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RETHINKING OUR DEFENSE BUDGET: ACHIEVING

NATIONAL SECURITY THROUGH SUSTAINABLE

SPENDING

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY

AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT

AND GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

JULY 20, 2010

Serial No. 111–152

Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gov

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York, Chairman

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

JIM COOPER, Tennessee

GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia

MIKE QUIGLEY, Illinois

MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

PATRICK J. KENNEDY, Rhode Island

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

HENRY CUELLAR, Texas

PAUL W. HODES, New Hampshire

CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut

PETER WELCH, Vermont

BILL FOSTER, Illinois

JACKIE SPEIER, California

STEVE DRIEHAUS, Ohio

JUDY CHU, California

DARRELL E. ISSA, California

DAN BURTON, Indiana

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

BRIAN P. BILBRAY, California

JIM JORDAN, Ohio

JEFF FLAKE, Arizona

JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska

JASON CHAFFETZ, Utah

AARON SCHOCK, Illinois

BLAINE LUETKEMEYER, Missouri

ANH ‘‘JOSEPH’’ CAO, Louisiana

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania

RON STROMAN, Staff Director

MICHAEL MCCARTHY, Deputy Staff Director

CARLA HULTBERG, Chief Clerk

LARRY BRADY, Minority Staff Director

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts, Chairman

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

PATRICK J. KENNEDY, Rhode Island

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

PAUL W. HODES, New Hampshire

CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut

PETER WELCH, Vermont

BILL FOSTER, Illinois

STEVE DRIEHAUS, Ohio

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

MIKE QUIGLEY, Illinois

JUDY CHU, California

JEFF FLAKE, Arizona

DAN BURTON, Indiana

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

JIM JORDAN, Ohio

JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska

BLAINE LUETKEMEYER, Missouri

ANDREW WRIGHT, Staff Director

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on July 20, 2010 ............................................................................... 1

Statement of:

Conetta, Carl, co-director, Project on Defense Alternatives; Benjamin

Friedman, research fellow, CATO Institute; Todd Harrison, senior fellow, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments; Gary Schmitt,

Ph.D., resident scholar and director, Advanced Strategic Studies, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research; and Gordon

Adams, Ph.D., distinguished fellow, Stimson Center ................................ 8

Adams, Gordon .......................................................................................... 62

Conetta, Carl ............................................................................................. 8

Friedman, Benjamin ................................................................................. 24

Harrison, Todd ........................................................................................... 40

Schmitt, Gary ............................................................................................ 52

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Adams, Gordon, Ph.D., distinguished fellow, Stimson Center, prepared

statement of ................................................................................................... 65

Conetta, Carl, co-director, Project on Defense Alternatives, prepared

statement of ................................................................................................... 11

Friedman, Benjamin, research fellow, CATO Institute, prepared statement of ........................................................................................................... 27

Harrison, Todd, senior fellow, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, prepared statement of ...................................................................... 43

Schmitt, Gary, Ph.D., resident scholar and director, Advanced Strategic

Studies, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, prepared statement of ........................................................................................ 54

Tierney, Hon. John F., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Massachusetts, prepared statement of ................................................... 4

(1)

RETHINKING OUR DEFENSE BUDGET:

ACHIEVING NATIONAL SECURITY THROUGH

SUSTAINABLE SPENDING

TUESDAY, JULY 20, 2010

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY AND FOREIGN

AFFAIRS,

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m. in room

2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. John F. Tierney (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Tierney, Maloney, Lynch, Welch, Foster, Driehaus, Quigley, Chu, Duncan, Jordan, Flake, and

Luetkemeyer.

Also present: Representatives Frank and Paul.

Staff present: Andy Wright, staff director; Talia Dubovi, counsel;

LaToya King, GAO detailee, Boris Maguire, clerk; Victoria Din and

Alexandra Mahler-Haug, interns; Adam Fromm, minority chief

clerk and Member liaison; Justin LoFranco, minority press assistant and clerk; and Christopher Bright, minority senior professional

staff member.

Mr. TIERNEY. Good morning. A quorum being present, the Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, the hearing

entitled, ‘‘Rethinking our Defense Budget: Achieving National Security through Sustainable Spending,’’ will come to order.

I ask unanimous consent that only the chairman and ranking

member of the subcommittee be allowed to make opening statements.

Without objection, so ordered.

I ask unanimous consent that Congressman Barney Frank and

Congressman Ron Paul be allowed to participate in this hearing if

they are able to attend. In accordance with committee rules, they

will only be allowed to question the witnesses after all official

members of the subcommittee have first had their turn.

Without objection, so ordered.

I ask unanimous consent that the hearing record be kept open

for five business days so that all members of the subcommittee will

be allowed to submit a written statement for the record.

Again, without objection, so ordered.

Once again, good morning, and we thank our witnesses for being

here this morning to assist us.

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Today the subcommittee continues its oversight of spending of

the Department of Defense. Specifically, we will examine recommendations from a number of defense experts for ways that we

can reduce defense spending while ensuring that our national security interests are not compromised.

Over the last two Congresses, this subcommittee has devoted significant time and resources to oversight of defense spending. We

have examined the defense acquisitions process, and have worked

to ensure that adequate planning and testing is completed by

multi-billion-dollar weapons systems were purchased. We have investigated contracting in our overseas military operations and discovered widespread waste, lack of management, and blindness to

broader security implications of these problems.

We have looked closely at the Missile Defense Agency, military

aid programs, and strategic planning for new technologies such as

the unmanned aerial vehicles. We continue to try to get a clear picture from the department of the actual number of overseas military

bases we have, as well as the strategic rationale for each location.

Time and again we see opportunities for increased efficiency, less

waste, and better use of taxpayer money.

Just 2 weeks before President Obama was sworn into office in

January 2009, the Congressional Budget Office announced that the

fiscal year deficit was estimated at over $1 trillion. The inauguration occurred with an anticipated estimated long-range deficit of

$111⁄2 trillion. In February of this year, President Obama established the bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Year Responsibility and Reform. This commission has been tasked with finding

ways to improve the long-term fiscal outlook of the United States.

It is critical that the commission scrutinize all aspects of our budget, including the defense budget, as it formulates its suggestions.

I hope, in fact, that members of the commission will pay close attention to our discussion here today. In fact, I am scheduled to

meet with the commission’s co-chairs tomorrow afternoon, at which

time I intend to urge them to do just that.

Today we will consider options for realigning our national defense spending. We have with us a panel of experts from diverse

political viewpoints who will speak about ways that they and others who worked with them on the related report believe we can cut

the defense budget while maintaining our commitment to national

security.

Two of our witnesses are members of the Sustainable Defense

Task Force, which has recently released a report with recommendations that, if implemented, would reduce the department budget by

some $960 billion by the year 2020. Neither I nor the individual

members of this subcommittee are bound to agree with each and

every recommendation made by the report or in the testimony

today, yet most of the Members would, I believe, welcome consideration of the topic and a number of the individual suggestions that

are proffered.

We look forward to the discussion of those recommendations, as

well as any additional suggestions from our panel.

To be absolutely clear, this discussion should not be dismissed,

as it may be by some, as an attempt to weaken the Department

of Defense or under-prioritize United States’ national security. As

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this subcommittee’s track record demonstrates, every member of

this panel takes the security of our country very seriously. Waste

is waste, regardless of the context, and inefficiencies only hurt our

ability to respond effectively to crises and promote our national security interests. Sound national security in an austere budget environment requires strategic choices and rational resource allocation.

Bigger is not always better, especially in matters of national defense.

Budgets always involve hard choices, but in this case these

choices can be made and make our Nation stronger. It is through

that lens that we approach our conversation today. It is our duty

on this subcommittee and in Congress as a whole to make certain

that taxpayer money is spent responsibly.

As President Obama has said, ‘‘We have an obligation to future

generations to address our long-term structural deficits which

threaten to hobble our economy and leave our children and grandchildren with a mountain of debt.’’ The critical importance of our

national security does not in any way exempt the Defense Department from its obligations to spend money wisely and efficiently.

[The prepared statement of Hon. John F. Tierney follows:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. With that, I would like to recognize Mr. Flake for

his opening comments.

Mr. FLAKE. I thank the chairman and thank the witnesses for

coming in.

As the chairman noted, every member of this panel takes the defense of our country seriously, but we also recognize that we have

a huge problem in terms of debt, deficit, and savings cannot be

simply gained in entitlement programs or other discretionary programs; it has to be gained here, as well.

Since 2001, as was noted, nearly 65 percent of the increase in

discretionary spending has come from defense, and we need to

make sure that we are spending taxpayer money wisely. That is

the purpose of this hearing, and I hope we are enlightened by what

you have to say. Thank you for your preparation and thank you for

coming.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Flake.

So the subcommittee will now receive testimony from the witness

panel before us today. Before we start, I will introduce all of you,

and then we will begin, going from my left to right.

Mr. Carl Conetta is the co-director of the Commonwealth Institute’s Project on Defense Alternatives [PDA]. Since co-founding

PDA in 1991, Mr. Conetta has authored and co-authored over 30

PDA reports and has published widely outside the Institute, including contributions to 10 edited volumes. Mr. Conetta also recently

served as a member of the Sustainable Defense Task Force, and in

this capacity contributed to the Task Force Report entitled, ‘‘Debt,

Deficits, and Defense: A Way Forward,’’ which represents a series

of recommendations to reduce the budget of the Department of Defense by $960 billion.

Mr. Conetta has appeared extensively before Congress, the executive branch, and other governmental and non-governmental institutions, and has been interviewed by a range of major media outlets. He has also served as a consultant for the Council on Foreign

Relations, the House Armed Services Committee, and the American

Academy of Arts and Sciences. Before joining PDA, Mr. Conetta

was a fellow at the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies,

served as an editor of the South End Press, and taught for 2 years

at the University of Connecticut.

Mr. Benjamin Friedman is a research fellow in defense and

homeland security studies at the Cato Institute. He also served recently with Mr. Conetta as a member of the Sustainable Defense

Task Force and contributed to the report. Mr. Friedman’s areas of

expertise include counter-terrorism, homeland security, and defense politics, with a focus on threat perception. He is co-editor of

a book on the U.S. military innovations since the cold war, and his

work has appeared in Foreign Policy, the San Francisco Chronicle,

the Baltimore Sun, thewashingtonpost.com, Defense News, and

several other newspapers and journals. Mr. Friedman holds a B.A.

from Dartmouth College, and is a Ph.D. candidate in political

science and an affiliate of the security studies program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Todd Harrison is a senior fellow for Defense Budget Studies at

the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. He joined the

Center in 2009 from Booz Allen Hamilton, where he supported cliVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:36 Jun 23, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00010 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\KATIES\DOCS\65555.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
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ents across the Department of Defense, assessing challenges to

modernization initiatives and evaluating the performance of acquisition programs. He previously worked in the aerospace industry,

developing advanced space systems and technology, and served as

a Captain in the U.S. Air Force Reserves.

Since joining the Center, Mr. Harrison has authored a number

of publications, including the ‘‘Analysis of the Fiscal Year 2010 and

Fiscal Year 2011 Defense Budget Request’’ and the ‘‘Impact of the

Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on the U.S. Military’s Plans, Programs, and Budgets.’’ He holds a B.S. and an M.S. in aeronauts

and astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Dr. Gary Schmitt is a resident scholar and director of the American Enterprise Institute’s Program on Advanced Strategic Studies.

His work focuses on long-term strategic issues that he believes affect America’s security at home and its ability to lead abroad. Dr.

Schmitt previously served as the staff director of the Senate Select

Committee on Intelligence, and as the executive director of President Ronald Reagan’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.

In addition, Dr. Schmitt has served as the executive director at

the project for the New American Century, as a consultant to the

Department of Defense, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, and

as a member of the research faculty at the University of Virginia.

Dr. Schmitt has co-authored and edited several books and has published widely for scholarly journals, volumes, and newspapers in

the areas of national security, foreign policy, and the American

Presidency. He holds a B.A. from the University of Dallas and

earned his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.

