And then an examination of the culture and lives of africanamericans during world war i. There was a real year of conflict when africanamericans came home. They were welcome in their home communities. In terms of reforming how americans thought about race relations, i dont think it did. It didnt have the impact that africanamericans hoped it would. The story of Abigail Scott dunaway, an oregon pioneer and Political Rights activist t. Shes an example of one of the really great diaries. She describes whats happening between the people, she describes troubles that happen. She describes the landscape and the scenery and its clear i mean, you get a pretty good inkling here that shes a pretty good writer. That skill served her well later on in her career. Here, wayne morris from oregon. He was a bit of a curmudgeon. He was a man of high principle and if you didnt have the same level of principles and integrity as he did, he would be vocal about that. He was very critical of other senators. He stood his ground. He couldnt compromise sometimes. So i think at times people were trying to move him adoan long and were frustrated in the end. But he is well known for his integrity. Watch saturday at noon eastern on cspan 2s book tv and sunday at 2 00 on American History tv on cspan3. Working with our cable 568 yats and visiting cities across the country. On sunday, author and journalist matt tie ebi will be our guest. If you grow up looking at thousands of thousands of faces until you see that one face that was put on earth just for you and you fall in love in that moment rges for me, trump was like that except it was the opposite. When i first saw him on the campaign trail, i thought this is a person whos unique, horrible, and amazing, terrible characteristics were put on earth, you know, specifically for me to appreciate or unappreciate or whatever the verb is. Because i had really been spending a lot of the last 10 to 12 years, without knowing it, preparing for donald trump to happen. Hes a contributor Rolling Stone magazine and is author of several books. His most recent book insane clown president diswatches from the 2016 circus during our live threehour conversation well take your questions on mr. Tiabbis literary career live from noon to 3 00 p. M. Eastern sunday. House Armed ServicesCommittee Chair matt thorn bury worked down with michael othan ly lynn. Good morning, everyone and welcome to brookings. Im in the Foreign Policy program. As you know i have the privilege and honor of welcoming back chairman thorn berry to discuss matters of defense, policy and other subjects under the sun. Hes the chairman of the house Armed Services committee, the first texan ever to have that role, in fact, and a texan whose family goes back to ranching in 1881. Probably wonder what hes doing in rainy washington when he could have been back home in the texas springtime. Were both grateful for you all being here today. Were going to get quickly to meters of the Defense Budget, defense spending and where the entire debate may go with the release of the president s budget tomorrow. I thought just to get us energized on a good monday morning if you can please join me in welcoming the chairman to the brookings. Applause i thought i could ask you to summarize your reform bill last week, any couple or three headlines that you wanted to make off that and one additional aspect to my question might be, i remember when you were here talking about your efforts are senator mccain and others on last years acquisition form. A lot of whether what you emphasized is look, if it saves money, thats nice but the biggest goal is to get information quickly. Im struck that youre trying to help the taxpayer with reforms and efficiencies that may save money looking hard at contractors, looking hard at theirs kinds of requirements, Logistics Matters and how we purchase regular supplies. I wonldered if you could explain the latest reform proposal in the context of how you think about acquisition reform. Sure. And maybe ill start broad with a bit of context as you alluded. I think as far as congresss responsibilities when it comes to National Defense these days, we essentially have two. One is to help rebuild the military and the second is reform to help the military be more agile and innovative. The budget largely deals with the rebuild, what you spend money on, etc. On the agility side, we face a world with the wayest array of complex challenges we have ever faced and where a world where technology moves and adversaries can direct investments and capabilities at a much faster pace than they ever have before. All of that requires us to be more agile and thats the reason i think acquisition reform is so important. As you point out, it is about getting 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 and carriers and all of that. This years bill focuses, as you mentioned, more on the daytoday sorts 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 on commercially online like on amazon business to business. And there are several other competitors like that. So now youve got two choices. You can go off the gsa schedule, which costs more and which Many Companies have decided theyre not going to participate in because of the requirements. You can go through that contracting process, which takes forever and you got to do the bids and all of that sort of stuff. None of which is the definition of agility. So one of the things is to allow dod folks to go buy commercially off the shelf items online on these online portals. We also try to update the audit, the way that companies are audited on the costs they incur. Theres lots of different sorts of audits at dod but this one basic starts bringing in private sector Accounting Firms to do the jobs. 70 of the live cycle