Transcripts For CSPAN2 Capital News Today 20130313

The state of texas defaulted to a federal exchange to the Kaiser Family foundation. Senator ted cruz, does he have to support this . Guest increasing support has been one of the interesting surprises. Theres a lot of stories about republicans whove lost their zeal for repeal and complete defunding because they understand the political reality. You see the effort by senator cruise and senator rubio who brings the profile to it and i believe senator mcconnell is on board. He came out with a strong statement saying we want to get rid of this law. These are reinvigorated effort. Host senator cruise is offering this amendment to the continuing resolution to keep it funny, which the senate is taking up today . Guest yes. Post a republican in gary, indiana, europe next. Caller i surgically speaking at first about a couple comments here about expenses and expenditures. I go to several. Yours and one of money current doctors they went to out of the Clear Blue Sky incentives see him every three months for medicaid, he wants me to come, not just me, every patient that comes in the door once a month for an office visit and to get on medication refill. Were talking about costs here. That will put the bottom out of the whole thing. I mean, what are people supposed to do . People dont understand it. I talked to people in the doctors office. Nobody has the same answers. A lot of the moneys going to come out of my pocket, the governments pocket. Where is the justification of this . Guest you know, i cant speak to monthly doctor visits, but the Affordable Care act, one of the things thinks the white house and president talk about his preventive visits better copay free. A certain number be to access and they hope that they visit your doctor for regular checkups, that actually reduces cost in the long run because people are getting things caught earlier. They are not waiting until the last decade to see someone. I cant speak to the specific situation, but the idea of regular visitors what they want to encourage. Host church as an independent. Bradford, massachusetts. Caller my question is i and my medicaid rate now. Does this make up the difference they do not pay linux guest there wont be much interaction between medicare. They will still operate on their assistance as medicare for 65 and up is typically people of their working age and because they are geared towards young people. They are the target if anyone until they are medicare eligible would be eligible for the exchange. Host are they paid for in some way for the Affordable Care act . Guest the states have been getting grants for a couple years now to set up exchanges. Tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of dollars to construct and exchanges. The setup costs are affected by sequestration to a degree, but experts everywhere say the white house is going to move dollars around, make sure the financing is in place to get the exchanges going. Host the Affordable Care act had a new tax put in it. Is that tax helping to pay for these exchanges . Guest not yet. The tax has been paid yet. Theres multiple taxes that took effect this year that does impact their expert patients this year. But the longterm tax down the road will pay for coverage expansion, which hasnt begun yet. Host dan, democrat until such, oklahoma. Host i have a union contract. So much of it goes to my wages. So much of it goes to my pension. So much of it goes to my Health Care Insurance and so much goes to humility. I have a really good package. What i hear about this Health Care Act is something im not sure it is. Maybe you could explain to me. What weve got to eca go out out in a year and i want these repair jobs and that 50,000 that year. This is just an example. Say that my Health Care Insurance is in my contract is valued at 15,000. While i have to pay taxes and 65,000 at the end of the year . Thats what i was sure have. Ill hang up that much to answer my question. Guest im not sure the Affordable Care act of love and there. If you have a private company to Purchase Health insurance for taxdeductible for your employer and what you pay towards your insurance is negotiated through the union with the employer. I cant speak to specific changes brought by the Affordable Care act, so i dont much of a difference there will be. Host i have heard the true cost of obamacare rather than the claims 900 billion will be 2. 7 trillion. Is this true . Guest there is endless debate about the real cost of the Affordable Care act days. You talk to the Congressional Budget Office and i talk about the deficit reducer over the long run because despite the expenses up front to get it going, there will ultimately be coverage to reduce pressure on things like medicare and other alleman the law touches. Republicans scream from the rooftops this law will break the bank even if your democrats say this isnt how we break the bank. We dont break the bank. Host independent in hague, north dakota. Caller yes, sir. My name is joe frank. A few questions if you can explain to me. You were just talking about breaking the bank. We lost our dad when i was 12 years old. One brother nine months old, my mother was 34. She never took a dollar from the government. We have Three Sisters and we stuck it out. Ive been paying Health Insurance are hoping my mothers and spent 12 years old is when i bought my first callous or earned them. And now im 75 and im an educator. They say medicare is breaking the bank and my wife and i have 12,607 a year for our medicare. You tell me, sir, why that should be breaking the bank because everybody has to pay that man or why we even take these medicaid patients along. Did they pay their Hospital Insurance all their life . I understand these people that cant work for mentally ill or something, but we are protect dean this country, sir. I think you explain that to me. Guest its interesting point you make. I think theres a debate going on, the state level and state houses about who should be eligible for medicaid. Should we really make an effort to get people who are employed on medicaid but cant afford Health Insurance versus people on holy and looking for a hand out. The debate is happening around the country on that. In fact, in florida yesterday they had a lengthy debate on this or they mentioned about 70 of people who are medicaid eligible are employed. They wanted to emphasize the point to show a lot of people who do seek medicaid are hardworking people who cant make ends meet and afford health care. Under point i medicare, it is to get medicare cost is slow. You can see this is breaking the bank as much as it must be a entitlement costs look like they could be a major budget buster down the road and are driving project deficits. That is why theyre looking for a solution there, too. Host out of the debate of expanding medicaid fit into this conversation . Guest exchanges are for people above the medicaid special. If you leave the lowest income people in the states are eligible for medicaid. Under the Affordable Care act, states have the choice to expand to people earning up to 138 of the poverty level, roughly 16,000. Still a very low income residents. I think the goal of the Affordable Care act was lets cover as many people as possible. That said this horrible population to utilize this health care the most enough for the lease. Host what did the Supreme Court decided this expansion . Guest this is why battles are played in the states. Washington cant force states to expand medicaid with the threat of saying if you dont do this will pull your medicaid funds. Every states biggest side in this medicaid. If you lose your medicaid funds, every state is pretty much broke. What the court said was states can expand medicaid, but washington cant hold this hammer if you dont have funding. This is not a state of choice in the last year or so to say are we going to expand medicaid are not . Host they spent eight or so governors who have agreed to expand medicaid. Jan brewer and arizona, Chris Christie in new jersey. You can see the list there. Why did they agree to this . Guest it is some of the most interesting developments in the last couple of months. Theres a lot of reasons why. We cant pinpoint one. Look at states like arizona or president obama won lake new jersey and say the political make up their with and supported the Affordable Care act. Then you look at the dollars involved. Even though its a choice for states, theres billions of dollars to accept it. By the conservative elements on the right dont want to grow government, we are trying to balance the budget and have billions of dollars on the table that could bolster your economy and expand coverage to hundreds of thousands of vulnerable residents. Its hard to turn that down. Host next to the wind come a republican in oregon. Go ahead. Caller in front of me right now i have from white sending me paperwork on health care plan. You are not telling the people what is going to cost them. 2014 will cost 95 per adult, 47. 