Welcome to brookings. As you know, i had the privilege and honor of welcoming back to brookings chairman mack thornberry, from the 13th district of texas to discuss matters of defense policy, budget and many other subjects under the sun. He is the chairman of the Armed Service committee. A texan who goes back to ranting in the 13th district as far back as 1881, probably wondering what he was doing on a rainy washington dealing with the federal budget when he couldve been back home in the texas springtime but we are grateful for your service. We are both grateful for being here today. Its a momentous time in American Foreign policy and defense policy and we will get quickly to matters of the Defense Budget, defense spending and where the entire debate may go with tomorrows release of the president s budget and congress gearing up in its normal hearing steering on the subject. Just to get us energized on a good monday morning if you could please join me in welcoming the chairman to brookings commack. [applause] before we get to the budget, could you summarize your acquisition reform bill . You had a couple headlines and one additional aspect to my question might be that i remember last year when you are here and elsewhere talking about your efforts with senator mccain and last years acquisition reform, a lot of what you emphasized was, if it saves money, thats nice but most important thing is to get technology to the war fighter quickly and efficiently. I know that remains your driving concern. I was also struck that you are trying to help the taxpayer with reforms and efficiencies that make save money. Looking at contractors, looking hard at various kinds of requirements, logistic matters and how we purchase regular supplies, i wonder if you could explain the latest reform proposals in the context of how you think about acquisition reform. Sure. Maybe ill start abroad with a bit of context as you alluded. I think, as far as commerce is monthly when it comes to National Defense these days, we essentially have two mac. One is to help rebuild the military and second, reform to help the military be more agile and innovated. The budget, larger, deals with the rebuild. What you spend money on and et cetera. On the agility side, we face a world with the widest array of complex challenges, we have ever faced. And a world where technology moves and adversaries can direct, investments, capabilities at a much faster pace than they ever have before. All of that requires us to be more agile and thats the reason acquisition reform is so important. As you point out, it is about hitting the best our country can provide into the hands of the war fighter in a timely way. We owe them that. A lot of what weve done in the past two years has focused on the big acquisition programs, planes, carriers and all of that. This years bills focuses, as you mentioned, more on that day to day source of things. So, probably the thing that will resonate the easiest with folks is one of the reforms we propose is to allow dod to buy things are commercially online, like on amazon Business Division and several other competitors like that. You have two choices that you can go off the gsa schedule which cost more and which Many Companies have decided they are not going to participate in because of the requirements. You can go to that contracting process which takes forever and you have to do the beds and all that sort of stuff. None of which is the definition of agility. So, one of the things is to allow dod folks to go by commercially, offtheshelf items, online on these online portals. We also try to update the audit, the way that companies are audited on the costs they incur. This one basically starts bringing in privatesector Audit Companies to do some of this job, its happening in other agencies, it ought to be able to happen in the dod. Two more, right quick. 70 of the lifecycle cost of programs are unsustainable. Not at the beginning, its on everything that it takes to keep it operating over its lifetime yet, we dont Pay Attention to that. We buy the cheapest thing that we will get the job done at the beginning, one of the changes is to require you can serve the same cost from the getgo. Then the other one, as you mentioned, Service Contracts of all the things that dod contracts four, 53 of it is services. Attend not weapons and agreements. Yet, if you ask dod, what are you spending the money on . And lots of other logical questions, they cannot answer it. This year bill we will try to get our arms around the Service Contracting that dod does with an eye towards making it yes, more efficient but also more agile. There are other things but those are some. Excellent. We want to come back to this topic and as you know, will have a conversation for a bit longer and then go to your questions but let me move on, if i could, to the Defense Budget. I think we have slides up that are showing some of what youve presented and proposed. Even if they dont come up, for whatever reason, let me summarize what i understand to be the state of play with your proposal. As we all know, President Trump has proposed a quote unquote 54 billiondollar increase in the Defense Budget for 2018. That is measured against the sea frustration level but lets say president obamas level was a more reasonable benchmark, as were slideshows, its only about a 20 billion increase which is real money but only, you know, the of the Defense