costs of programs are on sustainment. Not on buying it at the beginning. Its on everything it takes to keep it operating over its lifetime. Yet we dont really Pay Attention to that. We just fwie cheapest thing that will get the job done. One of the things is youre required to consider containment costings from the getgo. The other, as you mentioned, Service Contracts of all the things that dod contracts for, 53 of it is services, knots weapons and equipment. And yet if you ask dod, what are you spending this money on and lots of other logical questions, they cannot answer it. So this years bill, we try to get our arms around the Service Contracting that dod does with an eye towards making it more efficient and more agile in the future. There are other things, but those are a few. I know a lot of people h may want to come back to this conversation in a little bit. Let me prove on to the Defense Budget. I think weve got slides up showing some of what youve presented and proposed. But even if they dont come up for whatever reason, let me quickly summarize what i think to be the state of your proposal. As we all know President Trump has proposed a quote unquote 54 billion increase in the Defense Budget but thats measured against the sequestration level. So president obamas level is only about a 20 billion increase, which is real money but only a few percent of the Defense Budget overall. And 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 i think our technology is failing here, but lay out a little bit of what the major components of that money would be and we could talk a little about each of them. Le. Again, just allittle bit of context. Last year as House Republicans were putting together an agenda to ruj 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, a high operational tempo, all of these sl accumulated, so his charge to us was ok, lets figure out what it would take. President trump is elected. He starts talking about a specific size navy, etc. , so what we did was to say how much money would ak polish the goals that President Trump has set forward but could be responsibly spent, we believe, in fiscal year 2008 . And thats where we end up at 640 billion. I think that the budget that 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 its basically the obama approach with a little bit more but not much. Whats the difference . We tried to lay that out and i think this showed some broad categories. Air dominance, for example, is about 10 billion above what president obama had suggested. That is these are kind of broad labels. Thats not just more airplanes. That includes the maintenance and the operations, the training thats required for us to go against highend adversaries like russia, china, which we have not done so much of in recent years. So thats the reason you see these categories there. Some of it is are bringing our Ground Forces up to date. Some of it is Ballistic Missile defense, if i were to look at this today, looking at whats happened with north korea im not sure weve put enough into missile defense, both increasing the number of interseptemberors in current systems which are woefully short and other research into other kinds of systems that hopefully will be more effective and cost effective. Im not sure we put enough into munitions, by the way. There was a little bit in the bill that just passed. We put some here but we have some significant munitions shortages in various items if you look at it. But thats the reason that there are these categories. Im afraid when we talk about budgets we get into these numbers games and say, oh, this number, that number, throw them around. What we lose sight of is what those numbers mean and which capabilities are we willing to forgo with a different level of budget. I think we have to be concrete about that, because 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 choices we make. We need to make it more concrete rather than a, ok, 640, 660, well split the difference. Just to underscore and thank you for putting the slide up. This is the base budget. This does not include war costs, right . Were talking about Nuclear Weapons activities in the department of energy but the 640 billion you would recommend would then have an additional 60 billion in contingence costs. Is that for ballpark yes. I have think most have 65 billion for operating in the oco account. Youre absolutely correct. This is under budget categories the 05 account which includes things thats not all strictly pentagon. This is not trying to change the longstanding practice of putting some base costs in the oco account. Some say what we should try to do is take all those quote unquote war costs in the operations budget, many of which are no base budget related and fry and do proper budgeting and put them back in the base. You dont have enough money to do that, right . It does not accomplish that goal. It does not accomplish that goal. I think thats a worth while conversation to have. What concerns me is if theres just transfers from the oco into the budget and people call it a defense increase, it will not be accurate. Its will not tell you the facts which is youre really havent increased anything at all. Youve just changed the label on the money. I think its a worth while conversation to have, mainly because putting base requirements into oco makes it very difficult to plan and means the money is not spent as officially as it could be and yet we have become very dependent upon that for years to get around the budget control act. The proposal youre offering, as you said, is designed to fund things we know we can actually do reasonably fwhel reasonably short order. Is it also fair to say that this is consistent with the candidate trump vision of roughly a 350ship navy now, dr. Gold