50 per child. 162. 50 per child. 34750 per child. After that it chomps for 40,500 to a single person. And that is a bronze and there must be tears to the the coverage nor the costs. We will pass it and then figure out what it means. This is exactly what youre doing i get calls all the time because they know. They are scared because they know they can afford this. You people are telling the people the truth of what is going to cost. Host you got that information from senator wydens office . And you are a dog with a bone. What are you doing . Are you organizing people against the Affordable Care act . Caller i have a lot of people ask me what i want to do. Ive also call some different people in different things. This isnt the only thing i check to find out. This is from the kaiser foundation. People are scared and people out here who think the obamacare does the greatest thing and representatives said at voted. When they voted this in because then they find out theyre not going to get the care they were promised at the 2. 3 even on a bandaid at the hospital. Craig wrote them down here said we have shut down because the tax coming down. If you tax a companys coming your text to the people. Thats why they will not allow this to be thrown out because it was classified as a tax. President obama has light and so have republican. Host a lot there. Are her numbers correct . I think youll see some debate. Theres no one making any aleutian there will be premium increases. Theyre envisioning at least shortterm premium increases because of the laws impact on ones. The question is what does it mean for consumers. A lot of them will be eligible for tax credits to pay for the cost of care they didnt have before, so care could be more affordable for them. It has been well talked contrary to the point, is a lot of discussion of what will happen in a letter they send out. They are convinced premiums will skyrocket and see that public support for the love will evaporate and we will all become unworkable. Host if that happens, when we might see those headlines . Guest well see the beginnings over the next year was the coverage expansion stars and people start paying those initial premiums in the Affordable Care act area. Once solana officially takes effect, you will start seeing the real impact. Host robert cometh in the seat from. Hi, robert. Caller thank you for taking my call. I fed the whole thing rather confusing and i think its because we have been American Public understand basically for systems we use currently, medicare, medicaid private insurance and veterans. What is unclear to me is given the four current ways we receive health care, how is that going to change . Lets take the private insurance payer. Will they continue to pick that up or the percentage of private person pays be the same . With medicare, seniors often have to pay for an extra insurance supplement program. Will they continue to have to buy that extra program . So on and so forth. We would like to know how given the current payments being made, how that is going to change. Or if you will at all. Guest on private coverage, one of the fears for the opponents if its a job coverage and not symbol for his people into exchanges, which is private roles or medicaid or so forth. The Affordable Care act is built to run an expansion of private insurance on the exchanges. As much discussion as a government takeover of health care, the the law is predicated on private insurance that they have a time on the law. And on medicare, i hate to say it, but it always remains to be saying that there are some changes to medicare in the law in terms of enabling seniors to get preventive visits at no cost and close the door the whole on prescription drugs. I dont know how much that will do to set seniors from seeking supplemental plan. There may be additional after its indicted again is up in the air. Caller from my cat misty city. Currently going on eight months actively seeking word. My question is how is the unemployed be paid for the insurance plans. I understand there is a fine to occur if youre unable to the insurance. If youre unemployed and looking for work and cant find a job, who is going to pay the fine . Theres also word about if you are unable to pay for the fine, if you cannot pay, thats your spouse will have you paid. Can you respond . Guest im not familiar with unemployment. States have their own, so im not sure if you have a specific Arizona State unemployment plan there. The Affordable Care act and the penalties are designed to be tailored to peoples income. If you make under a certain amount, the minimum penalty is 95 in the first year, which some people say is too low, but its never going to leverage anyone to get coverage. With the lowest income threshold would be a penalty at all. Its aimed at people who have an affordable option for insurance. If you dont have an affordable sharing, you can get a waiver from the government for irs. Host johna, democrat of South Carolina. Caller good morning. I am a veteran of the United States army and i worked with the department of social services, sane people can and must without Health Insurance. So this is the Health Care Act. It extends to those in poverty. Those who couldnt afford health care. A lot of times their family members came in, whether it be the mother or father were out of work because of health care they didnt health care because of the clients. Now that the help is coming back, these people are able to go back to work. Its South Carolina. I think we need to develop what it would do for country. Host d. Of health and insurance . For your job . Caller i do. Guest South Carolina as you mention we. Governor haley said wed want no part in the medicare expansion is unaffordable in a release date, huck at the end of the day, even though Washington State for the first three years and then pay 90 thereafter. Theres a fear among opponents of the health care a lot that washington will not live up to that commitment. Somewhere along the way the night before to give you 90 and the states to pay for the massive expansion. But as you mentioned, the expansion is there for people who are vulnerable and who are sick and otherwise couldnt afford insurance. Host kyl, speak about obamacare shift from quantity of care to quality of care within medicare. Our projections following . Visit to turn analyses. If the programs are incentivizing providers from this feeforservice care, which is for every time a doctor doesnt ask for your test, the doctor gets paid and the notion universally is considered obsolete or outdated and driving up costs. But people are starting to move towards is a notion of Global Payments are finding a way to say. Or should pay for the healthy outcome of their patient and making sure they dont end up in the hospital again or that there are medical errors driving up costs. Host vivian shepherd says how can the cost of insurance skyrocket if theres a cap on how much Insurance Companies can raise the premiums . Guest it is not so much a cap. States are allowed to have mechanisms to reject premiums that rise to what is considered a nonreasonable or unjustifiable way. I think you are seeing frustration where they say we see Companies Raise rates on individuals or Small Businesses by doubledigit percentages. The Affordable Care act within a mechanism that is unreasonable or premium rates to expose and show the public whos raising rates in a lot of states have mechanisms to reject the race outright and considered them unreasonable. Host next to stafford texas. Caller yes, from dealing with interns with my daughter before she passed away and everything else, what is the big deal about obamacare . Wife and the government brief scene in the. Reason hospitals and pharmaceutical companies and regulating them instead of forcing this on us . Guest im not 100 sure i understand the question. The idea of the Affordable Care act is to make the system work better and then well have disagreements about whether this is the right approach and may spend 10 over the last few years. The atf of reaching to doctors and hospitals and Insurance Companies is part of what the supporters