Budget overall. What you are now suggesting is that President Trumps proposal is not enough and you want to add roughly another 37 billion to what he suggested and i wondered if you could, partly because our technology is failing here, but layout a little bit about the major components of that additional 37 billion would be and then maybe we can talk a little bit about each of them. Sure. Again, a little bit of context. Last year, as House Republicans were putting together an agenda to run on, the speaker asked our committee to look at what we think needs to be spent on defense. What would it take to repair the damage that has been done from eight years of crs, five years of the budget control act, high operational tempo, all of these things that have accumulated so his charge to us, okay, lets figure out what it would take, President Trump is elected and he starts talking about a specific size navy et cetera. So, what we did was to say how much money would accomplish the goals that President Trump has set forward but could be responsibly spent, we believe, in fiscal year 2018. Thats where we end up at 640 billion. I think, the budget the administration will propose is roughly 3 more than what president obama had suggested for this year. Its roughly a 5 increase over current year funding so, i think it is fair to say basically the obama approach with a little bit more but not much. What the difference . We tried to lay that out and this shows some broad categori categories, air dominance for example, is ten. Dot billion dollars over what president obama suggested. That is a broad labels. Its not just more airplanes, includes the maintenance and operations, the training that is required for us to go against high and adversaries like russia and china which we have not done so much of in recent years. Thats the reason you see these categories. Some of it are bringing our Ground Forces up to date and some of it is Ballistic Missile defense. If i were to look at this today, looking at whats happening with north korea, im not sure we put enough into missiledefense both increasing the number of interceptors and current systems. Are we willing to forgo with a different level of budget. I think we have to be concrete about it. The men and women on the front lines will have their life affected by what were not fixing by the new capability were not getting or whatever choice were making. We need to make a more concrete. And thats usually how this debate evolves. This is the base of budget and does not include war costs. Were talking about the base budget for the department of it defense and then the department of energy. The 640 billion you would recommend what have additional 60 billion in overseas contingency. Is that a ballpark . I think all of the s estimate is 65 billion and operating and we can get into more discussion about that. This is under budget categories the account which includes the nsa and department of energy and some other things. Its not all straggly pentagon. This is not trying to change the longstanding practice of putting base cost in the oak oh account. In other words theres some people have been trying to say we been trying to take some of those were cost in overseas contingency budget many of which are based budget related to put them back in the base. You dont have enough money to do that,. It does not accomplish that goal. I think thats a worthwhile conversation to have. What concerns me is if there is just transfers into the base budget and people call it a defense increase, it will not be accurate. It will not tell you the facts that you have not increased anything overall you just change the label on the money. Its worthwhile conversation to have mainly because putting base rate requirements makes it very difficult to plan and means that the money is not spent as efficiently as it could be. And we bank come very contingent upon that. That proposal youre offering is designed to fun things that we know we can actually do reasonably well and reasonably short order. Is this also consistent with the candidate trump vision of roughly a 350 ship maybe now and to increase the size of the old and also getting back to is that the vision behind this . Yes. I just want to be clear that you cannot accomplish these goals in a budget or two. It takes time. The general has told us her example that it takes ten years and 10 million to grow a fighter pilot. Therefores today was roughly 1500 pilots short. You cannot snap your fingers and then open the Training Pipeline up big enough to fix those problems. This takes time. One other point on that, earlier this year we had the vice chiefs who testified about the state of our military. One of the points that general wilson, vice chief of the air force made is that air force pilots today are receiving fewer training hours in the cockpit than they did during the whole military of the 1970s. That was my reaction. I went back and looked, we all know about the military of the 70s. Nobody would suggest that we have equivalent problems with people and so forth. But, there are a remarkable number of parallels between the damage done today and the damage done then. What did it take to get out of that . The last year jimmy carters administration was a 15 increase in defense funding. President rankin comes in has a 17 . And then an 18 , and then the next year 13 . And then three more years of 10 . That is what it took to overcome