that equipment and it just takes a period of time to get in there we have also use prepositioned stocks some are afloat some are short we're now replacing those so what i would say to us is that we're getting our training done because we know what type of equipment we need but not every unit will be full up and it's just going to take some time again with placed but i can tell my guardsmen that their normal yes sir yes sir that is a fact thank you mr chairman and thank you all for being here the frustration is just a little follow up on mr simpson thing but i think we talked about the rules you talked about the rules mr secretary for supplementals and otherwise supplementals are supposed to be for things that are it i mean that's one of the primary uses of a supplemental i think a bunch of us on the side for fiscal reasons not just related to defense but are worried about of use of the supplemental process by using for things which are not unanticipated and clearly the last supplemental defense supplemental had things in it which i think were not either urgent or an anticipated or both and the these should be things that urgent and on to support what i think i heard you say  mr simpson is that in in fiscal well wait at least because we anticipate that will probably be interact through fiscal zero eight we anticipate that we'll have a presence in afghanistan through fiscal zero way the president has sa that the war on terror is likely to last for a period of time so these are not so fighting the war on terror at some level in various theaters is not unanticipated going through fiscal zero eight so just wanted to ask getting clear by that in fiscal zero eight you're going to try and put in the budget all the cost for the war on terror that aren't has been up a new theatre opens up or something flares up that we don't expect or whatever obviously that's appropriate use but but to basically continue the prosecution of hostilities that in which we are currently engaged i think doesn't meet the threshold  costs us how many billion dollars to you know least a couple billion no so you got a couple billion dollars just bang right i mean it happened almost instantly to us and so if i tried to handle that you're at a time i couldn't have operated ships the military could never flown airplanes because we had the money to buy fuel so things actually happen over a period of time that changes those estimates and that's my only point again we can do it i'm not look i it's fine however we can do it but the only thing i would caution is when we do that estimate a year in advance when circumstances change the war heats up with were goes down or equipment gets damaged or whatever it is there needs to be a mechanism i mean otherwise it's an eye for men and women that were pretty now to to defend our nation that's also we just need a mechanism we estimate ahead where with certainty some things will change in those estimates and we need a mechanism to handle it as laden time as we can and i understand i obviously understand the gravity of the example you gave i'm not sure is a real good one because arguably every department in government uses fuel and had to anticipate saying you will cost but we're not operating combat airplanes with troops on the ground i mean we have an obligation to people we put in harm's way so it is different in other departments defense department has so many accountability problems and issues based on the answers that i've heard today and i just want to express my feelings if i could mr chairman very very briefly in spite of the fact that we have operation which is been doing the same thing for two hundred years and many of the people in that have spent their whole careers and cannot plan their activities and what it will cost one year out i'm telling you mr so that's where  said that sir well we project five years out i thought you said that you couldn't plan you couldn't put the cost estimate the cost of the war in an annual budget mccall's it was it was such a moving target you just could do it you do it with less precision than if you do it near term so anything in life that you estimate far in advance is not is good as some you invest in you do new crew so you can certainly do it but we're  time out i just think most of these members here heard what you said about that and the the justification was that if you if you rated nash asked for a  supplemental you're with a z putting zero in an annual budget you're more likely the number closer i don't talk about justification but i want to ask your specific question about about some of the things you said not one of the char asked i think by mr ryan about what cars that are maybe it was the chairman and your answer was that they had to do a reset cost that you couldn't that when you lost equipment and in a war that you had replaces some point time why would you plan for those reset cost ahead of time you know it's going to happen particularly given the fact that you're time that was actually addressed was in zero five so we know fire we started to address the reset costs and that then put the backlog and with the work of art that backlog and as we just had the but the the effect of that is that the cost of the world has been hidden from the public and i think that many of us are very happy to know that now that when you make your budget presentation you will include all of the c discretionary mandatory and there was a period of seven or eight years from ninety three through early two thousand where there was a substantial reduction in the discretionary mandatory spending having said that and looking at the substantial increase after a one because of i'm sure nine eleven could we just i mean how much of this budget from a one on was just to catch up and getting our equipment back  to state of the art my understanding is during that era of time if you were to take one hundred airplanes at nelson or for space you'd need fifty of them for parts and tires and then that may be folklore but i did hear that periodically so looking at that frame of time from the you know eight years in them in the mid ninety's to catching up how much of this budget through the last three or four years has been just to catch up to get us back and say they are scars i know if i knew the exact numbers but i can tell you i'm not sure we ever caught up i'm not sure we ever will with this with the budgets we have you know there was quick to pick your own holiday the army says for me to know general pace school maker has said that the army was one hundred billion dollars short when this war started there were fifty six billion dollars in the hole and that's part of what the admiral just said about you know the units were not equipped and so we had a lot of court hollow particularly guard and reserve units who when we went into this so we there's