hope as a way to streamline the system and make it more effective. Host chris is next in Nebraska Democratic collar. Caller i was under the impression 80 of premiums are for health care. Last year at approximately 3000 in health care premiums. Who is responsible for repeating that back to me . Is that the employer or Insurance Company or whether . Guest in general, it is the employer. A lot of people get coverage through their employer. It is the insurers responsibility to pay 80 for health care and 20 or less for administrative expenses. If they reach that, they are due to rebate to the employer or policyholder to get that money. So if you get insurance through your employer, they would get to check in effect to them if they want to reduce premiums for employees going forward, if they want to rebate to individual employers or how they want to apply that. It is a mixed bag. Host fanciest max, democrat in milwaukee, wisconsin. Caller thank you for taking my call. First, republicans want to repeal it again. This is with a kind of last of the original intent of this bill. So i dont understand that. Second, my question is with employers, wouldnt this take the burden off of employers to supply or provide insurance to cut employees, therefore they would be more apt to hire people, especially Older Workers because they cost more to ensure . Lastly come it cant be left up to the states because in the state weve gotten extreme ideologists for a governor. Hes not going to do it, so we are going to be punished for states rather than states that have governors that will go ahead with it. I was up to your answers. Thank you so much. Guest whether you like it or not it is thought to states on how to set up exchanges. That would actually entice support from republican leaning states, where they are strong believers in states rights. Your other point, employers and coverage is fear of proponents of the Affordable Care act that employers will drop coverage and penalties in place or if their workers get coverage on exchange but there is a fear out there because the employer sharp coverage across the board and everyone rushes exchanges could become an unaffordable problem and do something republicans warned about the republicans will drop coverage and that could make the law unworkable. Host paul ryan writes in todays wall street journal opinion section about his budget that is going to win there later this morning, including his idea that the assumption of the Affordable Care act is repealed and his idea for medicare and medicaid. We will be covering the News Conference here on cspan at 10 30 a. M. Eastern time. So tune in then. Saint augustine florida, but warning. Go ahead, question or comment. Caller okay, i dont understand how anybody can rationalize asking the government to do anything more than its doing. They cant pay for what its supposed to be doing now. It is saying it has to tax us more to get more revenue by adding all these people to the role, of course it is going to cost more money. I like many of the republicans feel the 100 will become 90, will become 80 and the states will be hung out to dry. Host cbo says aca is a deficit reducer, confusing that those facts as usual. Guest thats the point they like to hammer home that its reject it to actually reduce deficit and that is again by putting downward pressure on programs like medicare, by building and cost savings and some of the shifts away from fees for surveys and again providing coverage to people who would otherwise need emergency or catastrophic care. These assumptions builtin bit over the long term will start adding the cost curve that the president likes to say what people see and scares them off the face upfront set up costs in the billions and billions of dollars to build exchanges, to Fund Medicaid expansion. Therell absolutely be a lot of spending, but the idea is over the long haul that it will put downward pressure in health care costs. Host john, independent and georgia. Caller good morning. Yes, my question to you is why is it that so much talk about the entire Health Care System has focused on Insurance Companies and corporations that provide these Services Without the recognition that anything in america that is corporatebased is basically corrupt being that all of these providers work within the stock market and theyre beholden to shareholders, which is really a capitalist base product. And what that system, its going to always be the people at the top that can benefit from this and the further towards the bottom you could come youre always going to have that unpaid portion that is going to cut into your Life Services and ultimately, the only way out of it from the standpoint of many developed nations, germany, canada, lots of successful socially provided systems is through social care because there is no corruption on a capitalist site and its something we have to work at clay. Guest youre not alone on that. Theres always been a contention for a singlepayer type system, although politically it hasnt existed the political will on that. I do think your point would be well taken when youre dealing with Insurance Companies, you have a profit out of it in a health care environment. There is always a questionnaire. But again, the politics of the senior payer have never been favorable for the experiment was just that. Host thank you for your time. Appreciate it. The public isnt paying this much attention as iem and uart and those of us that are part of this Political Community. What i call the Political Community is about 10 Million People. Its the people that watch cspan. They watch meet the press. They watch fox news. I watch msnbc, to a lesser extent cnn, that they really care about politics a lot. We had 120, 130 million voters and most people got a lot of what goes on in washington journalism is background noise. It comes pretty much from the Mainstream Media that people forming an opinion of romney and obama and so on ad fox news does it reach most of his people. Fox gets great ratings, has a loyal audience, but a look at the shows, the bill oreilly shows the most popular on cable news. The kids to commit 3 Million People a night. Thats not the electorate. We have a big country in the conservative media only reaches a tiny chunk of it. Economists reckon the measure to fund the federal government for the rest of the fiscal year. Oklahoma republican and Arizona Republican john mccain raised objections to this continuing resolution come insisting on more time to read the 587 page package before allowing debates on the amendments. Majority leader harry reid has filed cloture on the measure. This means a procedural vote eating 60 of us will take place on thursday. Harris senator coburn and mccain on the floor. We will also hear from senator reid. We got this bill last night at 9 00. It is a 500 page bill and has multiple levels of operation senate that we found so far, on an appropriation bill. It has what i would consider and we have been completely through it, some things totally counterintuitive to where we find ourselves in terms of spending money. Before i could grant unanimous consent, and as soon as we get through the billing plan on grant teamed unanimous consent. We just are the majority leader so you can understand if somebody wants to read this bill. Talks are in excess of the trillion dollars. One of the reasons for your 17 trillion in debt is people dont read the bill. I also want to say to my friend from alabama, i have greatest praise for you. You know some of the harpers i have, but unit that was coming from the house. Do not allow us a time to assess what you are produced they been able to read and study the bill is really going against the best traditions of the senate, but also against common sense. How do we know whether we want to offer amendments unless he been able to read the bill. Are we just too blindly say were going to approve it because we have a deadline at the end of the month . I willing to do what is necessary to make sure we get a continuing resolution. But i am not willing to do that plainly. So im going to to study the bill. Weve got three members of staff working fulltime. Investigating, looking at this bill and i will go into details of the things weve seen so far. Where the statue of opportunity before the unanimous consent to go forward. I am not going to allow it until i know what the agreement is going to be in terms of amendment and whether or not if we read the bill and had good ideas whether we will be allowed to offer them. This is an appropriation of peer we have to be allowed to offer