fines proposal to get the army back to 540,000 or so active duty soldiers. Are those the four Structure Goals behind this . Yes. I just want to be clear, though, you cannot accomplish those goals in a budget or two. Right. It takes time. General goldstein has told us, for example, it takes 10 years and 10 million are dollars to grow a fighter pilot. The air force today is roughly 1500 pilots short. You cannot snap your fingers and then and open the Training Pipeline up big enough to fix all of those problems. This takes time. And i if i can make 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. So that was my reaction. So i went back and looked. Ok. We all know about the hollow military of the 70s. Nobody would suggest that we have kwif lent problems with people and so forth. But there are a remarkable number of parallels between what we the damage done today and the damage that was done then. What did it take to get out of that . The last year jimmy carters administration was a 15 increase in defense spending. President reagan comes in and has 17 . The next year 18 . The next year a 13 . Then three more years of 10 . Thats what it took to overcome the neglect and damage done in the 1970s to our military. And i think that sort of context kind of helps us with the size and the duration of what sort of repair work is needed for the problems that we have created. By the way, ive noticed that in recent weeks, for example, in an aviation week in Space Technology article last week there was more data about which aircraft have which Mission Capable rates. Do you think we need to get more of that material into the public . I know there are concerns not wanting to tip off adversaries but trying to be specific about the defense needs. How do you think we should handle that . Ive been pushing for more openness. Frankly, ive had some debates with the leadership in the pentagon about this. Because they are concerned about telling our adversaries too much about what our problems are. My focus being more political admittedly than theirs is to get the Political Support we need to have the sort of rebuilding like they did in the 80s, were going to have to be more explicit about that. Now, i will say when you have things like happened last month, you had a fair number of pilots go on strike because they believe the aircraft they were being asked to fly were not safe. It helps wake people up a little bit. I think but weve had a number of classified briefings with my committee and i think the more people know about the facts, the more urgent fixing this problem becomes. Let me bore onin on one other thing, army bringing aid teams. For the last couple of budgets, the army hack saying it wanted to send a third a year to do the full unit three week long exercises and training that are sort of the culmination. One would think that if weve tried to fund that twor two or three years and wed be doing apparently the army is still talking today in the same kind of dire toeps that it was two or three years ago, at least to my ear, about the state of readiness, the lack of proper full unit training and exercising. So whats going on . Is it because of all these continuing resolutions and other problems that imfeed army from carrying out its plans even if it winds up getting close to the amount of money requested . We have been spending 600 Million Dollars a year. Thats not chump change. Why hasnt the army begun to catch up . I think youre right in part of it. We have not been spending money efficient lib and certainly for units to rotate through the National Training center, you have to plan for that and we havent been doing well on this. Most of us have realize that just like were cannibalizing parts off planes, cannibalizing parts off ships, we are cannibalizing army units to make those we send on deployments full. You talk to the commanders about is this. Part of their college is they never had their full units. You have these people coming and going all the dime. So if they have a chance to go to the National Training center, they come back, a bunch of their people are taken away and plugged into other units and so theyve lost a lot of that bet. General millie says the key what hes looking for to increase the number of people in the army is not to increase flush structure. Its to plug the holes so that you can keep units together and units training together is whats required to go against these more sophisticated adversaries. So we i think thats and theres a number of other examples where is our people are so good when you send them off on a mission, they will accomplish that mission. But fundamental you look at the damage thats done to accomplish that mission, whether its mechanics working virtually around the clock, thats why im convinced that the damage is deeper than we understand. Should wuchtd things be thinking about how we do forward deployments differently in some places . Not that its going to solve anything without money but we still have that bringing aid in korea and its generally unaccompanied and its rotated. Its a strain on the army. Could we start considering some of these i think so. We have asked an a study just on cost at least of permanent presence in europe versus rotation. Thats just dollars. What were talking ability is the human toll on families and elsewhere. I think we ought to look at those options. Part of the within we ought to look at them is to show our commitment to allies in various parts of the world but 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 that it is tremendously cheaper to rotate a bunch of units through rather than have that permanent presence. By the way, it strikes me. This 640 billion plus the work costs, its a lot of money in one respect but its about 23. 