a there's a major effort in major dollars to fill in those holes and to recover from the you know the budgets of the ninety's so that has kept us in a significant deficit position  salaries benefits and just taking care of the sure probably about two thirds but thirty percent for reading this and support another thirty percent i'm sorry another thirty percent for medical and pay which is it's this committee has heard before we've really concern about the increasing cost of health care we spend thirty nine billion dollars annually which is about the entire defense budget of germany on health care so that's important piece and areas that we should be addressing in the budget for the families and in our men women uniform i know we've done an excellent job trying to catch up with some of our bases with housing because there are some other areas that we need to really concentrate on to help these families my judgment just point we're in pretty good shape and i think our people feel that they're being well treated we've done a lot for housing we've done a lot for health care a lot for salaries a lot for retirement so i think we've done a lot and we're in a pretty good position to this point i will just if i can add one comment and i keep hearing this is question about a continuing resolution you know we do have an appropriations for two that if it's not passed says the two thousand and seven bill would be extraordinarily detrimental to our men and women you know form so we've been working very hard with the congress in that regard because that is a case where it would be to our appropriations bills so i will make a comment that's one place that if anyone has influence in every card i would like to make that comment could i just add there's a there will be about a billion dollar shortfall if we do not in the in the health care area and the housing area which many of these members under no if you understand the no out of pocket costs which we work so hard with for military families who are living off base they would be affected by this in another four billion a big portion of that affecting the army and troops coming home from overseas so we'd appreciate any help you can give us no but you're much porton mr mcgovern thank you thank you mr chairman and i want to thank you for being here today and i'm new to you know getting the rookies are going to ask questions and let me let me say something that i don't i haven't i haven't said in a long time and that is i agree with all my colleagues republicans too and  other community services the rules committee we don't even agree on what the correct time is so this is this is a new experience for me to actually be in agreement with everybody and and i think we here is unanimity in terms of our frustration process you know is being painted as something that is extraordinary a marmite or is almost impossible to to do yet it's not the first time that administrations or presidents have done that i mean harry truman included funds for the korean war in the regular budget in the first year that conflict president johnson did president clinton included bosnia in the second year of that deployment so i think for some was a little difficult to figure out why iraq and afghanistan have to be so different and it's difficult to because we're going to lots of questions about you know whether we're spending our money properly how we're spending our money for our constituents and i know this kind of process is very difficult to be able to have any import or to be able to say that we're holding people accountable i mean so i will say this that i might my prediction is that things are going to dramatically change and i think you're going to the not just by  appeals from this committee but i think by other members of congress when other committees are i think going to demand a change or is this strange i mean f y o h well i know but i mean that but as you explain the f i o s i'm not i'm not totally convinced that really things do response to a question by mr barrett a while ago and that was with regard to the january eleventh the odi announced several policy changes in the deployment rules for the national guard and reserves in the country and you mentioned one of those controversial changes which is which seeks to circumvent existing limitations on deployments of the guard and under the current rules members of the guard could be mobilized for one year and then are demobilized for five years  pentagon says that this one to five ratio will continue to be its quote policy objective but for the quote today's global demands will require a number of selected guard reserve units to be re mobilized sooner than current  current policy goal but what you didn't mention were some of the kind of other deployment rules changes which i think have a budgetary impact that mean deploying reserve forces by unit rather than on a person to person basis reducing the maximum for reservists from the current eighteen months to one year provide compensation to members of the active or reserve components who are required to mobilize or deploy a head of their normal schedule or whose service is extended beyond their normal rotation and require a new or a review  hurricane katrina and then the other question is what will be the budgetary impact of these policy changes especially the provision to compensate active or reserve units whose service is extended beyond their normal  we'd like to have our active component deployed for one deployment one unit one year six months whatever it is and then be home for at least twice that amount of time that they were deployed today for question earlier what is the cost when you balance these off on how you do it between active and reserve component and how often you do these at some point when you put heavy deployments on folks they tend to vote with their feet right now fortunately we have record inless months and record reenlistments across all four services so what we've tried to do is add in strength force structure in the active component side to get those deployment ratios into a better balance of one two for example as opposed to one the one as it is right now what we delight to do on the reserve component side for those deployed in units to be one of the five but we may have to take certain units go down to one to four we would like not to break that any further down than one four so we look at those points if you will and that type of balance that we make these judgments constantly the rest of those incentives for example are to recognize that if we've told somebody typically when one of the ploy or for certain set a time and we extend you for some period we like to reimburse them to recognize their service for no and i'm not objecting i'm just curious about with the budgetary impact is going to be and my other question was about