A couple days of electing our chairs. Yesterday we approved 18 chairs which is pretty exciting. 3 contested races, following in the footsteps of the first woman to serve in that capacity. The chair of the Foreign Affairs committee, greg meeks of new york, another new yorker, elliott angle, and the chair of the ag committee, david scott from georgia, first africanamerican chosen to be the chair of the Agriculture Committee following in the footsteps of the leadership of colin peterson. Greg meeks also africanamerican, prehistoric woman, pretty contested races but throughout, women or people of color, more chairs to be announced but these were the ones that related to rules and budgets related to steering and policy committee, two of the speakers announcement that were made and others follow. We held the house, pulled the gap 132 of them starting with 18 that were chosen yesterday. I am excited, when they made their presentations over several days this week it was a demonstration of valu
Thanking our witnesses, secretary esper and chairman of the joint chiefs of staff milley for appearing before us to testify. The purpose of this hearing is to discussour policy in syria , particularly in light of the tevents that happened just a couple months ago in turkey when they invaded and drove the kurds out of portions of that but its our first hearing since congressman brendici has joined the committee. We have a lot of new faces but theyre not new faces anymore but its good to have another freshman added to the committee. I appreciate him serving, welcome. As i said the purpose of this hearing is to look into the events around syria and as a bunch of questions and the other big issue for us is just the ability of members of this committee toask questions directly of the key policymakers in an area that is of enormous importance and give them an opportunity to learn more about policy and also express their views and that is a huge part of our oversight role in congress and i th
Greater insight into it. No one expects that respects admiral syring more than i do. He is caught between imaginations of congress were read force them to take Critical Systems to pay for other Critical Systems and i think you would like to try to avoid that. But this is certain mr. Chairman our near adversaries are capable of attacking her critical space assets. This debate is no longer academic and the question now before this committee is what shall we do about it . These adversaries have taken note of the immense multiu. S. Force thomas provides our military and observed our space estimates. If we are to abandon future battlefields without a fight it will be our military who suffers the consequences as they find themselves cut off in fighting in an austere environment far from home. China has clearly demonstrated an operational direct antisatellite missile capability and proven data can reach from zero synchronous orbit to low orbit, earth orbit. Russia has also tested a direct dec