Dr. Gordon Adams is a distinguished fellow at the Stimson Center and a professor of U.S. foreign policy at American University.

Prior to that, he was the director of the Security Policy Studies

Program at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George

Washington University. He also previously served as the deputy director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London

and as the Associate Director for National Security and International Affairs at the Office of Management and Budget as a senior White House budget official for national security.

He has been an international affairs fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and received the Department of Defense Medal for

Distinguished Public Service. Dr. Adams has published books,

monographs, and articles, and has testified numerous times before

Congress on Defense spending and national security issues. He received his Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University and

graduated magna cum laude from Stanford University.

Again, I want to thank all of you for making yourselves available

today and for sharing your substantial expertise.

It is the policy of this committee to swear you in before you testify, so I ask you to please stand and raise your right hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. TIERNEY. The record will please reflect that all of the witnesses answered in the affirmative.

I remind all of you that your full written testimony will be submitted in the record and incorporated in it. We have allocated 5

minutes for each of you to give us an opening statement, synopsizing your comments, if you would. The red light is the one to let

8

you know that your time is up. About a minute before then it will

turn amber, giving you fair warning. For the first 4 minutes you

get a green light going.

We are happy to do that. We are anxious to get to the point

where we can have an exchange, so we invite your testimony, starting with Mr. Conetta, please.

STATEMENTS OF CARL CONETTA, CO-DIRECTOR, PROJECT ON

DEFENSE ALTERNATIVES; BENJAMIN FRIEDMAN, RESEARCH

FELLOW, CATO INSTITUTE; TODD HARRISON, SENIOR FELLOW, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND BUDGETARY ASSESSMENTS; GARY SCHMITT, PH.D., RESIDENT SCHOLAR AND DIRECTOR, ADVANCED STRATEGIC STUDIES, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC POLICY RESEARCH; AND

GORDON ADAMS, PH.D., DISTINGUISHED FELLOW, STIMSON

CENTER

STATEMENT OF CARL CONETTA

Mr. CONETTA. Chairman Tierney, Congressman Flake, members

of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear here

today before you to discuss how we might put our security posture

on a sustainable basis.

You have the report of the Sustainable Defense Task Force before you, I hope. I was one of the authors of that. We have recently

prepared a short, one-page summary. You might also have that before you. There are a number of proposals outlined there. I am not

going to examine them in detail. Maybe we will get into that during the question period. There is quite a bit there that is controversial. The proposals need your scrutiny, they need your criticism,

and we can go into detail during the question period.

What I would like to do is say something about the concerns and

the criteria that we used in developing those proposals.

We began our work with the recognition that today’s financial

crisis and great recession have altered the context in which all Federal policy must be assessed. For the formulation of security policy,

there are now three relevant reference points: 11/9/1989, when the

post-cold war era began; 9/11, when we were awakened to its full

dangers; and 2007, when the financial crisis commenced. The last

of these affects our security prospects in two ways: first, by weakening already troubled states, diminishing their capacities, while

also adding to the store of human desperation and social and economic dislocation worldwide. This is a favorable context for the

spread of extremist organizations.

Second, the crisis makes the future of our economic power and

influence less certain. It weakens our foundation. Considering both

the size and projected duration of our current national debt, we

now carry a burden greater than at any time in living memory.

Bringing it under control may require budget cuts of $300 billion

a year, possibly even more. At the same time, interest payments

on the debt will grow from 5 percent to 15 percent of the budget

over the next decade. This pincer movement will constrain our capacity to meet program needs, as well as to meet emerging ones.

The challenge to the essentials of our national strength—our

economy, our infrastructure, most of all our people—is real. As we

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now turn to adjust priorities and get our financial house in order,

what we need to keep foremost in our minds are those essentials.

They are the foundation on which our national security establishment is built.

Looking back over the past 12 or so years, we can now say that

our allocation of resources was premised in part on irrational exuberance, about available wealth, and about available credit. This

left us less attentive to the cost/benefit balance when making investments.

In every endeavor, in every area of policy, there is a point of diminishing return. Beyond this, the benefit of investment declines

and it becomes less assured. So how far do we push beyond that

point, that point of diminishing return? That depends partly on

how much wealth and credit we believe is at our disposal. It is that

part of the equation that we got seriously wrong over the past 10

or 12 years, and it distorted our choices.

A proper appreciation of scarcity would have led us to different

choices. Since 1998, U.S. defense spending has risen by about 96

percent in real terms. This has no precedent in all the years since

the Korean War. The post-1998 defense boom is nearly as great as

those enacted by Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Reagan combined, and only about half of the recent increase is due to our recent wars and contingency operations.

Whether one looks at the total DOD budget or just that portion

not attributable to today’s wars, U.S. defense spending is now stabilizing at levels significantly above the cold war peaks. Clearly,

what has not occasioned this surge is a neck-and-neck race with a

pure competitor. There is none. But what we have seen over the

past 10 or 12 years—somewhat more, actually—is a substantial expansion in the goals, roles, and missions assigned to our armed

forces.

Beginning at the end of the cold war, we pushed our armed

forces to prepare for and conduct more types of missions and activities faster and more frequently across a broader expanse of the

earth than ever before, and we set out goals that reached well beyond the traditional ones of simple defense and deterrence. We

added various forms of preventative action; not only preventative

war and regime change, but also greater reliance on our military

to shape the strategic environment and transform entire nations.

In this light, it is not surprising that we have moved from spending only two-thirds as much as our adversaries during the cold war

to spending more than twice as much today, and that discounts our

war spending. Had President Reagan sought an advantage this

great, he would have had to triple his budgets.

The spending balance reflects the fact that we enjoy abundant

overmatch in the conventional realm. And one criteria that we employed in the report in coming up with our recommendations was

to trade down some of this over-match.

Another step we took was to roll back some of the soft uses of

our military power, so-called environment-shaping functions, where

costs are high and payoff is indeterminate. What we focused on

were the surge requirements for war in dealing with the conventional realm.

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A different picture emerges when we survey our recent experience in large-scale counter-insurgency wars, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Rather than over-match, what we see is mis-match. The task force

exempted war spending from its cut options. We didn’t examine the

money that is spend on war; we cordoned that off. And we pegged

those spending cuts that we did propose, while some would directly

affect the wars, those that would, we pegged to the wars winding

down.

An example would be reductions in ground forces. Likewise, we

cordoned off capabilities directly relevant the counter-terrorism,

such as special operations forces and intelligence, although the latter, given recent news, may deserve a second look.

This doesn’t imply that we support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or we oppose them. That wasn’t our intention. We wanted to

look at the long-term budget. However, some of our options do assume that in the long term we are not likely to repeat those experiences again.

The fabulous cost, the slow progress, and the uncertain outcome

of recent efforts at regime change, armed nation building, and

large-scale counter-insurgency make them a poor strategic choice.

There are two parts to that conclusion: one, that it is a choice that

we have made, and, two, that it is a bad one.

Those are some of the concerns, some of the criteria we brought

to bear in developing the options. We can discuss others later.

I think really the most fundamental point we want to make is

that we need to look at this budget with new eyes, and our principal concern cannot be about guns versus butter; our principal

concern has to be refurbishing and preserving national strength.

That has to be the criteria that we bring to bear in all of our decisions from this point forward.

Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Conetta follows:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Conetta.

Mr. Friedman, if you would.

STATEMENT OF BENJAMIN FRIEDMAN

Mr. FRIEDMAN. I also want to thank the chairman and the ranking member and the members of the committee for the opportunity

to testify. I am especially pleased to be here with this distinguished

panel, most of whom have been in this business since I was a kid

or younger.

I want to make two main points today. First, substantially reducing military spending requires reducing the ambitions it serves.

Second, a more restrained defense strategy would not only allow

cost savings; it would actually improve our security.

I am agnostic as to whether our current defense budget is sustainable. I think many foolish things are sustainable, at least for

a while. What I do believe is that it would be unwise to spend anything like the $549 billion that the administration requested in the

base budget, a non-war budget, for fiscal year 2011.

I think there is no good reason we should now spend more on the

non-war defense budget in real terms than we did in any year during the cold war. So I advocate a more modest defense strategy, one

that I call restraint, because it starts with the assumption that

power tempts us to take part in foreign troubles that we could and

should avoid. Restraint means resisting that temptation. It would

husband American power rather than dissipate it in pursuit of ideological and unreachable goals.

Restraint does not require cuts in military force structure and

spending; it allows a less busy military could be a smaller and

cheaper one.

Now, an alternative approach to saving on defense is to pursue

the same ends more efficiently. Efforts to streamline the Pentagon’s operations through acquisition reform, eliminating waste and

duplication, or improving financial management might save some

money, but these reforms have historically delivered few savings,

probably because what seems inefficient from a business standpoint, whether it is maintaining essentially two Air Forces, keeping

twice as many shipyards open as we need, or building gold-plated

weapons systems is actually efficient in producing political goods,

whether it is the service’s preferences for weapons or jobs. So, rather than efficiency driving savings, I think spending cuts ought to

drive efficiency.

Market competition encourages private organizations to streamline their operations, and, while no such pressure exists in government, by cutting the top line and forcing the services to compete

for their budgets I think we can incentivize them to find some efficiencies themselves.

That said, I think it would be a mistake to take up the force

structure reductions recommended in my written testimony without their strategic rationale. I think that would badly overburden

the force, which would be unfair, without improving security.

So, as I suggested, the real driver of excessive defense spending

is lack of prioritization, which is the essence of strategy. We spend

too much because we choose too little. Unbalanced power and massive budgets have limited the need to choose among priorities. We

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confuse the necessary with the desirable, our sympathies with the

requirements of our safety. The truth is that the United States

doesn’t really have a defense budget. I think that adjective is

wrong. I think our military force’s size and composition now lack

a meaningful relationship to the requirements of protecting Americans.

For example, our security no longer requires that we defend the

European Union, which has a collective economy larger than our

own, from Russia or its own dissolution. I think peace among European states is deep-seated. Russia, which now spends less on its

aging military than we spend on researching and developing new

weapons, alone, is not about to reclaim its Soviet empire, let alone

threaten western Europe.

South Korea, likewise, long ago grew wealthy enough and then

some to defend itself against the north. And neither do we need to

defend Japan from China. I think history suggests that the likely

result of withdrawing U.S. forces and commitments from Japan

will be slightly higher defense spending in Japan and a stable balance of power in China, in large parts because they are separated

by a decent-sized body of water. Those states don’t have much to

fight over today.

I also think there is little basis for the claim that you often hear

that global trade depends on U.S. military deployments overseas.

I think that theory is a little bit too esoteric to discuss briefly here,

but I will say that the historical and theoretical case for it is thin.

I think it exaggerates the fragility of global markets and trade and

the economic impact that supply disruption in a particular region

would cause here in the United States.

Nor is it wise, I think, to spend heavily on defense today to

hedge against the rise of possible future challenges like China. The

smaller military that I recommend would maintain a vast superiority over China and all other states for the foreseeable future, particularly at sea and in the air, but the best offense against an uncertain future is a prosperous economy unburdened by excessive

spending and debt, which can finance a buildup of military capability if need be.

I will also say that counter-terrorism does not require great military spending. The military assets best suited to that are relatively

cheap niche capabilities, UAVs, intelligence collectors, and special

operations forces. The theory that we can only be safe by jihadists

by occupying and ordering the states where they operate has been

tested and proved prohibitively costly in blood and treasure. We

have been reminded there that we lack the power to organize the

politics of unruly foreign states, and evidence suggests, I think,

that trying to do so makes us more likely to be a target of terrorism than prevent it. And so state building and occupations, I think,

are a business that we should avoid once the current wars end, and

that ought to drive down the size required of our ground forces.

So, to conclude, defining security so broadly is actually counterproductive. Our military posture and activism globally drag us into

other’s conflicts, provoke animosity, and prompt states to balance

our power by arming, driving proliferation.

By capitalizing on our geopolitical fortune, we can safely spend

far less. By avoiding the occupation of failing states and shedding

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commitments to defend healthy ones, we can plan for fewer wards.