you know whether this change in policy you know is going to impact our ability to respond to crises here at home well actually i think that the change for example in the reserve components side will actually make it better for us to respond because we are taking entire units as opposed to trying to form a unit out of thirty different states and maybe thirty different units that is very difficult because it not only impacts the unit that you're trying to put together but it impacts all those other units too so then when you have to use them for either something in the united states or something overseas you have to wind up getting people from many other states and that takes time to deploy those units we'd rather do this in a unit mason this is one that frankly the army in the marine corps has been very very positive on and frankly talking to all our national guard leaders for example lieutenant general steven blum the national guard director went through a recent conference with governors adjutant general's and senior leadership without throughout the national guard and they are uniformly across the board very very positive on doing unit deployments for units as opposed to trying to do this mix and match across the board so i think we're going to get some real positive side this and we've gotten good positive feedback and my time is up thank you  hopefully one of the problems we had a couple of years ago when this thing started is that the estimates of the costs were so far off and they were this committee was instructed in fact not even to bother about budgeting the war because they didn't budget the everything to date is pretty much actual cost i mean if we're we know how many troops are deployed we know how many steaming hours flying hours operating hours arrive vehicles we know equipment damaged destroyed replacement c cetera so at this point you're pretty much real time in terms of actual cost and so shoppers against supplementals pretty much capture the reality of warfare and that's what we try hard to do as we go  along and you'll see some more of that this spring and then we'll projected for for zero eight but at this point you're my best judgment you're pretty close to what we know the cost to be and if it was fairly there well i i would feel like we would still be there i mean some some degree shortly will have some presence i would expect in both those countries during that period of time but i don't know at this time  can probably like you have to wait for the budget to come out so you may be ahead of us in this discussion ok well i would hope since you're not getting the details and we'll see it when it that you're going to have adequate health care for your injured troops including mental health yes and an adequate shipbuilding budget effect to disrupt the projected escalation in troop levels anything this committ do i don't know how to answer that question michelle i don't know with which you mean with this committee can do so i well is there anything that it ministration would respond to that this committee could do to let you know that we don't support the escalation or mr scott the press sharpen your troops we are funding that right now i mean yours it doesn't require special authorization i mean we can fund those troops so this is just another added cost of the war and so many kids are mixed in with all the other costs of the work so the zero seven separate men will have money to cover those but we're burning that money right now i mean we're actually burning that money so it's all part of just the total war costs there's no differentiation i mean these troops are no different than any other troops in terms of the budget itself so seven we will we will start to run out of money in terms of the total war effort and some time in april we will need approval of the congress of the spring supplemental to continue the total war effort and so that's i mean that's where we're going to be and  deeper because we have to have a lead time away from you know if you're if you think you're going to run out of money in june you actually have to start taking measures much earlier so we would then have to start reprogramming moving money lanes dear i will tell you we had to literally take all the salary money from the fourth quarter and move it forward i mean we took that money from without the base budget to fund the war because the settlement was late and that was highly highly disruptive to and and mr chair and i just i have some questions and i apologize because i was at another meeting when i came in late so if his answer these steps he's accept my apologies i'll cease to serve on this committee have been opera couple years  one of the issues earlier when i served on this before was i did team and have we military been able to make it through an audit yet  one question i've got several you talk about a spring supplemental are we expecting to see a false step a mental and a when are supplemental what so far been the actual cost of the war can we break down into camera borys for example what has what have we spent on trying to rebuild infrastructure there versus personality equipment and and the cost earlier to the committee we have a financial improvement an audit readiness plan we've between our assets and our liabilities we've got about a trillion dollars that can receive a clean opinion we're working on the systems that will make a department wide audit available to us and so we've we worked out but as you know the department conducts a lot of audit in general we have plenty of auditors and for example i have the defense contract audit agency they do thirty five thousand six hundred ten audit they did last year and they reviewed about three hundred forty six billion dollars of the department's funds saved over two point three billion in cost recovery so it's we do pay attention t hat we appreciate your interest in that area with respect to the breakdown of the cost for the war we've spent so far about three hundred seventy two billion dollars two hundred seventy six billion for iraq and sixty nine billion for oh yes which is the enduring freedom or afghanistan and twenty seven billion for operation noble eagle the as we submit our reports to the congress and we do that on a quarterly basis we submit the g a o the requests reports a monthly those are all broken down by categories and so those are available and the other question dealt with do we expect to have a fall and next winter supplemental and the answer that is no that's not planned although again there's sort of this proviso depending on how well we estimated we but the plan is to have that new base budget next year as we talk about i asked can we break it down to categories and you said yes so we know how much we've spent for rebuilding costs you know what those are trying to rebuild infrastructure