the neglect and damage done in the 1970s to our military. That sort of context helps us with the siphon duration of what sort of repair work is needed for the problems we have created. By the way, i have noticed in recent weeks for example aviation week and Space Technology article there was more data about which aircraft have which Mission Capable rates. Do we need to get more that date into the public . I know theres a tension between classification concerns and not wanting to tipoff adversaries and also tried to be specific about the defense needs. How should we handle that . Ive been pushing for more openness. Frankly, i have had some debate about the leadership of the pentagon about this. They are concerned about telling our theres too much about what our problems are. My focus be more politically than theirs is to get the Political Support we need to have the rebuilding like they did in the 80s, we are going to have to be more explicit about it. I will say, when you have things that happened last month, you had a fair number pilots go on strike because they believe the aircraft they were being asked of lies not safe. It does help wake people up little bit. We have had a number of classified briefings with my committee. I think the more people know about the facts, the more urgent fixing this problem becomes. Let me look at one more example about readiness problems which is, army brigade combat teams. For the last two or three budgets the army has been saying it wants to send roughly one third of their combat teams per year to the Training Center to do the full three week long exercises that are the combination. While think that if we have been trying to find that for two or three years and are doing one third of the brigades per year, we would be starting to catch up. Apparently we are not. The army is still talking today in the same kind of dire tones that was two or three years ago about the state of readiness, the lack of proper full unit training and exercising. What is going on . Is it because of the continuing resolution and other problems that impede the army from carrying out plans even if the lines of getting close to the amount of money requested. Cindspending 600 billion a yeas not chump change. Why cant they catch up . I think youre right for part of it. We have not been spending money efficiently. Certainly for units to rotate through the national Training Center you have to plan. Part of the reason i believe the readiness problems are deeper than most of us have realized is just like we are cannibalizing parts of a plans to keep other planes flying, and parts of a ships, we are cannibalizing army units in order to make those that we are sending on deployments full. So you talk to the commanders about this, part of their challenges they never have their full units. They have people coming and going all of the time. If they have a chance to go to the national Training Center, they come back and a bunch of the people are taken away and plugged into other units. So they have lost the benefit. General millie says what he is looking for to increase the number of people in the army is not to increase the course structure is to plug the holes so that you can keep units together. And keep units training together is what is required to go against more sophisticated adversaries. There is a number of other examples where our people are so good when he send them off on a mission they will accomplish that mission. If you look at the cost, the damage that is done to accomplish that Mission Weather mechanics working virtually aroundtheclock or cannibalization, that is part of the reason im convinced the damage is deeper than we understand. Warmer part of the readiness debate should be thinking of how we do deployments differently in some cases . Not that it will solve anything by itself without more money. Were going to pull in now, we still have a brigade in korea and is generally unaccompanied and rotated, its a strain on the army. We start considering some of these deployments to be permanent. I think so. We have asked for a study just on cost of permanent presence in Eastern Europe versus a rotation. That is just dollars. What we are talking about is the human toll on families and elsewhere. I think we ought to look at those options. Part of the reasons we ought to look at them is to show our commitment to allies in various parts of the world. Part of it is strain on the force and then we need to evaluate. I dont know what the cost data will show. Im not convinced it is tremendously cheaper to rotate a bunch of units through rather than have a permanent presence. It strikes me that 340 billion plus were cost is a lot of money in one sense but still only about 3. 5 of gdp. Is that about right . I think thats in the ballpark. Way below 4 still. One of the most revealing charts one can see is percentage of gdp overtime that we have spent on defense. What you see is the reagan bump but then it has been plummeting. My last question and then will open things up. Of course, this is the inevitable question because everything sounds a reasonable were talking about in defense only term but then how do we pay for it . Were seen discussion about President Trump wants to cut the state department and foreign assistant accounts and leave aside domestic issues that will be controversy. People are saying that it is doa on capitol hill because of some of these cuts. Im not suggesting you want to get into this and every detail today but i do wonder if there are certain principles you would at least counsel us to bear in mind as we think about how to pay for these needed increases. I was a principle number one is the first job of government is to fund at to fun defend the country. So the first part of taxpayer dollars ought to go to that. Then Everything Else is secondary. That is where i start. Focusing more the budget, we have to keep in contact the two thirds of the federal budget are entitlement or mandatory spending programs. Now for defense we are at 14. 