amendments with ideas on ways to save this country money and increase efficiency and effectiveness and still meet the deadline for chairwoman outlined. I hope you understand why we are not in any of the two granted until we know what were talking about. To ask anything less of us, you are asking us to deny the oath we took when we come here. With that, i would yield the floor and take my colleague, john mccain for being down here. I intend to jacked along with the senator from oklahoma. I would remind my colleagues that a week ago senator coburn and i sent a letter to senator reid and senator mcconnell copies to senator macola ski. We at the right to inform you of your intention to object entering a 10 agreement before consideration of a resolution until weve had for the 72 hours to review its contents. Thats okay though. Thats what we ask for. Its a 597 page bill of over a trillion dollars that we got at 9 00 last night. Is there anyone who has had time to read this entire bill . A 597 page long . Were talking about a trillion dollars. A trillion dollars that we are holding up the United States senate over not having food on the Club Last Night until 3 30 this afternoon to examine a 587 page bill, over a trillion dollars. What i have already found, what with already found that we havent finished a note to be finished within a few hours examining the legislation is the most egregious porkbarrel spending at a time of sequestration. I find it mindboggling that we spent three weeks in december on the floor of the senate during the fiscal year 2013 Defense Authorization bill. There are provisions that directly were prohibited in the Defense Authorization bill. I respect your knowledge of the senator from alabama and senator from maryland underfed species paper we spent three weeks and hundreds of hours of hearing an amendment to mark a. We said, for example that there would be no money for palm until we have a coherent strategy laid out by the administration as to how we were going to lament the base realignment. The fiscal year 13th Defense National authorization act prohibited expending that money. Now what if they cram into this 587 page bill . A hundred 20 million for Regional Health laboratory in civilian wastewater improvement on qualm. Why . I asked a friend from alabama, whether to directly contradict the authorization bill that was just past is that nobody would be given for these purposes until they develop a strategy for the base realignment and qualm. If you because the senator from alabama and ireland know something more than the defense of the racers stayed, that we had debate and discussion how we specifically prohibited at . So here we are. Weve had to not deploy Aircraft Carrier because of sequestration. Weve had to cut down on flying hours and reduce maintenance. Weve had to make all kinds of tough decisions as to the men and women who were surveyed and equipment and operations innateness. What if we already found out . I want to assure my colleagues i am not making this up. I am not making this up. 5 million additional for the National Guard challenge program. I think the National Guard Youth Challenge program is a pretty worthwhile project. But while were having to keep the carrier from deployment, 5 million for the National Guard program. 154 million for army, navy and air force alternative Energy Research initiatives. This type of research has developed such shining examples as the purchase of 450,000 gallons of alternative fuels for 12 million over 26 million per gallon. 18 million for industrial preparedness. 16 million for parkinsons Disease Research on defense. Its not out of health and human services. 16 million for neurofibromatosis research. 16 million for havas research, which is taken out of defense. I Million Dollars for unspecified radar research. 567 million for adding requested adequate research. 27 million for research initiatives. 45 the list goes on and on and we havent finished. How in the world how in the world do you have a provision for an Incentive Program that directs the department of defense to overpay on contracts by an additional 5 if the contractor is a native hawaiian owned company. How in the world is this justified in these times of sequestration . I note the presence of hours later on the floor and i want to assure the leader with all respect that this is a 587 page bill of over a trillion dollars. We got it at 9 00 last night. I hope in a few hours that they would examine this bill. What weve found so far is so egregious that its hard to imagine that anybody in light of sequestration to the lives of men and women serving the military could have added these provisions is frankly beyond anything i think ive ever seen in the years i have served in the United States senate. I yield to the distinguished majority leader and before i do, i have checked. Object to where . Friend from arizona. The 587 page bill has been available to the public because the vast majority of the bill is available to what the house passed, identical. He and his staff in the sun or from oklahoma have bad days and days to the server. Mr. President , i want to make sure everybody understands im really i try to be not too sensitive, but the senator from oklahoma seems to have a problem i assume hes referring to me. He is referring turbine. He is referring to schumer and murray. Heres what he said on sunday one of the shows. The senate is that nearly as dysfunctional as its made out to be. I dont know if he was referring to senator mcconnell. I know he is referring that one day he should look in the mirror. I want to try to get along here. The vast majority of the suspect in this bill came from the house of representatives. Its been available for days. I cant remember what date we caught this. Its been many days. I know senator mccain very well. He and i came to the house together. We came to the senate together and i understand how he feels about these issues. I dont blame him for being upset about this bill, but it is not our fault we are trying to get a bill to fund the government. But we need to do is get on the bill. Im criticized for not allowing amendments. We cant have amendments offered until we get on the bill. So i think it would be much better if we could get on the bill and if people want to offer amendments, its job all year. We have 100 senators and if you want to offer amendments. We cant dictate what amendments are offered before we get on the pill. I would hope my friend from arizona would take time with the staff, look over the bill amount since last wednesday and decide when we can get on the bill. Time is really wasting. We have to finish this in the budget before we leave for easter vacation. We can do it this week. We can do it next week or the week after. This got to get this done. Im not trying to fight with anybody, but as i said, i do have some sense activities about my friend from oklahoma continuously berating the senate and ive come to the rationalization maybe hes talking about his own leadership. I dont know. The senator from nevada gives her a question i guess. First of all, i appreciate very much that the majority leaders responsibility in fact is to make sure that the trains run and we take up and pass legislation. And there are many times when i have to say that the majority leader has been frustrated by sent events and individuals that arouses my sympathy for responsibility that he has and his inability to carry out those. I would point out to my friend from nevada that if we really just got this bill last night to rely on the fact that the house bill to be our guide when we know that there were many provisions, at least some provisions that weve already found in the Senate Version of the bill. I would hope that he would understand that we just need a little more time to get through the entire bill and i hope you will be sooner rather than later and then we can as the majority leader said the open for amendments. I just hope the majority leader might understand our point of view that this a trillion dollars bill. 587 pages. For us to take as an act of faith that this is the exact bill that came out of the house obviously is not the case. So again, but i finally say, sir, i appreciate the responsibilities. I appreciate his frustration and i hope you understand ours will try to move as quickly as possible. For many, many years, decades, senator mcconnell has been a watchdog of spending in this country. I expected of him and i dont say that an indicative fashion. I have no problem with senator mccain taking whatever time so he feels comfortable