5 bdp. Is that what yall think . Its way below 4 still. I think one of the most revealing charts is percentage of gdp over time weve spend on defense. Its been plummeting since then. To my last question and then well open things up. This is the inevitable questions but then theres the question how do we pay for its. And were seeing increasing discussion about President Trump wants to cut the state department, wants to cut foreign assistance accounts, leave aside foreigndomestic things. The president es budget is doa on capitol hill. Im not sugging that you want to get into this in every nittygritty detail today but i do wonder if there are certain principles that you would counsel us as we need to find a way to pay for these budget increases. Well, the number one answer should be obvious. The soldier is assigned to froektd country. They ought to go to that purpose and then Everything Else is secondary. So i guess thats the principle where i start. Focussing more on the budget, we got to just keep in context twothirds of the federal budget are entitlement of maunld tore spending programs. Now for with 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 66plus percent that is mandatory. I think we have an opportunity, and i realize this will sound poly annaish but there are some big entitlements that people are talking about reform, not only to save money but to help people receive Better Benefits from it. For example, more state flexion ability on medicaid. If youre coming from texas, lot different from new hampshire. So theres opportunity there. Tax reform is in play. So the big moving pieces are being discussed and that gives us an opportunity to put a little bit of common sense into this discussion. It happen . I dont know. Will politics trump Everything Else . I dont know. But we have an opportunity if we can get people of good will on both sides to sit down and look at these big moving pieces. We can put defense and Everything Else on a better track. Le. Excellent. Ive got one question which is going to be thinking about longer term innovation. Youve touched on that earlier but some of the current debate is focussing. But ill save that and get some others in now. Well start on the third row and please wait for a microphone and please identify yourself before posting your question to the chairman. Hello, back from the morning. Thanks for doing the event. My question is about whether you can talk a little bit about how important these reforms are for cyber security, when youre talking about opening up the bidding process, for example, to sort of new innovative companies, not having it be so rigid. Couldcan you talk about how that would appeal to other companies who want to be involved, maybe reaching out to silicone valley, for example. How are thinking about that . I think shes jumping ahead to your question a little bit. Let me clarify one thing. On the being able to go on line to buy commercial items, we allow the pentagon to decide which commercial items can be bought. So, for example, if you are buying laptops or software thats going to be plugged in to sensitive systems, then there has to be some checks there. So my point, the pentagon will be able to decide which commercial off the shelf items are appropriate to be bought commercially in that way. But the broader point is we absolutely have to help the pentagon be more userfriendly for companies to do business with. One of my concerned and thats part of the reason we have a lot of the reforms that are in there is that more and more commercial companies are saying its not worth doing business with the pentagon anymore, too much of a hassle for a variety of reasons, and im not going to do it. Once upon a time, a lot of innovation in this country happened in government labs. Theres still innovation that occurs there. More and more innovation occurs in the private sector. In order to defend this country we have to make it possible, desirable, more attractive for all of that innovation that goes on in the private sector to be brought in to the defense world. And so that is exactly what i hope one of the effects of the acquisition reform that weve been working on the last couple of years will do. Here in the thit row. Well work our way up and back. Hi. Ellen, schnapps sis newsletter. I see you identify is. 1 good dollars in unfunded medical requirements. Can you give any details on that . Well, one of the key things our troops have come to expect and i think we expect it for them is to be within an hour of receiving medical care if they are injured on the battle field. Its called the golden hour. You start looking at a variety of operations around the world, what it takes to maintain that golden hour and it requires some more investment. So that is one of those things that i think we absolutely have to maintain and it does require some more money. So thats part of it. Sidney here in the front row. Well work our way back. Hi. Sidney freed berg, breaking defense. Chairman, to save ask mikes questions but more rudely, because thats my role, but we have your role or your personality . Im just kidding. These a good point. Its your role. I mean, on the whaund, as you say, the new administration is allowing people to shake up discussion about entitlements and so forth. Because its sort of fixed immovable obstacles to any budget change. On the other hand, weve got a president who is, you know, seeming to shoot himself in the foot on a regular bases. Youve got budget coming out very late, possibly with no fight up numbers. So it seems like while there might be more room for an up side and great progress, theres also room on the downside, possibly both extremes are greater. Just having lived in d. C. For a while, my gut is that things will get worse rather than better. So what are the whats the best scenario you can see, best plausible scenario . Whats the worst case of gridlock and where do you think the odds lie . 