there i don't have them off the top of my head that they are available in our in our quarterly reports that the congress receives it's broken out and quite a bit of detail it lists all that is can you mean do you further break it down for example as were adding this surge of another twenty burden would be paid for by recouping some of the oil and that they would repay us back money as they got their oil wells up and running has any of that happen well perhaps indirectly that is a actually fund some of their own operations but i mean we are basically funding a training and equipping of iraqi and afghan forces so their want to do as soon as we can because that's how our troops eventually leave us to have their their troops able to do the fight but but we have money in the budget to do that shooters train and equip money in the budget to train and equip both afghan forces and iraqi forces as we talk about reese use the word reset for replay scene the equipment that is broken down their career is that the right word yes it's either to replace or repair ok and do we do that for the iraqi army as well or is it just for our troops do we include some equipping cost for write me do do we for example as we're involved with the iraqi army yes ma'am if i could ok raqi army for example in the afghan army fund in iraqi police forces fund a lot of what they are doing however in the supplemental to accelerate for example there are a quick thing so that they can be more independent we've included dollars for purchase to assist them in becoming more capable but the base funding comes out of the iraqi budget for example and when you talk about base finding what are we talking about  secretary and you can take them off to either of your colleagues if you wish the president's proposal to increase the number of troops by twenty one thousand is not the only policy option on the board obviously and therefore i am curious about alternatives in terms of the impending budget request for example could you provide to the committee a an estimate for what it would cost to fund the war in iraq through the end of two thousand and seven including an estimate for the cost of withdrawing our forces by the end of zero seven assume i'm sure there is but i don't know of any effort again because it takes the joint chiefs and everyone who are all sort of fighting a war rather than deciding not to so so whether that's doable or not it's a different question and does it fit within a framework well let me make the request i would like that information i think it would be helpful to this committee and to the congress to have that information we talk about withdrawing our forces we know we're not going to be in iraq i believe most of us believe we're not going to be there indefinitely and therefore to in order to have a healthy fact based debate  about leaving it would seem to me helpful to have that in from ation so i would make the request i have your request thank you thank you now this may have been asked before but i i don't you know i've been that unfortunately have been in there in and out of here today so stop me if it's been asked but i understand that information obtained from d o d has shown that through october two thousand and six the department has obligated only three hundred and sixty two billion dollars of the four hundred seventy one billion dollars appropriated to d o d by congress and those i understand are c r s numbers if that's true that would mean this more than one hundred billion in an obligated balance is still available to finance military operations and recep so my question is can you explain why this money has not yet been obligated much less and spent there are obviously continuing needs and secondly if this number is right doesn't that call into question the need for such a large supplemental request so i can answer the question the actual figure i just the congresswoman is three hundred seventy two billion dollars that's more updated figure remember included in the defense budgets are things that including intelligence that it's not necessarily our  own so there's those pieces there and there are other things that are included in some of these estimates you know the seventy billion dollars that we've been talking about that was appropriated last year there were things in it including  nine additional c seventeen which we would not necessarily classify is cost or so so our understanding at this moment my staff tells me that's about fifty billion that isn't obligated so far and that'll get us you know four or five months down the road i don't have the specific breakout of the operate but a good portion of that of course going to be performance money ok and when you when you drop the number from from a hundred billion to fifty billion are you taking out the c seventeen send those kinds of yes things that really aren't related to iraq and yes or any directly but still were part of the supplemental or part or not they were part of the supplemental the would that have any doubt s as i recall about two years the special two years ago the special inspector general for iraq indicated that eight point eight billion dollars that the coalition provisional authority had given to iraqi ministries that could not be accounted for and wasn't adequately tracked supposedly a lot of it went to ghost employees yes wealthy ghost employees if that's true what if anything did the department do to account for that large discrepancy and what steps did it take in response to ensure that entry such on track spending would not occur again my understanding of the situation was that that was iraqi money that was  not department money i don't have all the facts and figures but i understand also that there were some and i may be incorrect on this need to correct the record on and if i'm if i'm not right but there were prosecutions i'm sure that the auditors  this country they are i think one of the problem we have there get an awful weary of congress not as you've heard from my colleagues on both sides is out today trying to ask a question you know how do we get our arms around the supplemental  don't have time to talk about this middle where we are i think that's in a nutshell what we're talking about we're just sort of sliding around it not getting to it because all these other needs are closing in on us in every supplemental and i think part of the reason we haven't gotten them in the budget it shows how much we're spending and all the supplementals are outside the budget so that we don't see the total cost of the budget all in one piece you may not want to comment on that but i think and it's been talked about in different ways here your point is we get to talk about it after the fact nose job or it doesn't go through but it doesn't go through the process but it can i mean that's not our determination that's