y ten budget does represent for us the second half of the homestretch to complete all our transformation under base realignment closure military construction grow the army and the army modular force i know there's been a challenging year for all of us the dynamics with the budget schedule and you've asked us to address in detail the impacts from recent force structure decisions we are planning tomorrow to have a detailed session with a committee staff to go a line item by a light project and let me just briefly cover for you the top line story in my opening remarks we have about one point four billion in the program tied to the grow the army and they should have as you know yesterday we publicly disclosed our decisions on how we are going to apply those changes to the budget i want you to know it was not a simple process we've worked diligently and deliberately over the last several weeks to make sure that every nickel was looked at from both an investment and the capabilities perspective we're confident that the solution that will propose is exactly what is right for the army and right for the nation at all of the one point four billion that's in the grow the army wedge in the f y ten pride program approximately half of it is not tied to the configuration it's tied to combat support and compact services support of the remaining half of that about half of that is tied to reserve and housing not connected to the grow the army decision so we're basically talking about twenty five percent of the one point seven four billion that is in that budget roll out that needed to be looked at for reinvestment use our plan is to take those dollars and buy down capacity shortages that we had from other brigades that we built in the forty five total we also plan to buy out a relocatable sooner because you've been telling us that is the right thing to do so that is essentially the impact of  decisions on a macro level tomorrow we will cross walk one by one through them we think it's the right thing to do to get our capacity back get out of relocatable quicker as a business case for that the rest of the budget hole otherwise i look forward to your questions  operate military family housing and were additional privatization as planned prior requests reflect a program to address additional housing requirements associated with core structure  absolutely and and secretary arnie one one question and i hope this is not too too much home cooking i'm from north carolina and my district goes right to the edge of fort bragg and we have most of the military reservation but none of the base pentagon will be at fort bragg when all is said and done but it's been mentioned to me that we're not going to have an air force flag or i own the vase but there's still going to be a significant amount of air force presen and there's some concern that if we don't have an equal right that there might be some difficulty in going back and forth in terms of communication and getting things done it was suggest be our largest army base if you all could get back to me on that i would appreciate that thank you thank you mr chairman thank you mr taylor and their families in all facilities substandard facilities and it also forces our troops that are primarily going to be deploying to places like iraq and afghanistan to train really stand strongly on this the other thing that frustrates me is the fact that we seem to be rewarding the very countries that are reluctant to keep their part of i think we ought to take the stand if you're not going to help us in these areas of the world that are critical not just us but to the whole world and then we stick with the original strategy and bring them that he plan to stop the growth of the army brigade combat teams at forty five that means not creating the forty six forty seven and forty eight brigades as had been announced and planned u nder the grow the army concept and he also said that while he's stopping those three brigades he's going to continue with the same levels that have been approved by congress part of the the issue for me that the secretary said that he in his words he was going to sink into force and in doing so help to decrease the time between deployments which i think all of us agree we fundamentally need to address the question is this  the announcement there is a thirty five hundred person population each of those locations not exactly working out that way in some places we had were not at full strength so they will be getting some of those people at fort bliss fort carson in fort stewart we didn't have people at full strength they will be getting some people so i don't have display for you available today going based  not how how we're going to attack that yes we are looking at fort polk and we have been it's not a simple answer from a privatization perspective because the market one of the things that we have to look at is the ability to work within the limits on investment as well as priority or preferred returns that the private sector is now requiring when we originally the long bond grows and spreads against the longer our ability to make privatization work there is limited but we think that is the best solution we just think the timing to do that right now is probably problematic but we're not ready to give up yet we are looking at it and we will continue to try to find a solution for the for the housing problem th chairman that we have the active cooperation of the communities surrounding our installations as we attempt to grow those installations for example the local community has to make certain investments in order to meet the needs of the population that's going to be brought in and that's particularly true of parts of our country which are more rural and an awful lot of our installations are located in more rural areas if you're going to increase the size of the force by three or four thousand people that effectively means five to ten thousand people are coming into this rural community if the rural community does not prepare for that at our request then when those new troops arrive the facilities simply aren't there to meet their needs the needs their families need of their children the decision to reduce from forty eight to forty  five causes a real problem for the communities that surround fort stewart georgia this is a rural part of the country those communities are smaller communities that don't simply have excess capacity available to ready to receive a new date and and in that money is the sort of investment that we ask our partner communities to make routinely i think readiness in the future suffers if we don't live up to our end of the bargain if we don't