moving on it. If he has amendments to offer, move onto these amendments. I have no complaints about john mccain. People outside of this process might look at a press Conference Today which the document is similar where you sit there and we all sat here. Probably not for the best. People outside the process might be watching today and say well, why did this last year and the year before that. He was on the ticket. Branagh not exactly the right budget, but pretty darn close. President obama bring him what he calls the balanced approach raising taxes on the wealthy and his manicure and Social Security position. He won that election. House republicans got a million fewer votes than democrats. Senate republicans lost seats in people outside might wonder if elections have consequences on the budgeting process. The question is the election didnt go our way. Believe me i know what that feels like. That means we surrender our principles. That means we stop believing in what we believe in. Whether that country intended or not, we have divided governance. We have the second largest House Majority since world war ii. But we believe in this divided government area, we need to put out her vision. We think we are the country a balanced budget. We think well solutions to the problems plaguing our nation. A debt crisis on the horizon, people trapped in poverty. We are showing our answers. Elections to the consequences. We are in the majority. This is our offer. This is our vision. What you do is to show the country what you believe in. The senate hasnt passed a budget of four years despite the fact the law requires them to do so each and every year. Because of the no budget bill pay act they are finally doing a budget. I am pleased patty murray is attempting to pass a budget because we havent seen that in a long time. The reason im encouraged as if she can pass the budget, we actually have a process under the public for the nation to see that gets us down the path of solving problems. This is the one of the things the president tonight talked about. While the president take every one of these solutions . Probably not. A lot of solutions popular in did we win this argument . Some of us think so. We are saying heres our offer, heres our vision. Or so we propose a plan to balance the budget grow the economy cant repair the safety net, save medicare. We hope they follow suit because we can Start Talking and looking for common ground. We think thats a constructive way forward in that they were doing this. I think what she suffered us as a model for government that stresses stability and empathy. Dolly madison is modeling this for us. Shes not going to win. With that because we need role models and her way of conducting politics, and building bridges and a curse as a model he has for the future. Redish Prime Minister, David Cameron says britain may consider an expansion of the e. U. Arms embargo on syria set to expire in may. The Prime Minister testified before the British Liaison Committee made up of 33 chairman for the house of commons. This portion of the hearing is 20 minutes. Foreignpolicy and syria and e. U. Are go has not sent aeros applies to the rebels in syria. Hes got on one hand the Turkish Foreign mr. Calling for a listing on the bed. Youve got reservations, the stars. Are there circumstances whereby you would veto the arms embargo when its up for renewal in may . I would hope that wouldnt have been the case. But what i would like to do is continue with the e. U. Approach. We just amended as you know so we can apply for the acquit and. I hope we can persuade a friend with further change comes necessary. If we cant, then its not out of the question we might have to do things in our own way. So its quite possible you do detail an extension the embargo . We can have an independent foreign policies. For instance, we felt the action needed to be taken to help bring about changes, to help and the supporting bloodshed. If we felt our European Partners for holding back, then we have to change the approach. Thats not what i hope will happen. I dont think we did a good job persuading colleagues to a man the terms of the arms embargo as we can supply this equipment. Its not why are we doing this. It seems to me if we want to help bring about a transition in syria, we have to work with the opposition groups and we have to work to try and shape them and help them and encourage those in the committee to a pluralistic and democratic future for all in syria. You cant do that if youre simply not engage in supplying anything in terms of, you know, help in the works they are doing. Its a big step to be supplied the rabbo said tibetans. Its not a decision we take in. I hope we dont have to break from a collaborative approach across the european union. I was making the point if we thought it was the right thing to do we did it. Are enough. If you cant get agreement amongst the partners, we sat ready to take any domestic measures to ensure syria remain effective. Its a very bold, unilateral statement. Of course if for whatever reason, and this could have happened, we are discussing the terms and for whatever reason we couldnt have agreed, the changes have been necessary to provide nonlethal equipment. We wouldve had a choice, either you let go of sanctions package fall, you supply the nonlethal equipment. At the same time, britain is the Financial Center and important play with it in place its own sanctions legislations. Of course he was ready to go. If we could get agreement across europe that would have been irresponsible see the sanctions package fall in the not to put in place its own sanctions regime because otherwise members of the regime would access money or finance and who knows what. That was just responsible planning. Speaking of arming the rebels and is widely did they want to fight this cause at the moment. Would it be a mistake to be arming rebels who we dont really know their identity and whose intentions are rather uncertain . In to shape the opposition and to encourage, as i said, the opposition, pluralist, democratic, minorities have rights. We stand back from the sensate, im sorry, we cant reach an agreement in europe. Theres nothing we can do. I would argue that is a positive choice. That terrorists suppose a threat to our National Security. Dozens of places around the world. It. It does not mean you should not develop. Of course it applies. Other places around the world. I would argue open britain, we should know the state of global rules and what we can do. With partners, with allies that think that we can help to have an effect in countries and to reduce the level of threat that we face. So if you take, for instance, we are doing, im sure. Having train the african forces. Not in a combat role of anything like that. Is it better to play the sort of role and to help . Can you have an effect as a supporter . Yes, you can. In that think that is the role that britain should see. We should combine the tough and intelligent approach and work how well we can best maximize our national interest, reduced the level and we have done just that. The refugee fallout. Because the number of refugees, increasingly extreme humanitarian crisis. But the refugees, threequarters not. Giving more. What you said before leading to an even bigger sacrifice. Welcome ultimately the last question first. I dont think what were doing will add to the refugee crisis. What is happening anyway. Again, our policy come over trying to achieve, we are trying to achieve transition is syria. There are two ways that can happen. Have a political transition from the top, diplomatic pressure. We keep pushing. After transition. Eventually push regime. This is happening anyway. The very leading role. As you say, helping with that humanitarian crisis. Responding as it unfolds. No doubt whos responsible for this crisis. The neighbors. The capacity to follow through. But jordan and lebanon. To further destabilize those countries. The u. K. Government could then support. We have given the refugee camp in jordan. That was partly funded by u. K. Taxpayers. The case by case basis. We should use our generosity. But i dont i would not accept the irony that our actions are making it worse. Our actions are trying to help achieve transition. So that is easing the humanitarian crisis at the same time. Im not saying they are. And saying they could. The point were making, which is a very fragile reason, what is happening in syria is adding to the fragility is absolutely right. Its an argument for engagement. Actually, we just go back. In your statements he said, we