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 say, oh, this is never going to happen, theyre never going to get their act together, even some of my colleagues are saying, ok, were in for a year of long cr. If thats our mind set, then we will bring it to pass and i think thats a mistake. I cant tell you what will happen what i can tell you is that there is widespread agreement, i believe, in both parties that we have cut defense too much. Were roughly 20 below what it was in 2010. Let me just throw a couple other numbers at you just to back up for a second. If you look back for what were spending now versus 2000, before 9 11, our defense junlt budget has gone up about 40 . Over that same period, the chinese budget has increased four times. The russians, about three times. And just in a bit of context, we extend three times as much on medicaid today on medicaid today as we did during bill clintons time. Thats where the growth has been, in mandatory spending and with our adversaries. It has not been with our Defense Budget. And we are paying a price for it. So my job is to describe what i think it is necessary to fix the problems. And to try to be as effective an advocate as i can be for the men and women who risk their lives on the front lines to keep up safe. Thats what i am going to do. I cant tell you how the washington games will play out. But i can tell you we have some not just needs, but real damage that needs to be repaired and our adversaries are not sitting still. Building on his excellent question, do we need a repeal or reformulation of the budget control act . You can keep adding oco to get to whatever number you want to. In my opinion, ought to say the budget control act was designed to bring mandatory spending under control. It is a complete failure. We ought to repeal it and try something else. As i say, five years of this, 50 of the cuts under the budget control act have been inflicted on now 14 of the budget. It hadnt worked. Thank you. Maam here in the fifth row. I am president of a small government contractor. My question is about Small Business. I recently saw an interview with you where you referred to mid tier. And mid tier is a really a term that is being thrown around which means that inadvertently the acquisition punishes Small Business for success. As soon as they pop out of the Small Business codes, they are big but not big. So i just, the Small Businesses and the mid tier group are some of the most innovative places. Can you address that subject and what you see for the future of trying to help that situation . Yeah. Well, first i completely agree with your premise. That much of the innovation that is going on today is with, i usually say small and mid size companies. Now i cant define how many employees or revenue that is. But the point is there is a lot of innovation that goes on at the big five. But a ton of innovation especially for Future Systems that goes on for Smaller Companies. And i am sure the big Defense Companies will be able to adjust to whatever regulations, dod puts out. They can hire more accountants, more lawyers, they can adjust. It is really difficult for Smaller Companies to be able to do that. And so, i have talked to a number of companies for example, that will put in bids for something. But they dont hear an answer for a couple of years. Now how are they supposed to keep the doors open while they are waiting to get a response to the bids they put in there. That is part of the reason i keep focus on this idea of agility. We have got to be faster. Faster at making decisions. Faster in developing and fielding new capability and small mid sized companies are going to be crucial for that. Was there a hand here . Gentleman in the red tie. Right here please. Retired army and independent consultant. What is your view of the president s directive as it affects buy american and flowing the requirements down second and third tier. And can we expect to see anything in the ndaa for fy 18 along those lines . Well, just back to a detail on my commercial off the shelf buy it on amazon business to business or similar portals, we leave in place the current requirements such as the buy america and so forth. I think there is obviously several aspects to this issue. One of which is it is harder and hard tore figu harder to figure out in a Global Supply chain what is made in the United States and what is not. The other aspect to the issue, of course, is that there can certainly be implants of various kinds in equipment. And it is a challenge for us to know that the equipment we are fielding is bug free for lack of a better expression. And so were never going to be able to be on either extreme of this, the world is just too complex. So we have to have mitigation strategies. But none of that can slow us down. Because again, the worst thing is to lack the sort of agility that we were just talking about, i think. Maam, here in the sixth row. Good morning. Margaret on air force retired. I am very familiar with issues of cannibalization and maintainers and the operating tempo. My question has to do with last year on the house Armed ServicesCommunity Voted to include women in the Selective Service act. And it passed in the house committee. However, then it went to the floor and it didnt pass. It passed readily in the senate to be included in the ndaa. When we are talking about Workforce Development and talking about over 50 of the population as women, we are sending a real negative recruiting signal to women that they arent wanted in the military and why doesnt the house rectify this . I mean, all of the military chiefs have requested that it be done. Anyway, that is one question. And another one is with the budget control act, why dont we just consider an updated simpsonbowls situation . I disagree with you that that is a message being sent to women because of the Selective Service. I think the message is we need to step back and assess whether we need Selective Service or not. And 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 question. And the first question is what is the role if any of Selective Service in todays world. And so that was really the reason that 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. Report back and we will see what they say. But so the draft ended what . 