the congress decides to do that the congress can do we turn and all the data fact is there is more dangerous in the congress can put it through their committees i mean they decide not to but that's that's my understand that's a congressional determination on our determinate well i was not on the committee so please and i think what they're trying to get to is he comes through the authorizing side then goes to the appropriating side what is happening is going straight to the appropriating side and a lot of folks on authorizing side don't get a chance to get the number one the understanding helpful we understand your issues and concerns i mean the end of the day was seen in me that what is most important is that we do have correct numbers and everybody understands what's the money's been spent for and we  account for it and then frankly how you categorize it that is sort of what i call what bucket you put in the base budget or supplemental i mean that is of interest to natural your determination how we do that my in the congress has appropriated five hundred three dozen dollars for military operations and other activities related to the war on terrorism we estimate that of these amounts about three hundred forty four billion has been appropriated specifically for operations in iraq and there are some other appropriations that from vote for example classify the activities to some which may be related to iraq but that that's not in the three forty four number almost all of these appropriations have been exempted in one way or another from the normal constraints of the congressional budget process we estimate that in fiscal year two thousand and six the spent about one hundred billion dollars that's an outlay figure about one hundred billion dollars for its operations in iraq and elsewhere on the war in the war on terrorism in two thousand and seven that figure will approach one hundred twenty billion dollars roughly ten billion dollars a month that means we're now spending on these activities more than twenty percent of the defense department's budget and more than ten percent of all of the government's discretionary outlays those amounts obviously merit a great deal of attention and care in the budgeting process c b s has been asked on a number of occasions to estimate the future  were too low when we release our baseline projections of various points in the year we also offer some alternative scenarios that differ from the simple inflation numbers that appear in the baseline and we'll be releasing our annual outlook report next week and we will have some alternative in that report but estimating the cost of war is always difficult because every there's so much to fund certain about the pace and scale of future military operations and in this case it's much more difficult because we really have very little information and data on which to base our estimates let me give a few examples first the d o d supplemental budget request have typically been accompanied by much less data  justification than its regular requests the thirty three billion dollars and requested as part of the two thousand and six supplemental was accompanied by only five pages of justification the two thousand and seven request for a total of fifty billion dollars had much more detail but not enough and not in the form that would enable analysts to understand how do you know do you develop this budget requests second the o d s monthly obligation reports provide limited information about one quarter of the amounts obligated in fiscal year two thousand and six about twenty three billion dollars was allocated for purposes that the report describes as other with such little information it's difficult to estimate whether such costs would be encouraging future years and those reports also don't include obligations for classified activities which probably have cost at least twenty five billion dollars to date the report would also be much more useful if they contained information on operations along with the obligations troop levels flying hours vehicle miles in each month and that would help us and others to understand the relationship between the cost of being incurred and the nature of the military operations e use of separate appropriation accounts for war related spending might be helpful for c b l frequently has difficulty of tainting the monthly reports on war obligations and other data we often receive information months after data o chairman referred to earlier that the odu uses to formulate a supplemental request or at least the data and the methodology underlying it so we can better relate force levels operations levels to the costs  final brother issue involves the timing of budget request and the committee has discussed that extensively today whether it would whether it would be worthwhile for d o d to in the entire fiscal years cost of activities in iraq in the war on terrorism in its regular budget request and apparently they're taking some steps in that direction that approach would have some positive and negative consequences on the positive side including war costs and the regular request we give the congress more time to debate and discuss and evaluate those costs and to weigh them against other priorities it would give the budget committees more time and better information to use in crafting a budget resolution and it would avoid the problem of potential funding issues that arise if  supplemental if enactment the supplemental is delayed during the course of the year on the other hand budgeting for activities in iraq in the war on terrorism combined with the regular budget runs the risk of providing less clarity about which ones were for the war and which ones which one which funds were for the regular activities and if mr ingram pointed out submitting the request with a regular budget could lead to less accurate cost projections given the long lead times involved it will certainly  take modifications as the year went on perhaps very significant ones before or during the budget year as conditions change in strategy vols and the both the department and the congress would have to obviously have to be flexible as the situation evolves if the appropriations were provided for a full year in advance thank you mr chairman that summarizes my main points and i'd be happy to answer any questions improvements in that process my first recommendation is that the wars in iraq and afghanistan should be funded through a separate account or separate accounts attached to the annual defense appropriations act and that's something that that i think since you moving in that direction certainly congress many members of congress including the chairman have been pushing him in that direction i think we're long past a point really now where we should be funding these operations a supplemental have this point