By shedding missions we can cut force structure, reducing the

number of U.S. military personnel and the weapons and vehicles

we procure for them, particularly in the ground forces, and reduce

operational costs.

My written testimony specifies the cuts I recommend to that end,

and with that I will conclude and look forward to your questions.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Friedman follows:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you very much.

Mr. Harrison.

STATEMENT OF TODD HARRISON

Mr. HARRISON. I would like to thank the subcommittee for the

opportunity to share with you some of my thoughts on rethinking

the defense budget.

I have organized my remarks into five potential areas of savings

which address many of the options that are presented in the report

of the Sustainable Defense Task Force.

The first two areas, achieving greater efficiencies and refocusing

on the core business of defense, are changes that do not affect the

size, composition, or capabilities of the military, and the savings in

these areas are quite modest.

Three other areas of savings—reforming the military personnel

system, reforming the acquisition system, and altering the force

structure—have the potential to yield much greater savings, but

they involve more substantive changes in the missions and capabilities supported by DOD.

The first area is achieving greater efficiencies. The Pentagon has

again renewed its efforts to reduce waste and achieve greater efficiencies, with Secretary Gates’ speech last May directing the services to take an unsparing look at how they operate. Undersecretary

Carter has followed up with some specific proposals. Many of these

proposals are things that have been tried in the past with various

degrees of success. And, while working to achieve greater efficiencies should always be a goal of the department, efficiencies

alone are not likely to result in the magnitude of savings needed

over the coming decade. As Undersecretary Hale noted in a 2002

report on promoting efficiency in DOD, keep trying but be realistic.

The second area of savings is refocusing on the core business of

defense. Many programs and activities that are funded within the

Defense budget stray far from DOD’s core mission: to deter war

and to protect the security of our country. The task force recommends combining the military exchanges and commissaries to

achieve savings. I will go one step further and ask why should

DOD be operating a chain of retail stores at all? The exchanges

and commissaries are an artifact of a bygone era and could be

closed or sold to a private operator.

Another activity outside the core business of defense that the

task force did not address is the DOD-funded and-operated primary

and secondary school system within the United States. I should

note the that I am only talking about DOD’s schools within the

United States, not the schools that DOD operates in foreign countries around the world where military families would likely not

have access to an American style school otherwise.

In the United States, though, education has primarily been the

responsibility of the States. DOD notes in its annual report on

these schools that the U.S. schools date back to the time of a frontier Army post when, ‘‘adequate public education was not available

in the local area.’’ This is no longer the case in the seven States

where these schools are located, and since K–12 education is not

core to the business of defense, DOD should transfer these schools,

either to the States in which they reside or to the Department of

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Education. The resulting savings in the defense budget could total

some $750 million annually.

The third area of savings I would like to address is reforming the

military personnel system. DOD is the single largest employer in

the United States. It accounts for 51 percent of Federal workers

and employs more people than Wal-Mart and the Post Office combined. Therefore, any changes to military pay and benefits have a

profound and lasting effect on the Federal budget.

Since fiscal year 2000, total military personnel and health care

costs per active duty troop has risen 73 percent in real terms. What

is most concerning is that the cost structure within the military

compensation system has grown out of balance. For the Department of Defense, 52 percent of total compensation goes to non-cash

and deferred benefits, compared to an average of 29 percent in the

private sector. And, just as some private companies have been

struggling to remain competitive under the heavy burden of excessive labor costs, so, too, will the Department of Defense struggle in

the years ahead to maintain its force structure if labor costs are

not brought back into balance.

The task force makes several good proposals in this area, calling

for changes to the way pay raises are calculated, and raising the

enrollment fees military retirees pay for TriCare.

What the task force doesn’t address are problems with the military retirement system. DOD currently uses a cliff vesting retirement system, where benefits only become effective after 20 years

of service. This system creates distorted incentives, because it encourages personnel nearing the 20-year mark to stay on duty, even

if only for the purposes of attaining the benefit, and after 20 years,

when personnel are often in their early 40’s, the incentive sharply

reverses, encouraging personnel to retire early, since they can continue making 50 percent or more of their military pay while simultaneously drawing full pay at a civilian job.

For ways to reform the military retirement system, I would draw

your attention to the 10th quadrennial review of military compensation. One of the most attractive options this report proposes

is to transition from the current defined benefit plan to a defined

contribution plan, more like a 401(K), just as many businesses and

State governments have done.

The fourth area of savings is reforming the acquisition system.

I would divide acquisition reform into two areas: reforming what

DOD buys and reforming how DOD buys. Eleven of the nineteen

options in the task force’s report fall into the category of reforming

what DOD buys. It is true that cutting acquisition programs can

yield some of the greatest savings, but such decisions should not

be based on budget considerations, alone. They should consider

which missions and capabilities DOD no longer needs to support

and what the effect will be on the industrial base.

The task force does not address the issue of reforming how DOD

buys things; that is, the acquisition process, itself.

I would draw your attention to one issue, in particular, and that

is too many requirements being piled onto weapons systems. Many

different organizations within the department have a role in the requirements process, ranging from the Joint Requirements Oversight Council, the JROC, to the various organizations within OSD

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that review and approve programs as they pass through acquisition

milestones. Yet, few of the organizations that have the power to

add, modify, or otherwise influence requirements also have the responsibility to fund progress. Creating a better organizational

alignment between those who set requirements and those who

budget for programs would reduce the incentive to add the kinds

of exquisite requirements that drive-up costs and stretch out schedules.

The fifth and final area of savings I would like to address is altering the force structure. The task force recommends several

changes to the force structure, including reducing U.S. troops in

Asia and Europe by one-third and rolling back the size of the Army

and the Marine Corps to pre-2007 levels. If the primary intent of

these measures is simply to reduce personnel costs, the department

would be better served in the long run by first tackling the underlying labor cost structure and only then adjusting the size of the

force as necessary. Again, such decisions should not be based on

budgetary factors, alone. They should be informed by a realistic assessment of future threat environment and a determination of

where the department is willing to take risk, a strategic approach.

In conclusion, I would like to note that, while a declining defense

budget would force the Department to make many difficult decisions, it also presents an opportunity. It is an opportunity to transform the military into a more efficient and effective force.

Ironically, the rapid rise of the base defense budget over the past

decade may have prevented the department from transforming because it allowed the services to continue funding existing programs

and not fully commit to transformation, but the era of constrained

resources that is now upon us may finally force the services to

make the difficult choices that are necessary to create a more efficient and effective military.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Harrison follows:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you very much.

Dr. Schmitt.

STATEMENT OF GARY SCHMITT

Dr. SCHMITT. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Flake, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. I notice that there are five of us up here

on the panel, and if this was a hand I suspect I am going to be

the sore thumb.

Mr. TIERNEY. It could have been otherwise.

Dr. SCHMITT. I think the hammer is about ready to hit me.

Let me begin with the obvious: we do spend a lot on defense. The

task force report is absolutely right when it says that nearly 65

percent of the increase in Federal discretionary spending since

2001 has come from increase in the Pentagon’s budget, but I would

say this is a bit misleading. First, we are at war, after all. And

even in that, as a percentage of the GDP, these wars have been

waged more cheaply than similar wars such as Korea or Vietnam.

Second, from 2001 to 2010, the baseline defense budget grew by $228 billion. This amounts to an annual real rate of growth of just

4 percent. Growth, to be sure, but not the gusher Secretary Gates

spoke of in May at the Eisenhower Library. And certainly the $228

billion pales in comparison with the nearly $800 billion spent to

stimulate, supposedly, the economy.

The report begins with a quote from my good friend, Kori

Schake, a former Bush national security official and a McCain campaign advisor, ‘‘Conservatives need to understand that military

power is fundamentally premised on the solvency of the American

Government and vibrancy of the U.S. economy.’’ I certainly don’t

disagree. But as she, herself, states in a recent article in a recent

Post, ‘‘Advocates of a strong national defense ought to be thinking

seriously about entitlement reform; that is, Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare.’’ Referencing Congressman Ryan’s Roadmap for

America, she goes on to say that the real threat to adequate defense spending is the explosion in domestic programs. ‘‘Defense

spending isn’t addressed in the Road Map because it is not material to the overall debt picture.’’

From this perspective, the real problem is not defense spending,

but the fact that some 56 percent of Federal outlays are tied to

mandatory spending accounts, and will, if current budget estimates

hold true, expand at an even greater rate. Defense, meanwhile, accounts for 18 percent of those outlays and will shrink to just 15

percent in the near years.

Now, the task force report, Debts, Deficit, and Defense, is right

to think that if a trillion dollars could be cut from defense it

wouldn’t make a difference. I agree. However, let’s remember that

$300 billion has already been cut from defense in the past 2 years,

and to follow the report’s recommendations requires, in my opinion,

taking some rather risky steps.

However, rather than go through the report’s specific list of recommendations, which I would be happy to talk about in more detail in the question and answer session, let me make the broad

point that the force structure they outline is one that runs against

the basic force structure that has been agreed upon by three successive administrations, two Democrat and one Republican. It

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seems to me that we ought to think twice before jettisoning a force

structure that by any standard has performed remarkably well, has

done so at a very high tempo, and has enjoyed bipartisan post-cold

war support for more than a decade and a half.

Now, having said that, there is no question that savings can be

had when it comes to defense. Todd here I think has laid out a

number of useful proposals. Health and personnel costs have skyrocketed over the past decade and, while benefits for those in an

all-volunteer force must remain high, there is no question that

there are elements in the Pentagon’s budget that need closer scrutiny.

However, the real problem—and I realize just how difficult an argument it is to make these days—is that we spend too little on Defense. The key point here is that the procurement holiday that

marked much of the 1990’s was a hole the Bush administration

never dug the Pentagon out of. Now the Obama administration

wants to hold defense spending flat or less in the coming years,

which, when combined with the rising personnel costs and rising

operations and maintenance costs, has resulted in a significant

shortage in resources, perhaps, according to the Congressional

Budget Office, on the order of $30 billion to $40 billion a year,

needed to recapitalize our armed forces.

All of which brings me to my final point: the danger today is that

with the chronic under-funding of our core defense capabilities, we

will slip into a posture of strategic retrenchment through inadvertence. In this respect, one of the virtues of the report is that it does

not hide the strategic implications of its cuts, raising at the end a

very different vision for American grand strategy from what has

been.

By my lights, it is a path I would prefer we not take. I do not

think we should let go of a strategy that has, among other things,

successfully prevented destructive wars between the great powers,

and helped shape an international order which, for all its problems,

remains relatively stable. No doubt it has cost the American taxpayer a lot to maintain, but the benefits we have gotten in return

in terms of general peace, expansion of democratic rule around the

globe, and our own prosperity I believe are benefits that are far

greater.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Schmitt follows:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Dr. Schmitt.

Dr. Adams.

STATEMENT OF GORDON ADAMS

Dr. ADAMS. Thank you very much, Chairman Tierney, Congressman Flake. I appreciate the opportunity to testify here. One of the

advantages, of course, of coming last is that everybody has already

said the things I was going to say, but, of course, not everybody has

said them, so I will try to be brief.

I want to make three very simple points and introduce my testimony for the record, as you indicated, Mr. Chairman.

Simple point No. 1 is the Defense Department is now facing a

planning crisis that it has not yet fully anticipated and is not yet

ready to cope with what is going to hit it. All budgets, in fact all

planning in the Federal Government, is resource constrained, so we

cannot sit here and say we totally want the force that we want to

have and we want it to do what we want it to do independent of

resources. It has always been resource-constrained and this week,

of course, Congress is beginning the process of marking up appropriations for fiscal year 2011, which is going to constrain, among

other things, defense from the administration’s request.

But even that constraint doesn’t begin to cope with the tidal

waves that are hitting the Department of Defense over the next 2

or 3 years and over the next decade, which all of you in Congress

are going to have to deal with.

The tidal waves take two forms. Tidal wave No. 1, which has

been amply discussed here, is the tidal wave of deficits and debt.

At historically high shares of gross domestic product and, frankly,

with forecasts for debt and those deficits that are still quite optimistic compared to what we may encounter as Congress works

through the fiscal agenda over the next few years.