talked about the terrorists. We must beat them with tierney, address the political narrative they feed on. Now, the foreign secretary made an important speech about a restructuring of the intelligence in north africa. Start quoting long speeches. The figured if i added to that as well as in military and close down the space. Did 25 drain the swamp of issues on which the feed. You also start to think about how you develop political systems in which, you know, the moderates can beat the extremists. Inside. And believe somehow. Thats not. This is a top intelligent approach that recognizes. The political settlement. All those things as well as the top action that the french should consider. Restructuring intelligence, that part. It is part of the response. I dont think we should try and bridge and begin to come as a responsibility ourselves. Of course we cant. We have strong relationships in nigeria. We should build on those. Where others have strong relationships like the french, they should build on those. We should try and partner of the countrys where there are real threats of the extremism and the export potential. We should try to get ahead of these problems have them wait for them. In 2010. A very strong statement, an exit strategy. Communications but also other forces that are involved, sometimes in their own countries what is the exit strategy . Is to turn the people who will take over from the french. That is the military exit strategy. The physical force. Difference condone. There when he listened in croton check. That is. More importantly, purely Time Military puffy when his check is it is a build a capacity of the government and Security Forces to reach engaging with the neighbors said they can help the stability of that country. Its all of those things been built over time to enable molly to have a stable existence. Difficult. Welcome and they do best to do things. I think they are alert to that problem because of what has happened elsewhere. They want to get it relatively quickly. Then no longer they stay the longer the potentially become part of the problem. Thats why they are sensitive. The contributions, as you say, chips out with the c17. Hoping to resupplied. Specifically back turning to take over security. And then, of course, troops and nigeria trading deploy several. At the equivalent lessons. Perhaps we have not bought copies the eastern. You have a position with the vulnerability. The space in which terrorists drive. We have the Development Support before this crisis began. The think we should reconsider that . Other actions in the region. At think we should keep these things under review. We have a lot of different programs and a lot of countries, some of which were too small to make much of an impact and give as much of a say. So ive been trying to focus. Where we can both be contributing and trying to help your real political and economic development. Probably makes more sense. What can we do in this area that is the most constructive . What are you nigeria is a country we should partner but more and have greater effect. Whereas a pro league makes sense for the french to do more with that historical collection. Can we take particular action to protect women who are the most formal in this crisis . And be brutally suppressed. So for rape, violence, and death. Yet this committee does not always respond. The evidence doesnt provide the support. Do you believe that the u. K. Government partners. Will we will find otherwise, all the horror stories, why we didnt do anything about it. To things. One is, where you have gone, you have sort of gone on this regime i think that is another justification for this action that the french have taken. Theyre better off for that. But the point about gathering the evidence faster so that the world can try and act when those other things are taking place. I think there are. I think we can. Internationally. Part of that is how you gather the information on what was actually happening. I think its indicative. Lots of people are reaching. You were saying back in september cannot remember at that time. The one i was receiving and paying tribute to the world, the produce really good security and intelligence briefings. And this was showing a dozen area of concern. The extremism and extremist groups. We did in 2010. The less extreme, discussed in july of 2012 perrys of july last year. He traveled to the area. He had been there before. He had good contacts with the french. And actually has been really helpful as foreign secretary and quite a lot of detail about the International Meetings and he has attended on behalf of britain to try and make sure we galvanize action. So its something that was last up to the National Security council. As i said, ahead of these problems. Today whats happening, a massive Security Threat to the u. K. The threat to british people in the region. All these bases have the potential to provide a director his. The a scene and elsewhere. Pays to get ahead which is what i think for trying to do. The support for the prime office. But you agree that the amount of investment. The agreement im going ford, and increased threat. To think there has been an under investment in and diplomatic now works, relationships. The undersecretary for the situation in iran, not just in africa, but every other country. Difficult spending decisions. Trying to extend our diplomatic punch, its been pretty good. We need to succeed need to make sure their value in the world. Trade missions are very get part of that. They enable you to get to your next department. Im sure. Thank you very much. [silence] british Prime Minister David Cameron will be of the house of commons tomorrow morning. This week he will take questions from members at 8 00 a. M. Eastern. You can see live coverage from london here on cspan2. The head of the u. S. Cyber command said today that the threat of an assault on the u. S. Could cause major damage to the countrys infrastructure. The Senate Armed Services committee is next on cspan2. Health care reporter talks about a state Health Care Exchanges and federal spending. Of 50year relationship. At the time alexandria was founded in 1749 until he died in 1799 at the age of 67. He participated in the political life of the city. He was a trustee of alexandria. He represented alexandria through the virginia legislature. In major that the nations capital, alexander was included in the original district of columbia. Right now were in the ballroom. George washington loved the dance from. Tens of the most famous person in the United States. Here for George Weston and seven to 98. Martha came here. He died in 1799. They didnt have one in 1800 because that was too close to his death named after washington. George washington had moral powers of the city. The largest George Washington birthday parade in the nation. This is George Washingtons hometown. Next week and more from alexandria, virginia as book tv, American History tv and fees than local content vehicles look behind the scene at the history of literary life of alexandria virginia saturday and noon eastern on cspan2 book tv and sunday at 5 00 on American History tv on cspan three. Next the commanders of the u. S. Strategic and Cyber Commands testify about the effects spending cuts could have on u. S. Security in the military readiness to generals to questions before the Senate Armed Services committee which is chaired by senator carl evans. This is two hours and 45 minutes. This hearing continues a series of posture hearings that the Armed Services committee is conducting on our combat and command. Today we received testimony from the u. S. Strategic command of the u. S. Cyber command, unified command and cut u. S. Strategic command. Let us welcome the commander of the u. S. Strategic command and general keep dogs and check half of the command of the u. S. Ever command marry one of the sense. We thank you for your great work. We thank you. If you would pass along our thanks to those who work with you with their service we would greatly appreciated. This hearing comes at a time when the problem of defense and other federal agencies face the twin threat of sequestration and an expiring continuing resolution and we will want to hear from our witnesses what impact budget restrictions and uncertainty of likely to have on their programs and their operations over the coming months. First, some of the issues that i hope you will address this morning. Are you satisfied with the status of our Nuclear Deterrent . Second, are you satisfied with the National Nuclear security administrations ability