you know if you go to similar point in iraq the vietnam and korean war which are the best other examples of fairly long wars for the u s we were already at this point paying for the vast majority of the cost through regular appropriations one reason that i think we have to do this one reason it's important is that if you don't include  projected costs for ongoing military operations in the regular annual budget request you are providing a misleading and overly optimistic picture i think for the coming fiscal year in terms of how much federal spending will be required and that it wasn't such a big deal one of the most important things in good budgeting is to recognize have a budget process that forces decision makers to recognize the true cost of the policy choices are making i think continuing to rely on supplementals obscures those costs rather than rather than highlighting them second problem which we people discuss a little bit already today here is the problem with and i know this the congress and ask me is concerned what is the lack of oversight secretary england suggested that part of the problem is our you know congressional decision to have money in supplemental for some of the requests go directly to appropriators and not go through the budget committees in the authorizer but i think that really oversimplify things because it's not just it's not just an arbitrary rule talking about one hundred million dollars or more it's a it's a very big deal i also i guess would add one other point in terms of the use of supplementals i think again secretary england suggested that there is a tradeoff between using supplementals in which case you can get you can get accurate information and not using supplementals in which case you have more time to consider the information of less it's not as good and that is certainly true but i think it's really kind of a false choice because no one is suggesting that you rely that you can't do supplementals later you're in the air if you have to the fact of the matter is for a lot of the costs associated with military operations they are actually quite well known and quite easy to estimate we know roughly how many troops we're going to have that we've had roughly the same number for quite a long time now for a lot of cost in there that that are but if it's a ten billion dollars five billion dollars supplemental that can be a lot easier for congress to deal with than a hundred billion dollars yourself a mental my second recommendation is that the cost covered by special view what appropriations whether it's funded through the supplementals or whether it's funded as i would prefer and i think everyone here would prefer through the regular end of the fence appropriations act that those cost be limited pretty much to with perhaps a few exceptions to cost directly related to military operations operations in which our which currently means operations in iraq and afghanistan over the past several years administration has combined funding for iraq and afghanistan into supplementals under the name of the global war on terror  studios to go through the these costs support has from what we can tell the vast majority the funding provided so far really has been related pretty directly to the cost cost actually incurred in these military operations unfortunately there's reason to believe that th imperfect but at least relatively disciplined approach to generating gee what appropriations request is going to disappear for two thousand and seven currently the o m b is considering eight hundred billion dollars request by the services for supplemental for two thousand and seven this comes on top of of course the seventy billion dollars which congress has already provided for all seven so bringing the total to one hundred seventy billion dollars now that's a lot more than was anticipated by the by o they in their mid session review they said that they obviously as a plug in the zero seven requesting included fifty billion dollars for over seven but in their mid session review they said that they would need a supplemental and anticipated that total funding for over seven hundred would be about one hundred  billion dollars the best explanation for this i think why we see this jump is because the o t has really expanded broadly its definition of what can be included in the supplemental what can and should be included ground rules we're being expanded for the two thousand and seven spring supplemental to include the department's efforts in the global war on terror and not just ever to related to the operations in iraq and afghanistan i think it's really open the floodgates for the services to ask and afghanistan in their minds but beyond that it represents a broad framework for organizing the us military strategy planning and budgeting for really potentially decades to come and in that sense it kind of reflects or it's similar to how the cold war framework was used to help organize the plans programming budgeting of the pentagon in the second half of the twentieth century unfortunately i think you have a serious problem when you provide such a broad definition of what the g white is and then tell the services that virtually anything related to the g i what can be funded through the special if you want appropriations and this again is true whether you have your funding the g o f whose supplemental appropriations are separate accounts in the regular an defense budget in either case the defense department has basically removed any principal distinction between what should be funded through special g water appropriations and what should be funded in the rest of the defense budget and i would argue it's roughly equivalent to telling the services in one thousand and sixty eight at the height of the  n war that the request for the vietnam war for vietnam war funding can include basically anything related to winning the cold war competition with the soviet union it also wants to in effect telling the services that they no longer need to find room in their regular end of defense budget to cover the full cost of their long term plans and the services already have a pretty no problem with providing developing and presenting long term plans that are affordable within projected funding levels there's a lack of  religion and making this change enlarging the definition of g wide and what can be funded appropriations is going to make that planning and budgeting less realistic over the long term my third and last recommendation is that the defense wants to provide better  justification materials for many of the reasons that cvo has has has mentioned and i would just mention one point in particular i think it's especially difficult to tell from their justification materials to what extent reset costs are really being driven by the need to recover from cost incurred in the