7 of the federal budget. Needless to say, we are not going to fix our budget problems by cutting or even curtailing the 14 while ignoring the 66 plus that is mandatory. I think we have an opportunity, i realize this will sound pollyanna, there are some big issues people are looking it. For example more state flexibility in medicaid. If are coming from texas is different from new hampshire. There are opportunity there. Tax reform is in play. The big moving pieces are being discussed. That gives us an opportunity to put a Little Common sense into this discussion. What happened . I dont know. Will politics trump Everything Else . I dont know. We have an opportunity if we can get people of goodwill on both sides to sit down and look at these big moving pieces. We can put defense and Everything Else on a better track. Excellent. I have one question for later which is going to be about thinking more about longerterm innovation. As you point out, some of the current debate is emphasizing the nearterm readiness. Well get some of the questions and now. Will start in the third row. Please wait for microphone. Please identify yourself. Good morning. Thank you for the event. My question is about if you can talk about how important the reforms are for Cyber Security . When youre talking about opening up the bidding process for example for new Innovative Companies and not having to be so rigid. How would that appeal to other companies who might want to be involved . May be reaching out to Silicon Valley for example. How are you thinking about that . I think shes jumping ahead. Just to clarify one thing. On being able to go online to my commercial i dont, we allow the pentagon to decide which commercial items can be bought. For example, if you are buying laptops or software that is going to be plugged into sensitive systems, then there has to be some checks there. The pentagon will be able to decide which commercial offtheshelf items are appropriate to be bought commercially in that way. The broader point is, we absolutely have to help the pentagon be more userfriendly for companies to do business with. One of my concerns, and that is part of the reason we have reforms that are in their, is that more and more commercial companies are saying it is not worth doing business with the pentagon anymore. Too much of a hassle for many reasons. Im not going to do it. Once upon a time a lot of innovation in this country happened in government labs, there still innovation that occurs there. More innovation occurs in the private sector. So to defend this country we have to make a possible, desirable, more attractive for all of that innovation that goes on in the private sector to be brought into the defense world. That is exactly what i hope one of the effects of the acquisition reform we have been working on the last couple of years will do. Hello. I see that you identify 1. 1 billion and offended medical do you give details on that . One of the key things our troops have come to expect, and i think we expect it for them, is to be within one hour of receiving medical care if they are injured on the battlefield. It is called the golden hour. He start looking at a variety of operations around the world, what it takes to maintain that golden hour, it requires more investment. So, that is one of those things that i think we absolutely have to maintain and it does require more money. Hello. Im with breaking defense. I left a question, but more rudely because thats my role. Your roller your personality . Im just kidding. Thats a good point. On your one hand you say the new administration is wanting to shake up discussions about entitlements and move obstacles to any budget change including Defense Budgets. On the other hand, we have a president to his seemingly to shoot himself in the foot on a regular basis. Your budget coming up very late, possibly with no numbers. A very skinny budget coming out earlier. It seems like while there might be more room for an upside there is also more room on the downside possibly for both extremes. Just having lived in d. C. For a while, my gut is that things will get worse rather than better. So, what is the best scenario you can see . Was the worst case of good luck and where do you think the odds why . As president bush said in a different context, dont be guilty of the soft bigotry of low expectations. Which, i understand you can point to past failures and said this is never going to happen, they will never get their act together. Even some of my colleagues are saying we are in for a yearlong cr. Thats our mindset, well bring it to pass. I think thats a mistake. I cannot tell you what will happen. But i can tell you is that there is widespread agreement i believe in both parties that we have cut defense too much. We are roughly 20 below what it was in 2010. Let me just a few