Our live capitol hill coverage continues tomorrow with the confirmation hearing for the next defense secretary, ashton carter. Live coverage of the senator Armed Services committee will get underway tomorrow on cspan3 starting at 9 30 a. M. Eastern. This sunday on q and a, david brooks columnist for the the New York Times on writing an article for the times and the awards he gives out at the end of the year. The sidney awards. Sidney awards are given for the best magazine essays of the yeesh, and they can be in journals or Something Like the new yorker or the atlantic. And the idea is they always come out about that christmas week. And the idea is thats a good week to step back and not read little instant stuff, tweets, not even read newspaper articles. But to step back and read something deeper and longer. And its to celebrate those longer pieces. I do believe magazines changed history. The new republican until its recent destruction was the most influence political magazine of the 21
That a couple of things that we were told, specifically by the Service Members is that theres theyre concerned about the service to their country and the gi bill. Those are two things that were very important to them in terms of why they would come in, what they were looking for. Get an education benefit, be able to take advantage of that, which is a strong recruiting tool, and then move on to something else. Very good. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you all for being here. I guess this would be to anybody who wants to answer the question. But my thing is, is that its a very difficult position youre being put into and we all are because i dont think anyone questions the commitment the Service People and all people in military have to the United States of america. I know in West Virginia we feel very strongly about that, people willing to take a bullet. Ive always been able to explain when i was governor, when they would explain or complain about whether it be o
That i think the point needs to be made here is if you look at where we are, for example, the president s budget which was just submitted, by 2021, what we are paying in interest will exceed the defense budget. As i look at the work that you have done on the Bipartisan Commission and we look at what the biggest drivers in our debt are overall, looking at the bigbudget, mandatory spending, programs that we need to have similar looks at medicare, Social Security, very important programs to people, i appreciate that you have done all this work. We are looking at our military stepping forward first and making many changes. I think we need to look across the entire budget, ytoo. Where we are, we are going in 2016 two defense budget, only 3. 1 of gdp and 14. 3 of federal spending, which is the bottom of historic rates since 1950. The reason i want to put that in perspective in the big picture for everyone, we look at the sacrifices that our men and women in uniform make. This separation from
The undersecretary can do better justice than i can. There are classified and unclassified elements to it. I would say we are talking about pretty far down the road. Not as an alternative to the joint Strike Fighter but what follows the joint Strike Fighter i dont think there is a conflict between it. I was mr. Kendalls battle buddy. You know what he says. It is be on fighter aircraft. It is how to dominate in air combat. There is a whole list of things about driving and developing technology for 15 to 40 years down the future. If we dont do that today, we will not stay ahead of our potential adversaries. Thank you. I have a question about strategy and the challenge posed by emerging china. Can you tell us anything about in this project the strategy . The specific strategy . We dont use a budget exhibit which may be why you asked that describes which items are part of the strategy in which are not. Let me describe some of the major things that have been consistent in our budget. We fir
Forward. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Say to my good friend steve that i used to sit next on on the House Armed Services committee that i agree with you except im more concerned with todays war than i am with the war after next. Right now is when were having the problems that were having and we had a hearing last week. We had schlesinger, george schultz, madeline albright. And they reminisced over what our abilities were, capabilities at that time, what is expected and even read the charge that president reagan had made at one time in determining what a Defense Budget should be and the reason im saying this is i look and i agree with senator reid who talked about the inadequacy in meeting the threats. I agree that director clapper when he says looking back over my more than half century in intelligence, ive not experienced a time when we have been beset by more crises and threats around the globe than we are right now. That and in light of the fact that we a