wars in iraq and afghanistan and to what extent they are being driven by the and reflect the pentagon's long term modernization and transformation latest coming from the department fence that we are going to we're moving towards funding these operations through the regular any appropriations act and that the zero eight as i understand the zero eight request will include funding for military operations next year but i guess when he tells me also that basically the way they're developing those numbers is to straight line from what is in two thousand and seven i wonder a little bit about how you useful that information is would be and how realistic that information is going to be and i'd also i guess wonder if the if the if their baseline one hundred seventy billion dollars for four for the gee what i'm not sure that's really a good baseline to be to be projecting from i'm not sure how realistic that is in terms of what the actual cost for those military operations are so with that  that they may include all of the figures in the our defense appropriations bill but they may not be realistic projections well i guess my concern is twofold one as i'm not sure the hundred seventy billion dollar figure really reflects i mean again they have said that they're using this expanded deshon definition gee what i don't think that's particularly helpful i think would be better if this stuff if there's stuff in there that's needed for the long war that could last a decade or more that sounds to me exactly like the kind of stuff that should be being funded in the baseline defense budget not in a and not in the supplemental and so so that concerns me and then if they're going to if they are providing budget budget numbers and justification which i think that's all to the good but again it kind of concerns me if if if all that really is is basically it is straight lining from you know different budget categories from what it was you know seven i'm not sure that that's the best they can do in terms of providing providing information in the detail sort of to see what they actually come up with and how the judge gave her a far because it really does depend on you know the ability to project the to be able to make good estimates about what future costs are going to be depends not only on having good information as to what they're going to be requesting next year but having good historical information as well as having good information on you know what the op tempo has been and some very kind of concrete ways so places like studio can do good estimates how much future costs are going to be and a lso be able to compare that with what what they were getting in the past for those operations so they can tell to you kind of sense some judgment or some judgment as to whether these are appropriate costs or not if they do include a joint strike fighter or two blis missiles in this supplemental west why should we cut them out well i think you know there's two separate issues one is whether you should be funding the drunk strike fighter or ballistic missiles and another question should they be funded in a supplemental   our discretionary spending are we devoting to defense at present total discretionary spending if you include all the supplementals more than half see if i have some or more than you can give me the precise figure later but more than fifty cents on the dollar every tax dollar that we have any control over here in congress is going to the defense department you mentioned  inability to get some information that's necessary for the effective review timeliness of information that's the cost model on the war and the war obligation reports they're not arriving offices of the pentagon yes and with regard to your testimony about the other categories in the supplemental how much did you say or what percentage do you say that that included a vague other category and the obligation reported about a quarter and what does that what have you if you've been able to make any determination of what that includes it's a variety of activities in operations and maintenance for  example but not with no specificity as to what they are has that changed over time are they have they become do you have you had more in the other category i don't know the answer to that the military budget is not all that high mr kozik isn't it about fifteen percent above the cold war average well as a share of the overall funding level for defense right up for inflation are very high by have more than the comparison to gross domestic product really that's a product that is much lower i mean i think what that really doesn't have much meaning in terms of this of the spending does it i mean i think you have to separate out ok so there's some conjecture on your part right now it's about two hundred billion and again part of that request not having a specificity or is it actually there are taking in spending a worse place that should not wasn't actually wasn't i don't wasn't referring to the budget request i was referring to the obligation reports that the produce monthly of the how the money actually being committed to to look at that or is it you know is a better are better entity to go after that we don't ordinarily get into that level of detail in terms of budgets the reason that some of the stuff is valuable to us if we're dealing with what we're spending or how much we're spending any sense from your professional background that this is too much too little just right well i think it's very difficult to t that we try to go beyond that but you were responding i think to mr dog's question about total spending total defense spending which is a very sizable number no doubt about it in terms of looking at it all in number from your professional background as your think tank is that is the total number way too little just right well i would say i mean  thank you mr chairman i apologize i missed a bit of your testimony when i came then i i really i'm looking for more than anything some clarification about some very simple terms i heard th witnesses talking about you know and you know talking about the global war on terror i heard one of our previous witnesses talking about the supplementals are the entire war costs are in the supplemental i hear this word just war talked about and i'm just not really sure exactly what all those things mean the global war on terror what what is the definition so if we were talking in the terms that you just said and we defined we defined the supplemental and we constrain the supplemental to the cost for the for iraq and afghanistan  that would be something that we could clearly identify and budget for relevant and what you know again i understand this that when you have a category that's called other and it's not to find it is a bit problematic for budgeting as well as accountability purposes and that what