of the number such you just a backup for second. If you look back at what were spending now versus 2000, our Defense Budget has gone up about 40 . Over the same time the chinese Defense Budget has increased four times. The russians about three times. And just in context, we spend three times as much in medicaid today as we did during bill clintons time. So, that is where the growth has been. It is been a mandatory spending and with our adversaries. It has not been with our Defense Budget. We are paying the price for. My job is to describe what i think is necessary to fix the problem. To try to be as effective an advocate as i can be for the men and women who were risked their lives on the front lines to keep us safe. So that is what im going to do. I cannot tell you how the washington games will play out. What i can tell you is we have some real damage that needs to be repaired and are adversaries are not sitting still. To do this, do we need a repeal or reformulation of the budget controller . Its not the only way. You can keep adding oco to get to whatever number you want. But thats not good way. We are to say the budget control act was designed to bring mandatory spending under control. Its a complete failure. We ought to repeal it and try something else. But five years of this, 50 of the cuts under the budget control act have been afflicted on 14. 7 of the budget. It didnt work. I am luisa, con president of a small government contractor. Thank you for talking with us today. My question is about Small Business. I recently saw an interview where you referred to mid tier. Mid tier is really a term that is being thrown around which means inadvertently the acquisition system currently punishes Small Businesses for success. As soon as they pop out of the Small Business with a small Small Business, they are big but they are not big. So the Small Businesses in the mid tier groups are some of the most innovative places. Can you address the subject and what you see for the future of trying to help the situation . First, completely agree with your premise. That much of the innovation going on today is with small and Midsize Companies. Now, cannot defy how many employees are revenue that is, but the point is there is a lot of innovation that goes on at the big five but there is a ton of innovation especially for Future Systems that goes on with Smaller Companies. And, should the big Defense Companies will be able to adjust whatever regulations is they put out. It is really difficult for Smaller Companies to be able to do that. So i have talked to a number of companies who will put in bids for something they dont hear an answer for, for a few years. How are they supposed to keep the doors open while theyre waiting to get a response to the bids they put in. That is part of the reason i keep focused on this idea of agility. We have to be faster making decisions. Faster in developing and filled a new capability. Is small and Midsize Companies will be crucial for that. , retired army an independent consultant. What is your view of the president s directive as it affects by american and slowing the requirements down to second and third tier. Can we expect to see anything in the nda for fy 18 along those lines . Back to the detail, on my commercial office shelf were similar portals, we leave in place the current requirements such as the by america and so forth. I think there are several aspects to this issue. One of which is it is harder to figure out what is in a Global Supply chain and what is made in the United States and what is not. The other aspect to the issues there can certainly be implants of various kinds for equipment and it is a challenge for us to know. The equipment that we are fielding is the bug free for lack of a better expression. We are never going to be able to be on either extreme of this. The world is too complex. We have to have mitigation strategies, but none of that can slow us down. Again, the worst thing is to lack the agility we were talking about. Good morning. Im a retired air force. Im very familiar with issues of cannibalization and maintainers. My question has to do with last year in the house Armed Services committee voted to include women and Selective Service act. It passed in the house committee, however it went to the floor and to not pass. It passed readily in the senate to be included in the nda a. Over talking about Workforce Development and over 50 of the population is women, we are sending a real negative recruiting signal to women that they are wanted in the military and why doesnt the house rectify this . All of the military chiefs have said it should be done. Thats another question and another us with the budget control act, why dont we just consider an updated situation . I disagree with you that that is a message that is being sent to women, big cause of the Selective Service. I think the messages, we need to step back and assess whether we need Selective Service or not. Then, if we decide we do to consider who should register. But you shouldnt get to the second and third tier questions before you answer the first. The first is, what is the role of any of Selective Service in todays world. That was really the reason it came out like it did rather than jump to a second conclusion. Lets step back and we have appointed a commission that is supposed to look at all aspects of this. Well see what they say. So the giraffe ended 73 and in