Second tidal wave hitting defense is that we are, in fact, at some

point not too distant future pulling back from Iraq, pulling back

from Afghanistan, which means that the public willingness to tolerate extremely high and unprecedented high levels of defense spending is going to weaken and go away. That is the natural course of

things.

Now, we have been to this movie before. We were at this movie

from 1985 to 1998. From 1985, when deficit reduction began,

through 1998, overall national defense outlays fell 20 percent in

constant dollars. DOD budgets fell 36 percent in constant dollars

over that period of time.

What caused that change? Step one, a major attention of Congress and the White House to deficits and debt reduction. Step No.

2, the end of the cold war, where the major strategic planning scenario that undergirded our defense budget disappeared.

Combining those two things, starting with the first Bush administration, those things went down, the force structure shrank by a

third, 50 percent cut in constant dollars in procurement budgets,

and lots of program kills, most of them begun under the Bush administration. But that is what happens as the cycle of defense

changes and as the politics of the globe change.

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So we are heading for another one of those periods in our history,

and you in Congress are going to have to cope with it. The department is not yet there.

Second point I want to make is the tried and true way of achieving savings, some of which have been mentioned in testimony so

far, are inadequate to cope with this decline. In fact, we have created pressures for upward growth in defense budgets over the last

decade, and strength has grown, not shrunk, and strength determines a lot of where the budget is going. Personnel costs have been

growing faster than personnel costs in the economy as a whole. The

retirement costs for the Department of Defense personnel have

grown. Health care has grown at a faster rate than Medicare costs

have grown.

Overhead has grown, meaning the tail is now becoming larger

than the tooth. Operations and maintenance costs grow inexorably

at 21⁄2 percent per year, and that seems to not change regardless

of party, administration, or era. And acquisition reform, much-touted acquisition reform, currently is really, frankly, a recycling of

ideas we have dealt with before. Acquisition reform keeps proving

to be a mirage, and it is a mirage, frankly, because in the acquisition system the incentives are wrong.

It is not just a question of requirements. If services have to buy

in to get systems at an affordable budget, they will buy in at a

cheaper cost than they project the system to cost. If contractors

have to buy in in order to win a contract, they will buy in at a

cheaper cost than the system turns out to cost. So the incentive

structure makes acquisition reform an uphill battle.

The third point I want to make, I think that Secretary Gates,

who is trying to protect 1 percent real growth in defense budgets,

is actually fighting a losing battle, and the key to now constraining

defense is going to be in mission discipline. Sadly, the Quadrennial

Defense Review did not execute mission discipline. It simply layered missions on top of each other without setting priorities and

without calculating the risks of the various missions and the risks

that we, as a Nation, are prepared to tolerate.

I can associate myself with many of the comments that have

been made about mission, but I think we are at a point in American history where a serious baseline discussion of strategy and

mission is an essential part of how we approach defense planning

and defense forces.

The bottom line here has to do with looking seriously at counterterror missions and whether they should have been fenced; looking

at the counter-insurgency stabilization and nation-building missions, we don’t draw the wrong lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan;

looking carefully at how many nations in the world we want to

build partner capacity in; ensuring that we maintain deterrence,

alliance, support in conventional war in what is one of the safest

periods in our national security history; and, finally, in looking seriously at re-balancing the tool kit so we, in fact, do more strategic

planning with civilian agencies, we make governance stabilization

and reconstruction, civilian not military missions, and reinforce our

diplomacy.

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Last point, I would urge the Congress to give serious consideration to unifying the budget functions for defense and foreign policy

so we can make those kinds of tradeoffs.

So, in sum, defense budgets are resource constrained. The current tools for dealing with those resource constraints are inadequate. And, indeed, as was said earlier on this panel, I think it

was Mr. Friedman who said it, spending cuts will drive efficiencies.

We have seen that before. I predict we will see it again.

Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Adams follows:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. Well thank you very much, Dr. Adams, and thank

all of you for your testimony, written and verbal here today.

We are going to go to our question period here, 5 minutes per

member, and I am going to start, but I think it is a great jumping

off point from Dr. Adams’ comments, which were reflected in some

of the other testimony here. I don’t know that we really have a

budget in the Department of Defense. It seems to me we just spend

whatever we think we want to spend.

I think the last comment about piling on mission on top of mission just seems to be going, and if we have a weakness in our civilian capacities, then we ask the military to take that on. That is not

to say they are not good at it, they are not willing to do it, or they

are not well intentioned, but it sometimes seems out of line for

what they really are proposed to do and designed to do on that.

So let me ask this generally: if we were to concentrate just on

making the military that we have more efficient, getting rid of

some waste, fraud, and abuse, are we all pretty much in agreement

that would be a far less significant savings than if we really took

a look at the mission and took a look at just how we structure it,

what are the purposes of the mission of the Department of Defense? Do we have any disagreement on that? Dr. Schmitt, do you

disagree with that?

Dr. SCHMITT. No, absolutely not. I mean, I think the best you can

expect out of efficiency of any government organization is probably

5 percent, and that is even hard to do.

Mr. TIERNEY. That is a big number. I mean, if we can get 5 percent we would be pretty happy.

Dr. SCHMITT. Well, that is the golden apple. I wouldn’t count on

it, either.

Mr. TIERNEY. We are trying. We have a lot of hearings and design on that.

The other part is I would suspect that we have to worry about

efficiencies and a budget within the Department of Defense, but as

policymakers we ought to also look at what the Department of Defense budget is within our overall budget on that basis and take

a look at it. I think a number of you have testified that you think

that there is a situation here where what is spent in the military

is material to the overall debt picture, except, Dr. Schmitt, you

quoted somebody in your testimony saying that they didn’t think

that the defense spending was material at all to the overall debt

picture. Is that a position you endorse?

Dr. SCHMITT. No, not technically. I mean, look, it obviously would

help to cut defense spending, but I also think that the cost for the

kinds of cuts that have been proposed by the task force will raise

larger questions about the ultimate cost to the country. So on the

whole I would say the real problem fiscally, yes, defense cuts would

help fiscally, but not substantially, and the real issue is the entitlement programs.

Dr. ADAMS. Mr. Chairman, could I comment briefly?

Mr. TIERNEY. Yes, I would like someone to comment on that.

Dr. ADAMS. Defense has obviously played a role. The largest single source of spending growth over the past decade in the Federal

Government has obviously been on the mandatory side. On the discretionary side, the defense budget has absorbed something like

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two-thirds of the overall increase in discretionary spending. That

has been driven in large part by war costs, the costs of Iraq and

Afghanistan. So there is no question that it has contributed to our

deficit.

Interestingly, national defense has an over 19 percent share of

all fiscal year 2010 Federal spending, which is the same as Social

Security, and it is 3 percent higher than of all means tested entitlement programs combined. Now, that excludes Social Security because that is not means tested, but if you look at mean tested programs, defense is obviously—there is a kind of a third to third to

third piece here in terms of overall spending.

Clearly, from the spending side of the equation, what Congress

faces and what I think anybody seriously addressing deficit reduction or debt control faces is how do you put all the pieces on the

table at the same time.

Since 1985 to 1998, the period I mentioned earlier, what clearly

made deficit reduction possible, because people disagree on where

the cuts ought to come, was when that deficit exercise, starting

with Gramm-Rudman-Hollings in 1985, put all pieces of first discretionary spending on the table and then, with the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990, put discretionary, mandatory, and revenues

on the table with both caps and pay-go.

Those two things in the 1990’s combined with a healthy economy,

which we don’t have right now, were enough to drive us into surplus by the end of the decade. If we even made some progress of

that kind, it would be a good thing for the economy. The problem

that we have is that you can’t get agreement, I believe, here in

Congress unless all those pieces are on the table, and that is going

to inevitably involve the administration, as well.

So if you want to do it, you have to do it with everything on the

table.

Mr. TIERNEY. And I think that is indicative of this day, I don’t

think there are a lot of competing hearings out there necessarily,

but I am struck by the lack of attention to this particular subject.

It is as if people don’t want to deal with it or don’t want to go there

on that.

Mr. Conetta, do you see some value in our national Social Security and whether or not our seniors are secure in their retirement,

whether or not people have health care, whether or not they have

an opportunity for education, and whether or not we, in fact, have

job training and research and development, things like that? How

does that play into our national security structure?

Mr. CONETTA. There has been a lot of interesting work done,

analyses of our operations in war, of our success in war. Stephen

Biddle, an analyst with the Council on Foreign Relations, has produced a number of reports looking at why we won so well, for instance, in the first Persian Gulf War.

Often, the assumption is that we win because of our technology,

and what he demonstrates, I think pretty convincingly, is that it

is not that. We win because of a combination of our technology, our

training, our people, our capacity to work as a team.

The point I am getting at here is that I think people are the most

important part of our armed forces. We have a volunteer military,

and we are able to fill it with quality people. Why is that possible

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for us and not as possible for other nations? I think part of the answer is that we, as a Nation, pay attention to the health, the education, and the welfare of our people, so certainly that is a contributor, a factor in our ability to put together the military we do.

I think that is the type of thinking we need to approach this. We

need to approach it from that perspective. We need a holistic approach, and to understand that many of the benefits are indirect

but they are real.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you very much.

Mr. Flake.

Mr. FLAKE. Thank you. Thank you all. That was very, very enlightening.

Mr. Harrison, you mentioned that one of the problems we have

in cost is requirements keep getting piled on to weapons systems.

Can you explain a little further on that? How does that raise cost,

and what can we do to remedy that?

Mr. HARRISON. Well, what happens on acquisition programs is

one of the services gets together and says we need some new weapons system to fill a capability gap, and then it goes up for review.

The other services get their chance, their hack at it. The combat

commanders get to look at it. The more people look at it, the more

people touch it, they start adding more and more requirements to

it. Even once the system begins development, people will look at it

again and say, oh, well, now that I understand it better I would

like it to do X or Y or Z, and you end up with a program that just

keeps growing and growing and growing.

Every requirement you add adds cost. And even once you have

added a requirement, if you try to take that requirement out it

may also add cost. So the discipline in acquisition system is important, that people have to be willing to say, OK, here’s the weapons

system we are going to build, here are the capabilities that it really

needs to have, and we are going to take our hands off of it and let

industry built it under the contract that we have given them, and

then we will take delivery of it.

But too often we have these program offices that stay in the loop,

and all these other different bodies that review requirements at

every acquisition milestone, and it just keeps opening up the door

every time for people to add more to it, and the costs just start to

grow.

Mr. FLAKE. Thank you.

Mr. Friedman, you seem not very confident that we can decrease

defense spending by realigning the mission or reevaluating our objectives, but rather we should impose spending cuts and then let

that define the mission. Is that accurate, or——

Mr. FRIEDMAN. I am confident that having less ambitious missions would cut spending. I am not confident that efficiency gains

would reap a lot of savings.

My view is that there are a lot of efficiency gains to be had; the

problem is that there is no free lunch politically. I mean, the requirements process, these weapons get a lot of requirements because the services have various constituencies that want things

from them. A destroyer does a lot of things, and there are a lot of

people in the Navy who want something from a destroyer, and it

is hard to deal with that. Similarly, the commissaries, everybody

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knows that you can save a lot of money on the commissaries, but

the people going to the commissaries really like the discounts that

they are getting at the commissaries. It is basically a benefit.

So I don’t disagree that you can’t save money on that; I disagree

that you can save money on that without political pain.

Shipyards are another big one. I mean, we have too many shipyards. You close some shipyards, you can cut overhead costs on

procurement of ships, but nobody wants to close a shipyard because

those are big employers.

So my point is just that it is very hard to do.

Mr. FLAKE. I am from Arizona. We can close a lot of shipyards

with no problem at all.

Mr. Conetta.

Mr. CONETTA. The reform impulse during the 1990’s was fairly

strong, at least on the political end, but it isn’t how we achieved

savings during that period. The principal savings were achieved

first by reductions in structure because of the end of the cold war,

and then, because we were able to cascade so much of the equipment that had been modernized during the Reagan era into the

Clinton era, so we in a sense got a free ride.