live up to our to our word to our commitment to these communities that causes them to reasonably realize our requests and and i think we need to seriously look at the decision to reduce  encouraging the army and generally to figure out what compensating decisions can be made in order to mitigate the negative impact of a decision like this let's assume that in fact we're not going to have the additional brigade the army nevertheless is not shrinking it's growing certainly we can put warm bodies into fort stewart to basically meet the obligation that we have those communities that have relied upon us in going ahead and installation there and went to some of the housing and privatized housing which was very impressive the units were wonderful had a community great community room they were certainly very nice  aberdeen and the hospital was saying that you know there's course been a lot of discussion in terms of infrastructure related to roads surrounding the installations and preparing for this growth its course we're very happy to have  in maryland but they were saying that in terms of they're very concerned about infrastructure in terms of health care to prepare for these folks coming are you hearing similar concerns at all in terms of the communities where you're going we'll see if we can have a second run but i want to go back to some of the questions that were asked you know i've been here and i've gone through i think five base closures this last year i was able to see where the base closure commission  r they were never able to synchronize with one another and i think this is one of the reasons why we're having the problems we're having today and this is one of the one of the reasons why the local community has a lot of what we're going now we made some horrible myspace at the expense of local communities but now i'd like to yield to mr diallo the lady for want thank you very much mr chairman this is a very important hearing for me and my constituents to all of our witnesses thank you very much secretary arnie secretary pin the most important thank you to you because you've had a real leading role in the military buildup and also to secretary kyra and secretary  i also want to express my general support for the seven hundred eighty seven million dollars in total military construction funding in the fiscal year two thousand and ten budget for all of that was military installations including the guam national guard secretary arnie let me start with you as you know on april ninth g eight will report called on more senior level involvement from the d o d to make sure that it was local infrastructure issues were given more consideration in the federal budget process specifically the report calls for a meeting of the economic adjustment committee or executive level coordination with other federal agencies when can we expect t million dollars for the new hospital obviously one of the impediments to executing these funds that i'm confident congress will authorize an appropriate for is the completion of the draft of the record of decision  secretary can you update the committee on its status and when we can expect a draft and along these lines i'm also interested in learning more about how the department plans on using mitigation funding that this congress authorized in as you know from past correspondence i've been concerned about the air force's commitment to andersen's military construction needs we don't see these projects to be overshadowed or unnecessarily compromised due to increased navy and marine corps program needs on guam with the buildup can we expect similar commitments in future years for anders ten thank you mr chairman to you with the recent developments from north korea and their plans to now launch long range missiles with supposedly guam is one of their acquire property in areas where the local delegation is supporting us in the case opinion kanyon the mitigations are on battle mixes types of equipment we are compromising some of that obviously with the reduced but we are still training there and there are workarounds we just continue to work at it we think we had a plausible strategy for opinion plant is over sixty years old and requires significant modernization in order to assure the safety of our workers continuity of operations and timely delivery to our service members i just have two questions related to these two issues yes we currently have muscatine tracking at about eight point eight million dollars in total program we are experiencing some savings in projects as we are opening bids our intent would be you know once we think we've  have as of right now it's on track and we know that it will be completed as scheduled fort meade warrior transition units right now is about my understanding is that about one hundred fifty m  standing is there hasn't been any decision as to whether or not that's going to be a permanent unit apparently still pending the concern that i have is that they are that those numbers are continuing to grow and without a final determination the resources necessary to deal with that growth are not forthcoming my question is assuming in them until that decision is made assuming  the unit remains at that level or continues to grow in fort meade count on the resources necessary to deal with it we have warrior transition units all over the army and i think our strategy is to meet surges and spikes where we have capabilities for care in the fort meade situation and we are monitoring it closely that are was based on the best information continuing the expectations because i was just there are continuing to grow and again my concern is is at the same time we're having these units to provide obviously necessary resources we want to be we're going to set ourselves up for failure if we don't have the resources in the places where we're sending the soldiers so it's something i ask you to keep an eye on particularly as it relates to for me we are applying an enterprise concept for wounded warrior units looking across the kissel going back to what the navy buys and sells without having to mention any service at all we had a piece of land in my district that they could have bought for about seven hundred thousand dollars but they waited and waited and waited and waited when they came back you know they got eleven twelve million dollars or more so this is a way we're going to have votes in a few minutes we're going to have about five dollars for which means we don't finish our question and you guys would have to stay here for the next forty five minutes to an hour and we're not going to punish you like that so i just had one last question for my good friend