many respects the all volunteer army has been an incredible success. One of the big reasons i say the problems we face today are many ways different than what we faced in the 70s is because of the success of an all volunteer force. It seems appropriate that however many years later we take a look and say is it needed and just one bit of context, depending on his estimate to hear Something Like 70 of the Eligible Age Group are not fit for military service for a variety of reasons. All of that social contacts and military need should be looked at in the broader sense before we get to the other. I dont know whether it will happen or not, if it can help us get to a better more logical budget approach on for any of it. Certainly what we have done in the past three years is not working. I want to build on this question and ask you how we think about the state of the military in Society Today and how many people are willing to consider joining and how we address the question. We go through ebbs and flows in our national debate, is it becoming an institution that most people are glad to have but dont want to be part of themselves, certain coastal elites dont provide that. I wonder if you see that issue is a toptier issue at the moment. You mention 70 of all the demographic is considered not eligible. Should we try to change that in some way . Maybe you can imagine preboot camp where people sign up and join the military if they complete the phys ed boot camp. You can imagine letting people go out of the military come back and more easily. You can imagine a campaign for National Service in which we tried to send a message to those who are eligible therell be encouragement appreciation and benefits if they join the military or some other service. Do we need a big debate on that rain . Was a good to grade are one of those books that is urgent, important and in different quadrants. I think its important, dont think its urgent. But i think we need to keep our eye on the issue. I have been sympathetic with the idea of National Service. Could we do it other countries have a requirement that everybody spend a year to in some form of National Service . Were a long way politically from that. I think it would have a lot of benefits. At the same time, im not sure i can for see us going back to the warfare that takes millions of people on the battlefield. That gets back into do we need a draft to drop them off the farms and factories and go through boot camp and send them over the beaches . Is that something we need to have contingency plans for . Im not sure. I do think the Civil Military relationship is important. One of the book secretary mattis edited was just at that particular point. And a side note, we talk about and theres a lot of ways to evaluate it, its an interesting thing not discussed much. If you reduce the number of communities that have military bases near them, how does that affect the relationship between civilian sector in the military, or does it . It may so i think we need to keep ra on changes in society and its involving military with more specialists and highly trained folks in higher demands of the people who serve to keep that healthy. I dont think we can take that for granted. Thank you so go on the seventh row and work back. Thank you. My question is insecurity and prevention. Is there any budget place for only wanting modernization for readiness to any motto for, air land and maritime . Would you speak about how current are we on the system . Im not sure i understood the question. Early warning on nuclear matters. Yes is if you a conventional strike how current are we on the Early Warning system here at home . Well you have the Intelligence Community and you have a number of systems in the military that are designed to help provide Early Warning especially for Missile Launch or for other kinds of indicators that we may need to keep on top of. The whole Nuclear Enterprise from Early Warning to delivering strike has been neglected for 30 plus years. It is the foundation of have an incredible Nuclear Deterrent is the Foundation Upon which the rest of our defense efforts rests. Part of what you see and what we need to do in the future is to modernize every aspect from the Warning System and nuclear commandandcontrol to Delivery System and the warheads themselves. But i will just say, in addition to that we have to have a backup the Intelligence Community has suffered just as the department of defense has suffered over eight years. Its not just missiles flying through the air that we have to worry about, submarines and all sorts of threats. Having a robust Intelligence Community is essential to warn against all sorts of things. Maybe nuclear, maybe biological, maybe chemical or some other sort. Thank you so much. Mr. Chama, im interested in your thoughts, later this week the un is having meetings with defense ministers and then therell been native defense as well. Im interested in your thoughts on multilateralism engagement in the u. S. And various institutions and particularly on nato the president called it obsolete, not sure if you still think that. What is your view on the role of our nato allies in the Un Peacekeeping . I think nato has been the most successful lines in history. I think the more recent comments the president is certainly folks in his administration have made reaffirm the importance of nato. I think there president s has had a positive effect