The idea of or the impetus for increased efficiencies during that

period was to answer the question: how do we now increase modernization spending again without losing the peace dividend? How

are we going to be able to do that? And so the answer was we are

going to find all these efficiencies in a wide variety of ways. Many

of them never really went forward. They were going against a resistant medium. Some of them did, and the most successful was the

BRAC process, which, incidentally, took a lot of the decisionmaking

power out of the Pentagon and out of the political process, and that

helped a great deal. But even there the net savings probably didn’t

amount in the end to more than 3 or 4 percent of the total budget.

Part of the problem here, as others have pointed out, is that

there is a resistant median, and what one really needs, I think, is

to be able to approach the topic from the perspective that these

cuts must occur, that the cuts are our premise, and from that point

forward you have to find out how to apply them.

That wasn’t the case then, and eventually what happened was

we had to rebound the budget in order to feed modernization, but

it needs to be our premise in the future.

Mr. FLAKE. Thank you.

One more question. Dr. Schmitt, you mentioned that there are

areas of savings that we can find, I think you said in personnel and

what not, from the report that has been issued. What other areas,

other than personnel cost, overhead, retirement, in terms of acquisition or wherever, where do you see savings that can be had?

Dr. SCHMITT. I think it is a real difficulty when they are in the

report talking about cutting force structure, because I think force

structure is the bone that is left after the administration has really

cut $300 billion already from future programs. So we are getting

close to we have to make a decision. Do we really want to cut force

structure? I go back to my original point, which is that this is a

force structure, more or less that several administrations, Democratic and Republican, have agreed on. So I think there is efficiencies. Look, TriCare has to be adjusted. The health care benefits

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are driving up O&M. So those are real issues. There are other

things that can be done.

I would look at, for example, there are overseas bases that probably can be reduced in numbers, but I don’t think it gets you anywhere close to the kinds of savings that maybe we in Congress

would like, or Congress would like to fix the fiscal problem that we

face.

I just want to sort of go back to one thing that Gordon said,

which is he noted that 19 percent of Federal outlays go to defense

now. Well, 19 percent is basically what it was when he was at

OMB. Federal outlays for defense have not grown inordinately, and

the truth is the Obama administration will take the defense outlays down to around 15 percent in a few years. So if I had to step

back from this, I would say that the problem isn’t defense, it is

these other issues.

Mr. FLAKE. Thank you.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

Mr. Welch, you are recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. WELCH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you and the ranking member, Mr. Frank and Mr. Paul, for their leadership on this.

There are two issues as I hear your testimony. One is just trying

to cull the budget and look at where you can get efficiencies, and

that has been something that various Congresses have attempted

to do. You have identified some places for savings, like perhaps the

benefits. I think, Dr. Adams, you indicated that a lot of the procurement reforms are a rehash. But then the second area, which

is probably more promising for savings, is examining the force

structure and the mission. That is a debate Congress has not yet

had.

It seems as though there has been an acceptance in Congress,

whether explicit or implicit, that one of the responsibilities of our

military is now, in fact, to take on the challenge of nation building,

and in order also to accomplish that goal we outsource a very substantial component of the effort. We have 100,000 troops or so in

Afghanistan, and 100,000 contractors.

So I would like to just hear briefly from each of you as to what

precise elements of a policy could you recommend we focus on that

would achieve savings. There was discussion about nation building.

There was discussion about the question of force structure.

I will start with you, Mr. Harrison.

Mr. HARRISON. If you are looking for larger savings, I think that

you are correct that the place to achieve large savings is in changing the type of weapons systems we buy and altering our force

structure, reducing the force structure in certain areas.

Not to stray too far outside of my expertise as a budget guy, but

if you look at our threat environment around the world, I think it

is true that threats have diminished somewhat in Europe, so

maybe we could draw back some of our forces from there. With

Asia I am not so sure. I see good arguments on either side of that,

that threats might be rising or that they might be balanced by

some of our allies that are in that region. But I think if you are

going to make these cuts you don’t want to cut force structure or

weapons systems just for the purpose of achieving savings.

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Mr. WELCH. Dr. Schmitt, do you have any comments on that? I

only have 5 minutes.

Dr. SCHMITT. I understand. I think you have raised the right

issue, which is that we were talking about the kinds of decisions

that have to be made if we really want to sort of cut deficits and

use the defense budget to really participate in reducing the deficits.

You are going to be talking about cutting force structure in substantial ways, which is bound to have—and I think one of the

things about the report that is most honest is that it calls for different kinds of a grand strategy.

I personally wouldn’t go that route. I think it is more dangerous

over the long term. But it is absolutely the question that should be

on the table, and I think, frankly, it is the question that we haven’t

debated over the last several years. So this hearing, in fact, is really useful in that regard, because it raises the key issue.

Mr. WELCH. Dr. Adams.

Dr. ADAMS. Yes. Thank you, Congressman, for asking that question because I do think it is the essential question here. There is

no particular magic in a force structure number. Dr. Schmitt has

been referring to the fact that all these administrations have

agreed on a force structure number. Well, the reality is circumstances change and force structure requirements change as

those circumstances change. So when the cold war ended, we took

a force that was 2.2 million down to 1.4 million over a period of

4 or 5 years because circumstances had changed.

So the real question we have to ask ourselves is: have circumstances changed? What is the lesson, if there is a lesson, of

Iraq and Afghanistan? What is the lesson of terrorism? What is the

mission of the military forces that emerged from those lessons and

the circumstances in the world?

Let me make just three points. One is overall the United States

faces right now today no existential threat, completely different circumstance from the cold war. Right? We are, in fact, living in a

safer world.

Point No. 2, the volume, rate, and lethality of conflict around the

world has gone down over the past 20 years, not up. As a consequence, the challenges that we face that might even involve our

forces are less than what they once were.

No. 3, if the lesson of Iraq and Afghanistan is that the U.S. military has an expanded function for fighting terrorists, countering

terrorist organizations, arming other countries, training their security forces, fighting insurgencies—not sure where they are, but

fighting insurgencies on a global basis—and nation building, that

is the set of missions that need to have a very, very hard scrub by

the Congress of the United States.

There is a cottage industry at DOD today, a cottage industry

supported right now by this administration that would have that

mission set for the department expand rather than contract. That

I think is the critical circumstance that Congress needs to look at

today in threat terms, in capability terms, in mission terms, in

seeking a much more standardized and shrunk American military

force.

Mr. WELCH. Thank you. I yield back. Thank you.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Welch.

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Mr. Luetkemeyer.

Mr. LUETKEMEYER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I was kind of struck with some of the discussion we just had

here. I think sometimes we can be penny wise and security foolish

if we forget about the purpose of the military, which is our No. 1

duty as Congressmen, to protect and defend our country and the

Constitution.

So I am curious. Some of the cuts and things that you suggested,

Mr. Friedman, how is that going to impact our ability to stage operations around the world if we close down some bases in certain

areas?

Mr. FRIEDMAN. Well, logistically certainly it is helpful if you

want to have a war in Europe to have bases in Europe. The same

goes for Asia. So we are not saying that there is no——

Mr. LUETKEMEYER. With all due respect, I know that we have a

big hospital base in Germany right now that tends to a lot of our

men and women who come from Iraq and Afghanistan who are injured. Are you saying we need to move that or do something different?

Mr. FRIEDMAN. I wouldn’t recommend closing that while we are

still sending wounded people from Iraq or after there. In the future, after those wars are over, I think I would recommend doing

that, along with bringing all our bases from Europe back, because

I don’t think there is much in Europe that requires U.S. military

forces.

My argument, going back to the last question, is not necessarily

that there are no threats left in these regions or never will be. My

argument is that there are other nations, wealthy ones, in those regions that are perfectly capable of defending themselves when

those threats arise.

Sure, there is some risk associated with not having troops in the

places where I would like to not have troops, but there is also a

risk with having them there in terms of the cost that comes

through the force structure of having those missions, and there is

a risk associated with participating in a war that maybe we could

avoid.

So I think there is danger on both sides.

Mr. LUETKEMEYER. How do you think that makes us vulnerable?

Mr. FRIEDMAN. Which part of it?

Mr. LUETKEMEYER. What are the vulnerabilities if you cut back

on things like that?

Mr. FRIEDMAN. I’m sorry?

Mr. LUETKEMEYER. How do you make us more vulnerable?

Mr. FRIEDMAN. How do I make us more——

Mr. LUETKEMEYER. Yes. Don’t you think you make us more vulnerable by doing some of those things?

Mr. FRIEDMAN. I think having forces in places where we don’t

necessarily need to be, because we don’t need to participate in a

war there because a host country has the capability to do it themselves makes us more vulnerable because I would like to avoid

fighting in wars that we could avoid. Wars are dangerous and bad

things. They are very costly. So that is the sense in which I mean

that. And I think they make us more vulnerable because we have

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to maintain force structure associated with those missions, which

is very costly.

Mr. LUETKEMEYER. I know that I am speaking of more than just

the bases, themselves. I am talking about all of the military operations, all of the equipment that they have. I am very familiar with

a young man, for instance, who flies an F–16 that is 22 years old,

broke down twice while he was in Afghanistan and again on the

way home. I certainly would not want to curtail his ability to have

a piece of equipment that he is safe in and protect our men and

women who are on the ground with. I think that, again, we can be

penny wise and security foolish if we are not careful in how we do

the structure of the cuts you are talking about.

I am also curious. I saw, in listening to Secretary Clinton last

night, she had an interview and made the comment that there was

no intention of pulling out and continued to support Afghanistan

and Pakistani efforts. How do you see this playing out, Dr.

Schmitt?

Dr. SCHMITT. I expect, if we are to be successful in Afghanistan,

that the reductions that are being talked about in 2011 will be very

minimal and the likelihood of actually having a substantial number

of forces in Afghanistan for an extended period are quite high.

The difficulty with counterinsurgencies is you simply need boots

on the ground. They succeed if you have enough boots on the

ground. Historically they succeed. If you don’t have enough boots

on the ground, you won’t succeed. But they do take time and they

do take resources, and then the question is: do you want to put

those resources in? And if you don’t, then what are the consequences for abandoning Afghanistan once again?

Mr. LUETKEMEYER. Very quickly, how many of you have served

in the military? One. How many of you have members of the family

in the military right now? None.

Dr. Schmitt, just very quickly, do you think the concern that we

may have here or need to take into consideration, the effect that

it may have on our own economy if there is instability in the world

by not trolling activities around the world that could impugn or impact us in a certain way?

Dr. SCHMITT. Yes. One of the points I tried to make and hopefully made in the statement, is that we have had a very expensive

global posture since the end of World War II. We have had one

since the end of the cold war. I think that has led to general stability and prosperity around the world. It is very costly, from the U.S.

perspective, but on the whole it has allowed us to grow economically and allowed our allies to grow economically, and I think, in

fact, in terms of the sort of world order, the benefits outweigh the

cost that we put into it. There is no question that it is costly, but

I think, again, the benefits are much more there than not.

The second thing I would say is that we get used to that order.

We are used to traveling around the world without any disruption.

We are used to oil flowing from the Persian Gulf. But remember

the first Persian Gulf War? Just think what the consequences of

that if we did not have the sufficient troops to push Saddham out

of Kuwait.

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These are things that we tend to assume are going to go on in

the absence of the security role that the United States plays. I personally think that is a bad bet.

Mr. LUETKEMEYER. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

Mr. Lynch.

Mr. LYNCH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I also want to thank the witnesses for helping the committee

with its work.

Normally in the midst of two wars this is not the typical time

when we would grapple with reducing defense spending, but I

think the deficits and the financial situation requires us to do so.

We do have an opportunity now. In August our troop deployment

in Iraq will go from 165,000 down to 50,000, so maybe it is an opportunity to re-balance and reassess some of this.

After September 11th we saw a big shift from military responsibilities and intelligence responsibilities going over to the contractor side. As the chairman has said, a lot of us on this committee

have been over to Iraq. I have been over there at least 12 times,

Afghanistan and Pakistan probably another 10 times. It is amazing

the amount of responsibilities that used to be core military or intelligence or State Department functions that we have contracted out.