73 or Something Like that. And in many respects i think the all volunteer army has been an incredible success. One of the big reasons i say is that the problems we face today are in many reasons different from what we face in the seventies is because of the success we have had. Is Selective Service needed and just one bit of context, depending on whose estimates you hear, Something Like 70 of the age group of young people are not fit for military service for a variety of reasons. So all of that social context as well as military need, needs to be looked at in a broader sense. Why not another simpsonbowls or other name deal, i am for it. I dont know whether it will happen or not. If that can help us get to a better more logical budget approach, i am for any of that. Because certainly what we have done in the last few years has not been working. I want to build on this question if i could and ask you how we think about the state of the military and society today. And how many people are willing to consider joining. How we address that question. We sort of go through ebbs and flows in our National Debate as to whether or not enough people are thinking about joining the military. Certain coastal elites dont seem to provide a high percentage. And i wonder if you see this issue as a top tier issue at the moment. You mentioned that 70 of all of the demographic is not eligible. You could imagine things like pre boot camp where people sign up and join the military if they complete the physical education boot camp. You can imagine a campaign for National Service in, at least, we try to send a message to those that are eligible that there will be encouragement and appreciation and maybe some benefits if they join the military or other type of service. Do we need a big debate on that right now. Or is that a second tier issue. Was it good to grade or one of those books that has urgent, important, in different quadrants. I think it is important. I dont think it is urgent. But i do think we have to keep our eye on this issue. I have always been sympathetic with the idea of National Service. Could we do as some other countries have a requirement that everybody spend a year or two in some form of National Service, we are a long way politically from that. I think it would have a lot of enormous benefit. At the same time i am not sure i can foresee us ever going back to the kind of warfare that requires millions of people out on the battlefield which goes back to okay, do we need a draft that drafts them off the farms and factories and goes through boot camp and send them over the beaches. I do think this Civil Military relationship is important. One of the books that secretary mattis edited before he became secretary looked at that particular point. And side note, we talk a lot about iraq and there is a lot of ways to evaluate it. It is an interesting thing that is not discussed so much. If you significantly reduce the number of communities that has military basis near them how does that affect the relationship between civilian sector or the military. We need to keep our eye on changes in society and this evolving military with more and more specialist, more and more highly trained folks. You know, higher and higher demands on the people who serve. To keep that healthy. And i dont think we can take that for granted. Thank you. So go here in the seventh row and keep working back. The woman in the black suit. Thank you. Think tank group for nuclear policy. My question is in a security and prevention. Is there any budget placed for Early Warning modernization for readiness to any mode of war, air land and maritime. And would you speak about how current we are on the system. Thank you. Im not sure i understood the question. Early warning on Nuclear Matters primarily . For nuclear . Yes. In case we have a conventional strike, how current are we on the Early Warning system here at home . Well, you have obviously the Intelligence Community and you have a number of systems in the 4 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. I think the whole Nuclear Enterprise from Early Warning to actually delivering strike has been neglected for 30 plus years and is the Foundation Upon, having a Credible Nuclear Deterrent is the Foundation Upon which the rest of our defense efforts rest and so part of what you see and what we need to do in the future is to modernize every aspect from the Warning Systems to Nuclear Command and control to Delivery Systems to the war heads themselves. But i will just say in addition to that, we have to have let me back up. The Intelligence Community has suffered just as the department of defense has suffered over eight years of crs, five years of budget control acted, et cetera. So not just missiles flying through the air that we have to worry about. It is submarines and all sorts of threats and having a robust Intelligence Community is essential to warn against all sorts of threats and maybe nuclear, maybe biological, maybe chemical or some other sort. All the way back and then the gentleman across for the next question. Thank you so much. Mr. Chairman, i would