on encouraging nato allies to increase their contribution to natos defense efforts. I read in the press that there will be an announcement related to that in the next few days as the president is in europe. All of that is good. I come at this very simply, we cant do everything that needs to be done in the world. We have to have friends and allies. Part of the concerns i have heard the most in recent years is that its very hard to be a friend, as i have a variety of defense ministers of Foreign Ministers and ambassadors that i try to travel a bit so i think we have to be a better friend. Certainly thats true nato, is true in asia is true all around the world. One small example, we have friends who want to come by weapons and equipment from us willing to pay cash and we make it very difficult for them. Improving our ability to sell much less to provide weapons and equipment to friends who as they become more capable can take some Responsibility Office is one thing were looking at as part of the dod portion of it as one example i think there is a place for you and peacekeeping. There are limits to what the un will or can do. But there is a place for in the world. You are going to be challenged to get above the 603 billiondollar topline. The president has requested that much. The House Appropriations Committee Said she can defend the 640 number but not unless something falls from heaven will it happen. Will your bill mark to 640 or somewhere in the middle . I dont know. Is on the table . We havent decided what number we will mark two. But this goes back to what were talking about the soft bigotry of low expectation. I know people are somewhat cynical and theres a lot of reason to be. But, i think first is the job of the military to help her pose what they think is needed for them to execute the missions their order. Then it falls to us to make those decisions. We ought to bear the responsibility of those. Ive been concerned that the military has not been willing to stand up and say this is what it needs. The hedge their bets because either pressure they feel or think from the leadership. So i worry that we start hedging our bets at the beginning and then where you end up is way down here where is the real need we lose sight of. My focus is what is the need and then well have a discussion among the house about where we are with the budget process where the mark out to be an take it stepbystep. Its important to say that if you want to do these things this is what it takes. If youre not going to do it at that level you have to be really clear and bear the responsibility for the things you are not doing and the capabilities he will leave off and the repairs you will not carry through. Last year the gao report found significant Food Insecurity among currently serving military families and called for cooperation between dod to quantify the expense of the problem in addition partners of ours have stated that there is at least one food pantry on every naval and marine base in the u. S. We talked about entitlement programs and needing more, snap is an entitlement program, how do you propose to address the issue that some of our military are going hungry and how does that fit in with the need for readiness and effective defense . People are most important element of any countries, certainly our National Defense. We have to have paying benefits that are appropriate for the most important part of your National Defense. We have asked for Additional Information on these issues as we have looked at it in past years it turns out your eligibility for snap is dependent upon the number people in your household. You get some military families that are relatively low rank with that many kids and they absolutely can be eligible for food stamps. But we have to focus on is making sure anybody who serves in the military has the pan benefits that are appropriate for someone who is willing to intern risk their lives for all of us. There shouldnt be anyone who falls into that category. Its more the focus of treating our people right. One of the big things weve had for years as youll remember, according to the formula the military pay raise should be a certain amount. President obama ever your head at lower. Last year we required it to be at the level the formula said which i think was 2. 1 . Were not talking gigantic money. That is finally what was enacted but it was the exception. Every year before it is been whittled away at least half a percent and so forth. Help run a better track. Not only and how much people get paid but ensuring the benefits meet their needs. Weve had commissary reform with had tri care reform on the healthcare side, we have instituted a retirement system which changes the 20 year or nothing approach the military has had for so long, trying to update all of the benefits to be more appropriate for the times we live in has been something we have persisted in. I will take the last question go back to shortterm versus longterm. I know youre thinking about all of our National Needs across different domains and certainly a pushed acquisition reform with a mind towards promoting innovation my question is less about your priorities that about the nations and whether we are capable of addressing nearterm crisis and also keeping our eye on the longerterm ball. As we see problems how do we make sure we think longerterm about everything from Cyber Threats that make our military forces