Now, the last couple of weeks we heard a report from Secretary

Gates, who said that when we hire a private contractor to take

over a responsibility that was formerly performed by Government

personnel, that we pay 25 percent more to have that contractor do

it. I think there is a real opportunity for savings here, and I want

to know, from your standpoint, is this an area we are looking at

where we are paying that premium to have private contractors

handle this?

I have heard it from everybody. I have heard it from Treasury,

I have heard it from USAID, I have heard it from the military that

these contractors are cleaning up and they are making pretty hefty

profits, and that is all at the cost of the American taxpayer. We

have to be smarter now and more resourceful and more prudent

with the way we are spending money. Is this an area that we

should be looking at, to reduce those costs performed by contractors

and have them, instead, performed more efficiently and more

cheaply by Government personnel?

Dr. ADAMS. Mr. Congressman, could I tackle at least one cut of

that?

Mr. LYNCH. Sure, that would be great.

Dr. ADAMS. I know others on the panel may want to, as well.

I think this contractor versus civil service versus uniform is one

of those areas where you might get certain kinds of efficiencies, but

you also pay certain kinds of costs. In other words, the key issue

for me really here remains mission. What is it we are doing? And

then who is responsible for doing it?

When I was at OMB, we did an awful lot of time working on

what they call Circular A–76 comparisons. Would it be cheaper to

contract it out? Would it be cheaper to do it in-house? These are

notoriously difficult calculations to make.

The short-term advantage of doing it with contractors is, once

the contract is done, the contractor can go away and you don’t asVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:36 Jun 23, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00088 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\KATIES\DOCS\65555.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
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sume responsibility for the contractor, so up front it may cost you

more dollar-for-dollar in the given year to do a certain function

with a contractor. Long-term, you are not going to be invested in

that contractor for life.

Mr. LYNCH. And that is a great point, Dr. Adams, but we are

talking about core functions.

Dr. ADAMS. Absolutely.

Mr. LYNCH. These functions are not going away.

Dr. ADAMS. No.

Mr. LYNCH. So this is perpetual contracting. I am talking about

those functions, not something that is going to go away.

Dr. ADAMS. Absolutely. I am going straight there with you.

Mr. LYNCH. OK.

Dr. ADAMS. This is just an analysis I am giving you right now.

On the do it on the government side, you can do it probably more

efficiently, although the cost comparisons tend to be difficult because where you allocate wages and salaries, when you do it on the

government side of course you are investing on somebody over a

lifetime, which means it is not just the direct costs up-front, it is

the lifetime costs that benefits the retirement pay and so on, so it

makes these comparisons very difficult to do.

The problem that I think we have gotten into is more substantive

than the issue of cost, and it is the question you raise. We are now

asking contractors to do things which ought to be done under the

inherently governmental function title by public sector employees.

if we do the sets of roles and missions that we are doing currently,

it is going to be enormously expensive to acquire the government

personnel to do all of those, which is why the question of mission

is tied to the question of whether you do it by a contractor or in

the public sector. In other words, to have the right-sized force you

have two things you have to deal with. One is how much are you

asking people to do, and the second thing, which we haven’t talked

about, is what is the relationship between your tooth and your tail.

Historically, we have now something on the order of two-thirds

of the active duty military personnel actually involved in tail not

in tooth, and the ratio of combat forces to tail has actually gotten

worse over the past 50 years. It was closer to 50/50 50 years ago.

It is now about two-thirds/one-thirds tail to tooth. So the other

piece of managing this in the government sector is not necessarily

adding people, it is redefining what people’s jobs are and how much

of a tail you actually need as opposed to the tooth that you need

up front.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Dr. Adams.

Mr. LYNCH. Thank you. I yield back.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Lynch.

Mr. Duncan.

Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank

you for calling this hearing. It has been a very interesting and informative panel.

I don’t have any questions. I just want to make a few comments.

When you add up the regular military budget, the supplemental,

and emergency appropriations, the military construction budget,

the money that comes in at the end of the year, anonymous bills,

we are spending more on defense than all the other countries in

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the world combined. As Mr. Conetta has pointed out, a 96 percent

increase just since 1998, about three times the rate of inflation

over that period.

Most people in the country, if you ask them, they will tell you

they are against massive foreign aid, but what they don’t realize

is that we have turned the Department of Defense in the last many

years into the Department of Foreign Aid, because most, or at least

very much, of what the Defense Department does is just pure nation building, which is another word for foreign aid. We simply

can’t afford it.

I agree with Mr. Friedman that much of our interventionist foreign policy that we followed over the last several years has created

great resentment around the world and has made terrorism more

likely instead of less likely.

When you sit and think about it and about what we have gotten

for over a trillion dollars now in Iraq and Afghanistan, fighting

against militaries or organizations like Al Qaeda, the main antiterrorism official in the U.N. said a few months ago that Al Qaeda

was now so small it was having trouble maintaining credibility.

But we are fighting against organizations or militaries with

budgets of less than one-tenth of 1 percent of ours. And these

threats have been so greatly exaggerated. I voted for the first Gulf

War because I went to all those briefings and heard all the generals and the people from the Defense Department and the State

Department tell how great the threat was and talk about Saddam

Hussein’s elite troops. And then I saw those same elite troops surrendering to CNN camera crews and empty tanks and I realized

then that the threat had been greatly exaggerated, and it still has

been over these last many years.

So what have we gotten for all this money? Last weekend we had

another suicide bomber in Iraq, 48 people killed. The situation

there is still just terrible.

Then I saw in the current issue of Newsweek Dr. Richard Haas,

president of the Council on Foreign Relations, and he is in favor—

there has never been an intervention that he hasn’t favored, I suppose, but he wrote about Afghanistan. We are not winning, it is not

worth it. And he says in this article the economic costs to the

United States of sticking to the current policy are on the order of

$100 billion a year in economic cost. The military price is also

great, not just in lives and material, but also in distraction from

other potential problems.

I was impressed with Mr. Harrison talking about the personnel

costs, because we have sent so many factories to foreign countries,

other countries over the last 30 years that now for many young

people in small towns and rural areas their only way our or their

greatest, the highest pay they can receive is in the military, but we

can’t afford to keep increasing the military pay and benefits like we

have been, especially when we are headed into a time when the entire Federal budget is going to be taken up by Social Security and

Medicare and Medicaid and various pensions.

So I appreciate what most of these gentlemen are doing. Most of

the think tanks and others that favor increasing the military budget at this point are supported by the Defense contractors, and the

Defense contractors hire all the retired admirals and generals, and

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really what all this is about is about money and power instead of

any real threat to us. I am just amazed that more conservative Republicans aren’t awake. I think some are awakening to this, because fiscal conservatives should be the ones most horrified by

what is going on here.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Duncan. I appreciate it.

Ms. Chu.

Ms. CHU. Dr. Adams, you argue that U.S. involvement in Iraq

and Afghanistan have led to the abuse of the emergency supplemental process, and actually funded defense spending that is wholly unrelated to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Can you explain

how the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have bloated the non-war

defense budget?

Dr. ADAMS. I am sorry. Could you say that again, Congresswoman?

Ms. CHU. You have argued that——

Dr. ADAMS. I heard that, yes.

Ms. CHU. So can you explain how it has bloated the non-war defense budget?

Dr. ADAMS. Yes. There are two principal ways in which the

supplementals and the war titles have been used over time in a

way that funds expenditures in the Department of Defense that are

not directly war related. One which is pretty visible is putting into

the supplemental budgets hardware, military equipment, and procurement, that is unrelated to equipment losses in the wars in Iraq

and Afghanistan.

That has clearly been done. It was true of the supplementals

more than it has been true of the recent war titles in the budgets,

but every single war supplemental, starting with the first one, has

carried spending for equipment that basically restocks inventories

here at home or in exercises for the military but is not replacing

equipment lost in Afghanistan or Iraq.

So one of the agreements that the new administration, the

Obama administration, when it came in, negotiated with the Department of Defense was to restrict the uses of the supplementals

for purchasing equipment that ought to be in the regular base

equipment acquisition planning of the services. There remains a

gray area there, and the gray area is what is called reconstitution,

so I always urge the Congress to take a very close look at what is

called reset or reconstitution in war titles and supplementals for

equipment that really ought to be funded through the base budget

because it is in the long-term plan for the services.

The other area that is more difficult to tease out is in operations

and maintenance, and about two-thirds of the spending for the

wars in Iraq and Afghanistan falls in operations and maintenance.

This is the support for our troops that are in the field. It is not

their pay, but it is the support services for the troops. Some of it

is going to the contractors we were talking about earlier.

The unique characteristic of operations and maintenance funding

in budgetary terms is its fungibility. That is to say, money appropriated for operations and maintenance to the departments and to

the military services is essentially fungible with any other money

appropriated to operations and maintenance, which means, from

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the services’ point of view, operations and maintenance funding,

which is two-thirds of the war, is funding that is also useful for

their general operations and maintenance and can easily be moved

around inside the service budget to fund operations and maintenance requirements at home.

That area has not been sufficiently scrutinized by Congress. It

does constitute a significant addition of O&M resources to the services.

Ms. CHU. You have also said that what we should learn from

Iraq and Afghanistan is that we do not need a military capability

of intervening globally in all conflicts and disorder, and that we

could prioritize missions that could maintain or even enhance our

national security at less cost with smaller forces. Can you explain

what kind of military missions you have in mind, how it could

work, considering the threat of Al Qaeda?

Dr. ADAMS. Sure, and I know others on the panel may have responses they want to give to that because they have talked about

the area of mission.

This is, I think, the fundamental issue. What is the role and responsibility of the United States globally? What are the challenges

that we face? What is the role and mission of the military in meeting those challenges? We don’t often talk about it that way, but defense forces are basically a support function for our national security policy. They are not our national security policy. They are a

support function for it.

So the real question that I think we haven’t addressed yet but

now need to urgently is: in the array of missions that we have,

which ones are most important to the security of the United States,

how much is the military role in carrying out those missions? And

how much force do we need to actually execute those missions?

The most highly debatable area of mission right now today is in

this area of counter-insurgency, stabilization, nation-building,

counter-terrorism, and building partner capacity. That whole envelope of missions is an area where defense responsibilities have expanded enormously, and where the lesson we seem to have drawn

from the war in Iraq and Afghanistan is we now need to be prepared to do those missions on a global basis.

There is no sustained analysis of that proposition. We have excellent work on how to do counter-insurgency—80 percent of it, by the

way, is considered a civilian function in the counter-insurgency

manual—we have no analytical text that tells us where, when,

how, and why the United States is responsible for those missions

on a global basis and where we are going to have to execute them.

So right now we have no analysis of that area of mission in

terms of policy and challenge that should tell us how many forces

we have, and I think that is highly questionable that our national

security is engaged every time there is a terrorist attack, every

country where there is an insurgent, every country that has a fragile state, every country that has a security sector.

Right now we have an open door on mission and an open door

on budgets without any analysis. If we turn that around and take

a hard, cold look at that area, I think we will discover that we don’t

have as many areas where we need to conduct those kinds of missions. We are not peculiarly well-suited in the military to carry out

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governance reconstitution and so on, and we don’t have so many

countries where we need to worry about doing them.

Where that leads me is to say we can take a step back in that

area of mission and we can look seriously at our civilian capacities

in the government to execute those parts of those missions that involve governance and economic development, which is the longterm responsibility that we and many other countries and international organizations have, but involve substantially less commitment of military force, certainly not on a global basis.

We then return to missions that others have talked about here,

which have more to do with the traditional functions of the military—deterrence, allied reassurance, conventional warfare—and a

niche set of missions that may involve the military part of counterterrorism, humanitarian operations, non-emergency evacuation operations, and the like where we can tailor a force that I would suggest is considerably smaller than the force that we have today. It

would be more efficient and more sculpted to do those kinds of missions.

So, in a very brief description, that is how I would approach the

question of missions.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Dr. Adams. Thank you, Ms. Chu.