i'm hearing here today talk to me a little bit more and about the long war and the costs that you're talking about because i'm assuming those are part of the other category have you ever seen a written definition by dia on what the global war on terror includes i suspect i have i've read so many documents but i know i couldn't remember what it is i think it's a pretty simple you i really have no further questions like me so mr campbell thank you mr chairman mr sunshine just one question for you and if i heard these were i didn't write you the one down but i believe that you said you estimate it c b s said that the total cost of the wars in the war on terror the wars in iraq and afghanistan largely was five hundred something total total appropriations over the since two thousand and one it totaled by our so about five hundred three billion dollars the prior witnesses under secretary jonah detailed out something that was three hundred seventy two different what is what is the difference what been appropriated to date and obviously there's some amount of the the appropriation has not yet been obligated i think that accounts for most of the difference between those numbers ok which which for those of us sitting here what that would mean is your number basically then would be coming back i mean how do you it's just going to be always awkward did the decision to include all this in the two thousand and eight budget cure most of the problems for the future i don't know that if it i don't know that it clarifies the the issue as to what's for the war and what's not for the war you still have that question but i mean in terms of in terms of budgeting w i think it gives this committee a clearer picture assuming that this i'm meaning to that two thousand and eight number in terms of what you want to do and well as your resolution but you have any reason to believe that they're going to give you a five year a reasonable five year budget because he was a little evasive after two thousand and eight two thousand and didn't sound like that there's going to be zero after that which would obviously be unrelated to reality that's what it sounded like to me that they would not have numbers beyond two thousand and eight is anything is any way we can get a handle on whether or not we are conducting the war another efficient manner  the persian gulf war start to finish cost the united states less than ten billion start to finish we had allies there were contributing submissive sensual amount does this my way or the highway and running up bills  supplemental is one hundred seventy billion is there any way we can try to see if there are other ways to conduct this war that might not cost or i keep going the way we're going by two thousand and sixteen the about forty billion a year then about i think that about right we get an estimate last year of something along those lines although it was based on lower cost that was the number that you're referring to actually  it was based on a lower cost than we're actually incurring so probably under a similar scenario to what we did not want for it because we're probably at least fifty billion assuming that there were no effect on other requests should come and be part of the defense budget for the defense authorization act defense for preaching but it should maintain some wall of separation between the two so you can identify the war costs and in addition to that which is something i preach you can also in one day we finally disengage we hope know what the incremental cost was that does not need to be ripped recurring and can be extracted from the budget how would you structure this to give us the best insight into what was actually being spent on the war comes with the defense of the relation requests for defense for procreation bill but it is not part of it's not  exactly what i think remember cost is and then some day when you want to phase out you know exactly roughly how much you need to extract in order to phase out but he's down the or if any guidelines term war as opposed to the long term ongoing responsibilities of the farm and the fence i think the congress probably might want to you know clearly identify for its purposes what it would like to see in those two different categories and then set up a budget structure so that those two categories are as clear as possible because i would only concur with that and also i think that you and one of the problems now is that once you get beyond the current fiscal year still need to have the option of doing supplemental but if for example we were to provide full funding for two thousand and this year and it was passed before the beginning of zero eight and then that shouldn't be a problem right if we need it will will clearly need an over seven supplemental this year because we didn't do it right at the outset but for zero eight presumably if you finish the bill before the fiscal year starts you'll have enough money and then it later in the year you do need more money turns out your estimates weren't that accurate you might need another five ten billion dollars or something like that then of course you need to africa up a mental bit that would be much easier task for congress to manage and oversee effectively and a hundred billion dollars it might also be not quite as much of asking too much the impossible to ask for a five year projection of likely cost based upon some kind of synfuel age scenario or several alternative scenarios the too much to ask to predict what the scenarios would be i don't think it's too much at all to ask under a variety of scenarios profit range of different scenarios what the possible exposure would be c we have done that i'm not sure we've done it as well as we would have liked to have done it but we have visual model a fairly simple fun back of the envelope model ours is some vast database is not visible to us as we look at the simple summary of it we have a number of factors that we take into account but the but the the model is based on undated that isn't current because we don't have current data for this particular conflict and therefore it's not hazing very well in predicting the cost of this particular conflict well you assume the build on the fifty five thousand troops into theaters in afghanistan and around how did you pick a number fifty five thousand i think that was worked out with your staff ok that's what you call a circular chain of reasoning in our in our outlook report that were released next week we decided it wasn't so prudent to pick one path so we're going to present a couple of different paths a higher kind of number and a lower kind of arc because five year period so they do that all the time it is hard for me to believe that there aren't some call studies in the pentagon of what the consequences would be of some drawdown of forces over a reasonable