vulnerable to serious hacking space satellites and other capabilities that might be vulnerable to be taken down and taking advantage of robotics and Artificial Intelligence. Are you comfortable that were at a fairly good path with some of these things are is there some kind of added impetus to give to those thoughts as well. If i were comfortable i would be doing the reforms that we have i visited a number of Small Midsize companies and robotics among other areas, they describe for me how difficult it is to try to do business. Last week we had testimony from the eight oh nine panel. One of the witnesses was an executive fry robot and he described how he went to meet with wall street and they advised him to get out of the defense because of all the hassles it was not worth the return et cetera and they did. So now theres a couple of spinoffs in boston for people who were part of that company but thats whats worries me. Theres tremendous innovation and capability, the challenge we face is bringing it into the pennanpentagon and defense prog. So more stable budgets, more flexibility and funding because some of the rigidity of the funding categories makes it harder but the difficulty in doing business with the federal government all of those are key to help feed those things in as well as the approach we have laid out on acquisition which is Modular Systems you can make improvements as time goes on. There is also a significant part of the future that are policy decisions, cyber what we expect the military to do to defend the country in cyberspace. How comfortable are we with Unmanned Systems that have lethal capability and how do you deal with that . What are the limits to which were comfortable with Artificial Intelligence sorts of things. Many issues that are out there that we need to be talking about but in order to have those options we have to have an acquisition system that pushes acquisition more. One of the big restructurings we did last year was to have a new undersecretary to focus on innovation. There are offices that are workarounds that are doing some good things that we have to bring the whole system up several levels in order to accomplish what we need to. Thats a great place to finish. Please join me in thanking our chairman. [applause] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] tonight on the communicators, Carol Mcsweeney of the federal trade commission talks about key issues facing the internet including the recent Malware Cyber attack on 150 countries, internet security, privacy, and regulations. She is interviewed by a reporter david mccabe. Reggie save the greatest challenges are with policing this new landscape of devices . I challenges i was going to be keeping up with the new ways in which technology is being used to survey a, monitor or gather information about people. As the connections become more connected in our bedrooms and on our bodies and giving precise information out about us i think it becomes more important to protect that consensus so people are aware of whats happening to their information. Watch tonight and cspan2 at eight eastern. Cspans washington journal, live every day with new some policy issues that impact too. Coming up on tuesday morning, former senator discusses his book a limiting the power of the federal government. Then democratic congressman al gray on his recent call to impeach President Trump. Michael kirk will join us to talk about his new pbs frontline film about white house chief strategist, steve bannon. Watch washington journal, live at 7 00 a. M. Eastern on tuesday morning. During the discussion. The senate is out for the night but earlier today members confirmed the nomination of our governor, Terry Branstad to be the next u. S. Ambassador to china, 82 13. Those who voted against the governor were democrats. Tomorrow, debate continues on the nomination of John Sullivan to be deputy secretary of state. With a voter advance that nomination scheduled for 11 00 a. M. Eastern. Last week, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee unanimously reported mr. Sullivan favorably to the full senate for consideration. Follow the senate live on cspan2 when members return tomorrow at 10 00 a. M. Eastern. Tomorrow, testimony from former cia director, john brennan on the investigation into russia as possible hacking of the 2016 president ial election and possible ties to the trump campaign. He will speak in front of house intelligence committee, live 10 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan three. Never let anyone define you. That is the first lesson i want to leave you with. Only you define who you are, only you. Are hard should be open not just falling in love, but to the world. We need to look, we need to ca care, and we need to contribute. Dont ever let anyone tell you that your dreams are silly. If you have to look back at your life, regret the things that you did and not what you did not do. Nothing stay still. Things will change. The question for you is whether and how you will participate in the process of creating change . Just if you pass commencement speeches from the cspan video library. Watch more of this year speeches on saturday, may 27, monday, ma3 on cspan and cspan. Org. Last week, british Prime Minister teresa may launch a Party Selection agenda and Campaign Rally in the england. This is 40 minutes. [applause]
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