be interested in your thoughts. Later this week the un is having meetings with defense ministers and then nato defense ministers as well. Thoughts on multilateralism and engagement of the u. S. Particularly with nato. The president called it obsolete. What is your view of the role of our nato allies and also the u. N. Peace keeping. I think the more recent comments the president and certainly folks in his administration have made reaffirm the importance of nato. I think the president has had a positive effect on encouraging nato allies to increase their contribution to nato defense efforts. And 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. So all of that is good. Again, i come at this i think pretty simply. We cant do everything that needs to be done in the world. We have to have friends and allies and part of the concerns i have heard the most in recent years is that it is really hard to be your friend. And as i have a variety of defense ministers and Foreign Ministers and ambassadors as i try to travel a bit. So i think we have to be a better friend. And certainly that is true in nato. Its true in asia. It is true all around the world. And just one small example. Weve got friends who want to come buy weapons and equipment from us. Willing to pay cash and we make it exkucruciatingly difficult f them. And increasing our ability to sell much less to provide is one of the things that we are looking at as far as the dod portion of it. As just one example. Obviously, i think there is a place for u. N. Peace keeping. You know, there are limits to what the u. N. Will or can do. And there is a place for it in the world we find. Yes, please. Hello, tony with inside defense. You are going to be challenged to get above the 600 billion tax law she can defend the 640 number but not unless something falls from heaven will it happen. Will your bill mark to s6 603 o s 640 . I know people are somewhat cynical and there is a lot of reason to be. But first it is the job of the military to help propose what they think is needed for them to execute the missions they are ordered. And then it falls to us to make those decisions. And we ought to bear the responsibility of those decisions. I have been concerned through the obama years that the military has not been willing to stand up and say this is what they need. They hedge their bets because of either pressure they feel or think from the leadership and so i worry that we start hedging our bets at the beginning. Then where you end up is way down here somewhere whereas the real need we lose sight of. So my focus is what is the need and then we will have a discussion in the house about where we are with the budget process. Where our mark ought to be and take it step by step. But i think it is important to say if you want to do these things, this is what it takes. And if you are not going to do that at that level, you have to be really clear and bear the responsibility for the things you are not doing. For the capabilities you will leave off. For the repairs you will not carry through. Yeah, here in the eighth or ninth row, i guess. Amanda with a jewish response to hunger. Last year a gao report sound significant serving military families and called for further cooperation with dod and usda to quantify the defense 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 fl flexibility. Snap, how do you address the issue that so many of our military are going hungry and how does that fit in with the need for readiness and effective military force. People are important elements of certainly our National Defense and we have to have pay and 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 your eligibility for snap depends on the number of people in your household. So low rank family with a bunch of kids and absolutely, they can be eligible for food stamps. I think what we have to focus on is making sure that anybody who serves in the military has the pay and benefits that are appropriate for someone who is willing to in turn risk their lives for all of us. And there shouldnt be anyone who falls into that category. But it is more, the focus of treating our people right. So one of the big things that we have had for years as you will remember, is according to the formula, the military pay raise should be a certain amount. President obama every year had it lower. Last year we required it to be at the level the formula said which is i think 2. 1 . And that is finally what is what was enacted. But it was the exception. Every year before it has been widdled away, at least, half a percent and so forth. I hope we are on a better track. Not only in how much people get paid but ensuring that the benefits meet their needs. And so we have had commissary reform last year. Tricare reform. Instituted a new retirement system which changes the 20 year or nothing approach. Trying to update all of these benefits to be more appropriate for the times we live in has been something that we just persisted in. So i am going to take the last question to now come back to this question of shortterm versus longterm. And i know you have been an advocate of thinking about all our national needs. And pushed a lot of acquisition reform. My question is less about your priorities than about the nations. And whether we are capable of addressing near term crisis but also keeping our eye on the longer term ball and as we see a lot of attention to the readiness problem which is understandable and essential, how do we make sure that we think longer term about everything from the Cyber Threats that the defense Science Board has said make serious hacking. Space satellites and other capabilities that may be vulnerable to being taken down quickly. Taking advantage of artificial intelligence. Are you comfortable we are at