Mr. Jordan.

Mr. JORDAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I didn’t get to hear everyone’s testimony. I assume Dr. Schmitt

is not, and frankly I wouldn’t be either, but how many of the rest

of the panel are supportive of a freeze to defense spending or a cut

to freeze over an extended period of time, which would in essence

be a cut? Who on the panel supports that step? We will go down

the line: freeze or reduction? Doctor, do you support that?

Mr. HARRISON. For me it depends. It depends on what changes

we are making in the missions that we are willing for our military

to support and what risks we are willing to take.

Mr. JORDAN. OK. I didn’t want to speak for you, Dr. Schmitt, but

I assume that is where you are, just a blanket cap or freeze.

Dr. SCHMITT. No, I wouldn’t support that.

Mr. JORDAN. OK. Dr. Adams.

Dr. ADAMS. Definitely support.

Mr. JORDAN. Yes or no?

Dr. ADAMS. Sorry, definitely support it.

Mr. JORDAN. Definitely support it. Now, three and a half, I guess,

who supported the cap, would you support the same type of approach to every other agency in the government—Department of

Agriculture, Department of Energy, Education, up and down the

line?

Mr. FRIEDMAN. It depends. We have to talk agency-by-agency. I

can’t speak for every agency, so we have to go one at a time.

Mr. JORDAN. OK.

Mr. CONETTA. I think that, given our current circumstance, we

should start with the premise of proportionate cuts. We should determine what types of deficit reduction. We need to begin with proportionate cuts as a premise and go from there. I don’t think we

end up with proportionate cuts. That becomes a question of matching needs to budget.

Mr. JORDAN. OK.

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Mr. HARRISON. I think the spending freeze on non-security-related discretionary spending that is in the President’s budget this

year, I think that is a good thing.

Mr. JORDAN. OK. Dr. Schmitt, would you agree?

Dr. SCHMITT. Freeze and/or cuts.

Dr. ADAMS. Definitely support it. I worked for 5 years in the

Clinton administration in OMB, and one of the most effective tools

for both the executive branch and the Congress in dealing with deficit reductions was caps and pay-go. They enforced an incredible

discipline on every element of the government.

Mr. JORDAN. Let’s cut to the chase then. I have introduced the

only balanced budget in Congress. Our budget does this. Frankly,

until you do that, you don’t force Congressmen to do the work we

should have been doing all along: finding out which programs

work, which ones are stupid, which ones are redundant, what

makes sense, what doesn’t make sense.

So it seems to me we should have some kind of cap, but I

wouldn’t say on defense, I would say on the overall budget because,

frankly, as Mr. Luetkemeyer pointed out in his questioning, defense is where we are supposed to spend taxpayer dollars. It is everything else that is, according to Robert Rector at Heritage Foundation, it is the 71 different means-tested social welfare programs

we have which, when you add State dollars and tax dollars from

the State and Federal actually are more than national defense, so

there is a whole host of areas that we should be focused on.

How many on the panel would support an overall spending limit,

some percentage of GDP, would support that kind of concept in our

budgeting process? We will go down the line again.

Mr. CONETTA. Yes. You mean with regard to the entire budget,

or with regard to defense, a cap?

Mr. JORDAN. I am talking overall budget. I mean, it is the problem.

Mr. CONETTA. I don’t think it is wise to——

Mr. JORDAN. We start with a $3 trillion deficit we have, the $13

trillion national debt we have. It is the overall budget, yes.

Mr. CONETTA. Yes. I don’t think we should ever go to deciding

that any portion of government spending or government as a whole

should be tied to any particular GDP figure. So no, don’t tie it to

GDP.

Mr. JORDAN. Mr. Friedman.

Mr. CONETTA. You need to make a determination——

Mr. JORDAN. I need to go quick. Mr. Friedman.

Mr. FRIEDMAN. Yes. I support that, not indefinitely but sure, this

year, next year, yes.

Mr. JORDAN. OK.

Mr. HARRISON. I would not support it for the overall budget for

the simple fact that we have some things in there like Social Security benefits that have already been promised that are growing.

Net interest on the national debt is rapidly growing in the budget.

I think you have to look. Spending is only one side of the equation.

I think you have to also look at the other side of the equation as

revenues.

Mr. JORDAN. And I am going to get to the other side in a second

if I get time.

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Go ahead, Dr. Schmitt.

Dr. SCHMITT. I would support it.

Mr. JORDAN. Yes. Dr. Adams.

Dr. ADAMS. I support caps for discretionary spending, pay-go for

mandatory spending. I would not take any part of the Federal

budget, including defense, to a share of GDP.

Mr. JORDAN. It seems to me the one thing we need, in addition

to doing this, putting limits and going through the exercise of figuring out what works, what doesn’t, and getting spending under control, the one thing we really need more than anything to deal with

our budget situation is growth. So give me your thoughts. You guys

probably guess where I come from on the growth side, but we need

to have the right kind of tax policy, the right kind of regulatory

policy if we are going to have economic growth.

You talk about the years where we actually balanced the budget

and started running surpluses. It is because we had sustained and

strong economic growth in this country and, frankly, we are not

having it now. I would argue the policies that Congress and the administration have been pursuing are making it difficult to get the

kind of economic growth we need to deal with our budget situation

long-term. So your thoughts on that quickly and then I will be

done, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. CONETTA. Well, I think one thing for sure, looking back, I

mean, this is not my area of expertise, how to feed productivity

growth. But one thing we can say for sure is that much of the

growth that we thought we had in the mid- and late 1990’s turned

out to be a castle of sand, which we are now paying for through

our debt. So we obviously need a different approach to how to feed

and stimulate our economy than the one that was present at that

time. It wasn’t just a government question. It was a question of

credit and wealth building in the country, as a whole. It was built

on speculation.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Conetta.

Mr. Frank, you are recognized.

Mr. FRANK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate this hearing.

And I thank all the witnesses.

We need a thoughtful, non-rancorous discussion about the appropriate mission, and I thank all the panelists for the spirit in which

we have it. That is the key issue: what should we be doing? What

is the policy we should be setting? And we have not had that conversation, and I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for providing this forum

for this continuing conversation.

I do want to add just one thing. I know there was a question

raised about who served in the military. I think we ought to be

very clear. Let me volunteer that I did not serve in the military.

I wasn’t wanted. I actually did try to line myself in once, but they

didn’t need me at the time in 1960, and then subsequently I guess

there is no point in trying to go where you are not wanted.

But the question of whether or not you served in the military is

very relevant to how we should conduct military operations. It is

not relevant to whether we should conduct particular operations.

That is what this is about. The mission is not about how you fight

a war. When we do put our people into war, then I want to be guided by their judgments and I want to give them all that we can.

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That is why war is very expensive for us, because you don’t send

our young people into war.

All of us here on this rostrum have had the terrible experience

of going to a funeral of a young man or woman killed in these

wars, and so that means you spend it. But whether or not you get

involved, no, that is not a matter of military expertise. We honor

the military’s expertise when they get engaged.

Second, I would say this. Dr. Schmitt, I was a little surprised to

hear you say that one of the big arguments for this is that is the

way it has always been, or for a long time, that there has been a

bipartisan consensus. Frankly, I had thought of the American Enterprise Institute as being somewhat more transformational in its

approach. The notion that because we had always done this in a

bipartisan way as one argument for continuing to do it I think is

mistaken. It would certainly argue against your suggestion that we

seriously alter entitlement policy. Social Security has an equally

long bipartisan history, and no one I know thinks that, frankly—

I mean, I think that is the kind of argument people throw in that

doesn’t really motivate them, whether that is the way it has always

been.

But I would ask you, Dr. Schmitt, in terms of your view that the

military has been denied funding it should have ideally gotten,

what in the last 10 years or so would be examples of where we

were unable to accomplish a valid national security goal because

we lacked the military resources to do it?

Dr. SCHMITT. I think we have been able to accomplish those

goals, but it has been extremely close run. Let me give you an example when it comes to, for example, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mr. FRANK. All right. I appreciate it, but you suggested to me

that there was a shortfall.

Dr. SCHMITT. There is.

Mr. FRANK. Yes.

Dr. SCHMITT. There is a shortfall, which others can talk to here

as well as I can. There is a shortfall in replacing, recapitalizing

the——

Mr. FRANK. OK, but I asked you a specific question. We have

paid no price for that yet.

Dr. SCHMITT. We have paid no price for that yet.

Mr. FRANK. OK. I would say, in my view, I can find some resources, the Iraqi situation. Frankly, I think it almost doesn’t

honor fully the military goal. I am told we are going to keep 50,000

troops in there, but they are not going to be combat troops.

First of all, I think there is some fudging there, because they do,

I think shooting and being shot at, I don’t know how you define

combat, but it does seem to me the people there are doing that.

Continuing to keep people there makes no sense to me, but that

is an example. If you leave the mission as it is, then you can argue

for more.

I also wanted to comment on another important point that was

made, Gordon Adams made, and others. Here I think some of my

liberal friends may be a little bit inconsistent in over-emphasizing

the extent to which you can reduce spending by simply getting rid

of fraud, waste, and abuse. There has never been a budget item I

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have seen that said fraud, waste, and abuse which you could zero

out.

We talk about fat. Metaphors mislead us. Yes, there is fat in

every human enterprise, and especially in some public enterprises,

but it is not layered, it is marbled. You can’t just slice it off at the

edges. It is deeply involved. That is why I do believe that the most

effective way to enforce efficiency is to put limits on spending, not

flat caps, but to let people know there are limits, because imposing

efficiency from the outside is very difficult. Incentivizing efficiencies from within is what happens.

I think one of our problems has been that the Pentagon has in

general and the national security has in general been less subject

to budgetary discipline, and because less subject to budgetary discipline less efficient.

Just one last question, again for Dr. Schmitt. I think we are

over-extended. I would ask you to evaluate, because clearly the

missions you talk about, oil from the Persian Gulf, it doesn’t just

come to the United States. In fact, we get more of our oil, I think,

from other places. Do you believe that our wealthy western European allies are contributing sufficiently to the common purposes

that we have?

Dr. SCHMITT. No.

Mr. FRANK. What can we do to do that? I think here is the problem. I agree with that. Well, no is a very good answer. Not everybody has to hedge everything around here. But the point is this:

I think we are the enablers of that. There was a very interesting

article in the New York Times a month ago about how the Europeans were able to afford more in some areas of their budget because we carry them.

What would you think we should do if you agree that they are

not doing enough? Is there anything we can do to get them to do

more, because clearly if they did more couldn’t we do less?

Dr. SCHMITT. Yes, we could do less, but I would add that they

are doing quite a bit. There are tens of thousands of allied troops

in Afghanistan that have——

Mr. FRANK. Excuse me. How many NATO, non-American troops

are in Afghanistan?

Dr. SCHMITT. Thirty-five thousand, forty thousand.

Mr. FRANK. Compared to what of us?

Dr. SCHMITT. Fifty thousand now, up to——

Mr. FRANK. And in Iraq?

Dr. SCHMITT. In Iraq, originally about a third of the force——

Mr. FRANK. Originally, but you said first that you don’t think

they were doing enough.

Dr. SCHMITT. Let me be clear: yes, the allies could do more. I

have my doubts that if we reduce our posture in the world and reduce our own budget substantially, as the task force suggests, that

we will, in fact, get more from our allies.

Mr. FRANK. Let me ask you that, though, because I think that,

I mean, what do you know that they don’t know? After all, excuse

me, I want to phrase this question. There is, you say, a common

purpose with our European allies. There are missions that have to

be accomplished, fighting terrorism. I wish you could fight terrorism with nuclear submarines, because then we would win, because

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we have more nuclear submarines than they have. Unfortunately,

I don’t think that much of what we spend helps us. I don’t think

the political part is a lack of ordnance, a lack of weaponry.

But, given that they have the same interests we have, why, if we

did it with less, would they not do more? Would they say, oh, well,

Persian Gulf, can’t get the ships out, tough? Why would they not

be incentivized if we stopped carrying them to do some more?

Dr. SCHMITT. There are free rider problems with the allies, but

it is not as severe as sometimes people say. I repeat that if we cut

back our forces, it is not as though, because of their own budget,

the way they have handled their own budgets, toward which we

are heading, they have less flexibility for actually increasing defense.

Mr. FRANK. Are they dumb? Would they endanger the shipping

lanes, the Persian Gulf, the Straits of Morocco or whatever that I

hear about? I mean, are they suicidal, the Europeans? Why would

they not want to defend themselves if we stopped, cut back?

Dr. SCHMITT. Secretary Gates made the point a few months ago,

talking about the NATO strategic review, and he said unless the

NATO partners begin to up the ante in terms of defense spending

the strategic review won’t be worth the paper that it is written on.

I agree with that. I am just saying——

Mr. FRANK. Would you add a threat that we would withdraw

somewhat from western Europe to let them do some more on their

own?

Dr. SCHMITT. No. We have withdrawn from western Europe. The

amount of troops that we have there is fairly minimal. It is there

for logistics and for use because logistics is easier to go from Europe to the Middle East than——

Mr. FRANK. Let me ask you one last question. The 15,000 Marines on Okinawa, which, of course, destabilized the Japanese Government by our insisting on them, I have assumed, and I think we

should have sea power and air power available with regard to the

People’s Republic of China. Is there a contemplation that we are

going to use 15,000 Marines in any kind of land war involving the

People’s Republic of China?

Dr. SCHMITT. No, probably not, when it comes to the land war

with China, but the expectations, those troops are there to be able

to be deployed in Korea, possibly in a conflict in the Taiwan Strait,

and elsewhere.

Mr. FRANK. Well, the Taiwan Strait is——

Dr. SCHMITT. If I could——

Mr. FRANK. Excuse me. A conflict in the Taiwan Strait would be

with whom?

Dr. SCHMITT. With China and Taiwan.

Mr. FRANK. OK. Seems to me the notion that we are going to use

Marines in any kind of combat with China is, I think they are

there for some kind of political reason to reassure the Japanese,

keep the Japanese from spending money, and I think 65 years after

World War II ended it is time for the Japanese military budget to

become realistic.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Frank.

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I want to thank you and Mr. Paul and the others who were instrumental in having this organization do the report that gave us

such a good platform to have this discussion. I thank all of you for

participating.

I would allow everybody to ask another question or two if they

want on that, primarily so I can ask the one that I want to on that.

One of the beauties of being Chair, I guess.

Can any of you—and let’s just go down the line—can any of you

tell me the number of bases that the United States has overseas,

and consequently the number of military personnel that we have

in those bases?

Mr. Conetta.

Mr. CONETTA. I would say 873, but the number is probably

wrong. It is an old number. It has changed a lot because of building

in central Asia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. It is a number to start with.

It is also important to recognize that much of that number are really small installations. The number of major bases is much smaller,

though it is growing.

In terms of total numbers of people we have overseas, active duty

military is in the vicinity of 350,000 divided now not quite equally.

More are engaged in the CENTCOM area, Iraq and Afghanistan.

The rest are pretty much tied down in Asia and Europe. And that

is just the active component. I think it is probably around 45,000

more reservists who are overseas supporting them. So all told we

have over 350,000 overseas.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

Mr. Friedman.

Mr. FRIEDMAN. Well, I was going to please Congressman Frank

and just say no, I don’t know the answer off the top of my head.

Mr. TIERNEY. OK.

Mr. FRIEDMAN. He knows more than me.

Mr. TIERNEY. That is acceptable.

Mr. TIERNEY. Dr. Adams.

Dr. ADAMS. What Mr. Conetta said is about the right number.

Mr. TIERNEY. OK. I ask that question because we have been

working for about 8 months now with the Department of Defense

trying to get those answers and they don’t have them, so it is interesting that you can tell me the number of bases you think and the

number of personnel, because we have gone around and around in

charts and paths. We bring it up here and wind it, paper the wall.

Mr. CONETTA. I can only tell you a wrong number.

Mr. TIERNEY. It starts with what is the definition of a base? It

is the installation? All the installations, satellite? The number of

countries that they are in is astounding, and some of those countries—I think we had an interesting time finding what the heck is

our national security interest in having troops in a base in that

particular location.

It is a conversation we want to have on this group, but it is one

that is very difficult to start until you get the facts on that, and

the facts are so difficult to get from the entity that should have

them. It should disturb us all on that. It makes you wonder how

they can budget and control for those people on those bases and

those materials that are in all those places.

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I think that is part of it. All this theory that we are talking

about is very interesting.

Dr. Schmitt, I was interested in the colloquy between you and

Mr. Frank, but part of it would be much better informed if we really knew how many bases were overseas and where they were. It

would be fair to you and fair to Mr. Frank to actually have a discussion and be able to point out, well, this one has some significance and this one doesn’t. But the fact that we can’t even begin

to identify where all these people are and then try to figure out

what is their impact on our national security interests and how do

they play into it and are they essential or not is sort of incredible

on that.

Do any of you have any comments that you want to make as we

wrap this up, something that you want to leave us with that we

may not have covered and should have into or gone into in more

depth? We will go left to right if it is OK with you, Mr. Friedman.

Mr. Conetta.

Mr. CONETTA. I wanted to underscore what I think is probably

the small amount but real amount of consensus that we have discussed as a panel. I think we all agree that it is worthwhile going

after problems of waste and trying to improve the efficiency of the

Pentagon. I think we all agree that is important. I think we also

all agree that it is relatively small peanuts, that if you are looking

for big savings it becomes a question of affecting missions and

structures, though we obviously don’t all agree that would be a

wise thing to do.

This pertains especially to Secretary Gates’ efforts now to achieve as much as $100 billion savings from reductions in infrastructure and efficiency. It may cast some doubt on whether that

is possible. But I think we have identified the notion that if you

really want to have big savings, it is going to have to be structured,

though we don’t all agree that is the thing to do.

One step forward possibly for our thinking in that area is this:

we all know what the input is to our military machine. It is dollars.

But we seldom speak in terms of what the output is. We sometimes

say that the output is structure, which would mean tactical units,

or we might, as a proxy for that, say the output is trained individuals. But actually that is not the output in either case. The real

output is military power. If we pay attention to the change in our

military power, which is not a question of how many ships we

have, how many people or planes we have; it really is a more complicated equation than that.

I think we would conclude that, in fact, our military is much

more powerful today, although considerably smaller, than it was

during the end of the cold war. And that may help our thinking

about can we reduce and where can we reduce.

Mr. FRIEDMAN. Just two small points. Dr. Schmitt mentioned a

couple of times the $300 billion in cuts that came from procurement programs that Secretary Gates canceled. That is true, but

those programs were mostly replaced with other programs. So,

while there was savings, they went right back into other procurement for the most part, and in this year, the procurement budget

rose significantly. So it is not as if we have been cutting the procurement budget. We have not.

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And then, second, with regard to this question I never served in

the military, sure, I never served, but when I talk to people from

the military I get the sense that they kind of like the idea of doing

less and having achievable missions rather than really difficult nation-building goals. I think there is actually a large well of support

within the military for the kind of thing that I was talking about

in my testimony.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. Mr. Harrison.

Mr. HARRISON. I would just add that I did serve in the military.

I don’t know that it qualifies me any more to speak about these

matters than the other gentlemen at this table.

But my final note, I would just caution that, as we are going

through this budget situation over the next several years, we do

run the risk of optimizing our force for the wrong type of conflict.

Right now Secretary Gates has put a lot of emphasis on optimizing

the force for counter-insurgency warfare. We run the risk that 10

years from now, once we are out of Iraq, Afghanistan, that the Nation is not likely to want to get into a situation like that for a long

time when you have a military that is optimized for the wrong type

of conflict.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. If I can just interrupt for 1 second, Mr.

Harrison, I think you hit something on the head. I get constantly

asked the question about whether or not this administration or the

last administration or any of these people that promote the

counter-insurgency theory are intent on doing that in Somalia,

Sudan, Yemen, the other areas, is that their intention and goal.

That is one of the things that we have to look at. I think Dr.

Adams mentioned that.

Dr. Schmitt.

Dr. SCHMITT. Well, certainly you should look at it. I mean, I actually think we have been fairly discreet in some cases. I mean, we

have not jumped into every conflict or every place of instability. I

think actually some of the military has done a pretty good job of

prioritizing where they have to be.

Just two points. One is, and this could be sort of read different

ways, but I think the report, when you actually look at it, is probably more sanguine from my point of view about after these wars,

about the Middle East, and it is more sanguine about the military

balance in east Asia than I would be comfortable with.

I think the trend lines in east Asia are not good. It is something

that we are going to have to deal with, and it is going to be costly

to deal with it, because the way to deal with it, because it is the

Pacific and the Indian Ocean, are fairly significant and costly platforms.

Again, I think Todd is right. There is an emphasis on today’s

wars. Maybe that is what has to be done. But there is stuff coming

down the road that is going to be difficult for us to deal with.

The second thing is I would say that there is kind of an expectation that Iraq and Afghanistan are these one-offs and that we won’t

be doing that in the future. That may be the case. Maybe we will

decide that is the case. But I would just say that both Democrat

and Republican administrations have been involved in wars in the

Middle East now for 20 years, and so I would say that if history

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tell us anything, the likely trend line is that we are not going to

be out of that area any time soon.

Mr. TIERNEY. As in we never learn, I guess.

Dr. Adams.

Dr. ADAMS. Four points, I think.

One, I congratulate you on going down this road, because it tries

to marry up the problems that we have economically at home and

in terms of the Federal budget with how we approach our national

defense.

No. 2, as we go down that road, as you in Congress go down that

road, dealing with the reality that to get an agreement everything

has to be on the table is a good principle.

No. 3, efficiencies clearly are not enough, and I think you have

a fair amount of consensus on the panel in that regard that efficiencies aren’t going to get it, and Secretary Gates’ ambition right

now probably falls short of what you are going to have to deal with.

And, fourthly, I want to underline that the discussion that we

have on this issue, and it is understandable because it is the subject of this particular hearing, all too often falls into the box of saying what should the military be, what should the military do, how

should the military behave. We don’t have enough conversations

about what are the purposes of American statecraft and what is

the role of the military in that broader engagement globally in

dealing with the broader set of challenges.

I heard Dr. Schmitt say just a moment ago, and maybe he

misspoke, but to say the military does a pretty good job of

prioritizing where it should be. Well, it is not the military’s job to

prioritize where it should be. It is the national security policy apparatus, the White House, the Congress, the civilian agencies, all of

whom need to be engaged in that decision, and ultimately it is the

Congress and the President’s decision about where the military

should be engaged or not engaged.

I dig his principle, though. There are lots of areas where we don’t

have a stake, and defining policies as we defined them today puts

us at risk of being in areas where we don’t have a stake. I wouldn’t

use Afghanistan and Iraq as the proxy here for what else we may

do. In both cases those were wars of choice. Those were not necessary interventions; they were wars of choice. We chose to go in

and remove a regime in Afghanistan. And you can support it or disagree with it, but it was a choice. We chose to go in and depose

a regime in Iraq. And in both cases, we ended up inheriting responsibilities for a whole array of functions that we have asked the

military to do. I think it is very debatable that we are going to go

into those kinds of situations again at any point in the near future.

Mr. TIERNEY. I would hope so. I would hope it is debatable.

Interestingly enough, we had a conference not too long ago about

northern Africa, Algeria and Libya and Morocco and places like

that, and one of the general consensus—and these were Members

of the Senate and the House and both parties—the real question

at the end became what is our interest there. I don’t think we ask

that question enough. What is our interest there, and who else

might have an interest that ought to be taking the lead as opposed

to us so that we don’t have to do that everywhere all the time.

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Let me again just say how much I appreciate all of your written

testimony and your time spent here, your expertise today. I think

you have helped us embark on a conversation that I hope continues. I think it is a valuable one for us to have. I hope it bleeds into

some of the other committees both here and in the Senate on that

and the American public. I think it is important, so thank you very,

very much.

The meeting is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 11:58 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

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