to maintain our Nuclear Stockpile so that we can ensure without testing at the star power remain safe and meets military acquirements. Third, you believe we have the ability to protect our space assets and to reconstitute them if necessary given the growing congested and contested nature of space. Fourth, the department of defense is allocated a block of the electromagnetic spectrum a connection aerospace, Cyber Commandos tried warfare assets to our forces. The elite combat and command for synchronizing spectrum operations. How concerned are you about preserving the department of defense access to this block of spectrum given the competing pressure to allocate more spectrum toward commercial use and finally your view on the links between this space in several domains with the potential for integration of capabilities and operations in both domains. Now, relative to the sever command, for years and especially since the apartment proposed to establish is sever command the Armed Services committee has emphasized a lack of an effective policy, strategy, rules of engagement, doctrine, roles and missions in control and command arrangements that is so critical to managing a smile but complex before demesne. Progress has been slower than we desired but appears to be picking of speed. After congress failed to pass comprehensive Server Security legislation the president developed and issued an executive order better sheriffs i return information. The president has also recently issued a classified president ial policy directive governing cyber operations. The problem of defense working through the interagency planning process has developed a set of Emergency Action procedures for cyber crisis situations similar to the processes in place and regularly exercised for nuclear and Ballistic Missile defense operations. The joint staff is ready to issue its first ever document covering cyber doctrine. Finally, we understand that the joint staff states that it will soon issue rules of engagement for military commanders. The fact that these foundational policy from marks and planning actions are now just taking shape serves as of stark illustration of how immature and complex this warfare domain remains. A national Defense Authorization act for fiscal year 2013 included the sense, a provision that raised serious concerns about the complications that could be caused by making it Cyber Command of fall unified command. We also included a provision that requires the secretary of defense to create a process for designated defense contractors to report to the apartment when networks containing department of defense information a successfully penetrated and it would be interested in hearing the views of our witnesses on our recent import and addition to the law in that regard. Meanwhile, chinas Massive Campaign to steal technology, business practices, intellectual property and Business Strategy through cyberspace continues and it continues relentlessly. Last years report by the National Counter intelligence executive plus the recent report by the corporations and the very reason Cyber National intelligence estimate all leave little doubt that chinas actions are a serious threat to our nations economic wellbeing and to our security. It is long past time when the United States and our allies who are also being attacked in this way should be imposing costs and penalties on china for their behavior. The defense Science Board released a study in january that provides a grim assessment of the ability of the Defense Department and the horrors of Critical Infrastructure to defend vital systems and networks against capable adversaries. In light of vulnerabilities highlighted in that report the defense Science Board suggests building resilience and to our forces and infrastructure in addition to trying to improve the fences. We look forward to hearing from general alexander on the extent to which Cyber Command is capable of preventing adversaries from seriously damaging a Critical Infrastructure. We have a long way to go to protect our vital infrastructure and services from damaging separate tax. That is why i supported the lieberman spill that the senate failed to act on last year. Thus the reason why the president issued his recent executive order, and thats the reason why all this are deeply concerned about this issue and look to working together to try to address the threat. I agree with all of your statements. And very concerned. I want to thank both of you for the time you have given me personally. You have helped me along, particularly you will, and general alexander. Ive the importance of and a clear forces for the security of the nation and that our allies was made clear by deputy secretary defense carter before this Committee Just last month. Even in the face of the drastic budget cuts and all this by the sequestration. He said we in the department of defense would try to protect our Nuclear Capabilities to the maximum extent possible and that the Nuclear Deterrent is the last thing that you want to do serious damage to. While we all agree with that in this room there are a lot of people out there really dont because is not as well understood as the conventional threat. The troubling gerald keller, the statement he made to the house Armed Services Committee Last week and the sequester impact. He said, reduced readiness and curtailed modernization will damage the perceived credibility of our capability, increasing the risks to achieve our primary deterrents and assured assurance objectives. Allegis made that bold statement. In other words, if we dont consistently demonstrated commitment to modernize their Nuclear Deterrent both in words and in funding, our allies might lose confidence in the u. S. Nuclear umbrella, potential adversaries could be led tivoli that they hold a Nuclear Advantage over the United States, which i think that gap is closing. Of the president has been a wall on the issue, was pleased to hear and make knowledge in his state of the mess is the neo strengthen our own fiscal defense capability. Now, on the cyber end of it i do agree and and skipping a lot of my Opening Statement because some of the contents or in reference to china because that is a fact that it would be redundant. This of ministration has thus far failed to implement an effective cyber deterrent strategy that dissuades those seeking to all our economic and National Security interest at risk in cyberspace. The department is beginning to rise above the gridlock that has sought to undermine the pentagons reach. Im happy to welcome general alexander and applaud him and his team for the progress theyve made in just the last year and developing the Foundation Necessary to start developing cybercapabilities. I will confess to fan the conversation you and i had. My concern over your future is to make sure you were there long enough to find somebody who ask understands this complicated issue and can do with it as effectively as you have. More must be done in resources allocated. Im pleased to see the department is having passed the defense only nine to. We need to get beyond that we can understand his offenses and all that has to be first to. Under the sequestered, and the department will be subject to the highest levels of scrutiny. The threats we face are going to her fiscal woes and emboldened by dysfunction. Every dollar we spend has to be maximized in this going towards nuclear deterrence, Missile Defense and cybershould be placed at premium. Thats a Nuclear Deterrent Missile Defense in favor. That is the most significant part for the hearing we are having today. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you, senator inhofe. General kehler. With your permission i make my full statement of part of the record. Good morning, sir. Senator inhofe could distinguish members come my honor to join you today. Its a privilege to begin my third year with the United States Strategic Command. Im pleased to be here with general Keith Alexander has responsibility as the commander of the Cyber Command and director of the National Security agency covers some of the most critically important subjects. General alexander and i and our staffs are in Constant Contact and value his Leadership Vision and council. Complexity dominate the landscape, even as the United States transitions from a decade of act of conflict in southeast asia. Uncertainty and complexity make the transition unlike any weve experienced in the past. Many regions during volatile and increasing economic and information connections mean regional issues with the global consequences. Events over the past to validate this day. Since my last appearance can weve seen violent extremists continue to act against or threaten u. S. Interests of the citizens, allies, partners and homeland screensaver activities in quantity and intensity with potential for greater exploitation of intellectual property, institutions and Critical Infrastructure. Irans ambitions remain concerning. North korea conducted much of violation of obligations under multiple u. N. Security Council Resolutions and announced last month it connected another rear tests. For civil words continue to do richter strategic capabilities. Fiscal uncertainty is having unique challenges. Not only are sequestration reductions steep, but the law of us little flexibility in how to apply them and work from a continuing resolution while services are servicing to the base budget. All of this and continued readiness is essential, modernization server do. Threats in cyberspace are increasing in Ballistic Missile proliferation exists. As we confront these challenges, potential enemies are watching. Start, and is focused on connecting nations most critical for our core National Security interests. My priority support this focus theatre fundamental purpose remains constant with the other combatant convinced we must deter and prevent attacks against the United States, a sure friends and allies of commitments to them and if directed, and play appropriate force to achieve National Check this should deterrence fail. To do this, men and women have complementary capabilities for the tentative explanation in spare time in the objective is to prevent click by influencing in advance assessments and decisions of those who consider a Vital National interests. Ultimately this requires the credibility of americas capabilities right to bear in concert with other elements of national power. While our heritage and Strategic Command is nuclear, vigilance will not for waiver. Today struck him as far more diverse and versatile than ever before. I am pleased to report the strike, is capable of executing its assigned missions today. However, given the potential impacts of fiscal this coefficient into tiny resources could have come i am concerned they may not be able to state the same as accidents or a year. Im most concerned with the impact financial uncertainty is having on our people. Uniform uniform and onion for member select type managed the effects of sustained high stress, employment up additional 10 list. They willingly take personal risk for their country, they are fearful of taking risk for their families. Hari restricts in some likelihood of unpaid for those are traveling to civilians. By the lake and the civilians comprise about 60 of the strike, Headquarters Staff to fill a key represent expertise and make up much of the essential workforce which provides crucial funds like intelligence, maintenance insisting that. Because they are such dedicated teachers, our militaries in civilian members will cope with financial uncertainty in the near term but every overtime and most experienced professionals will retire early and our best young people were presale more stable opportunities elsewhere. We are in him for that now. Sequestration linpack command readiness and curtail growth in areas like sabre and cyberdefense. Even the services are trying to get missions as much priority treatment as possible within the law, you heard that from secretary carter last month. We could not remain immune. While the Immediate Impact will vary by command, overall the effect is like an avalanche from a seemingly small impacts are going to grow. As time passes we will see greater impacts and potential impacts to things senator inhofe mentioned that the group was straight to Missile Defense and awareness in space and cyberspace into her support for work fighters around the globe. The longer term continuing financial will affect modernization lunchroom sustainment potentially eliminating or jeopardize an important wakeup elucidation occurs. Of course ultimately such reductions could impact our ability to deter and assure. Mr. Chairman, responsibilities have not changed but the environment in which we must carry them out is different than a year ago. I remain enormously proud of the womens elite and adversaries must know we can meet our Mission Responsibilities today. The pathway we arrived discreetly risky strategy and ability to execute. I look forward to working on this difficult and complex challenges and will certainly carry back your message of appreciation for men and women who we are privileged to be associated with them and look forward to your questions. Thank you. We make thank you of the general kehler. General alexander. Thank you. It is inoculate the men and women of Cyber Command. Its also a tremendous honor to work with bob taylor. Hes been supportive of everything were trying to do and hes the only one nice to me. It gives me great pleasure to talk to you about the great things redoing the Cyber Command, but also address the questions he put on the table. Some of the questions that have troubled the committee in the past to try to answer some of those. I cannot answer all of those today. Throughout the Defense Department is he now takes a team to operate in cyberspace and the cyberspace have attacked about this approach. At times talking about the approach, we are not clear whos in charge when peer for defending the nation in cyberspace or in any way, thats the Defense Department mission and not close to your cyberand favors base. For us are responsible for supporting the combatant commands and Cyberspace Operations in defending the Defense Department networks also supporting dhs and defending Critical Infrastructure. We must also gather Important Information to protect, prevent and mitigate and recovering supporting dhs and fbi. As they said, no public or private entity has all the required authorities for resources or capabilities to respond to a series favorite type. I work closely with secretary napolitano and deputy secretary of the dhs and bob mueller and fbi. We all see eye to eye on the importance of cybersupporting each other in these missions. Fbis role in domestic space is absolutely critical to disrupting criminals in stopping attacks and leaving investigation in this area is. Dhs has worked to defend the government and strengthen the Security Posture of Critical Infrastructure is essential. The ability for domestic cybersecurity and help protect federal works in Critical Infrastructure. To act quickly, they must have clear lanes of responsibility and rules of engagement. We all recognize the private sector plays a key role in this area and having the ability to work with the private sector is important to us in one of the key reasons we need cyberlegislation. D. O. Issued last month is denoted, chairman, a step in the right direction. But it does not take away the need for cyberlegislation. Id like to point out before i go forward the Civil Liberties, oversight and compliance are key for Cyber Command in an essay in this space and we take that requirement sincerely and too hard to ensure we do every part of this properly. I would also point out we can do both. You can protect Civil Liberties and privacy internation cyberspace and i think thats one of the things we need to educate the American People on. How do we do that . How do we work with industry to do this . To look at the landscape come youve hit on much of that, chairman. When you look at the landscape from our perspective, its getting worse. Cyberattacks are growing. We see in the attacks on wall street over the last six months grow significantly. Over 140 attacks over the last six last summer in august sought a destructive attack on saturday you ramco. The data on over 30,000 systems were destroyed. If you look at industry, and antivirus community and others believe its going to grow more in 2013. Theres a lot we need to do to prepare for this. Let me just talk a little bit about what were doing to prepare from our days. As many of you know, we are already developing the teams we need, detect dixon technic procedures and adapter for how team should be employed. But they focus on defending the nation in cyberspace. I would like to be clear that this Dissemination Team is not a defensive team. This is an offensive team that the Defense Department refused to defend the nation if we were attacked in cyberspace. 13 of the teams we are creating art for the mission alone. We are also creating 27 teams that would support combatant commands and their planning process for offensive cybercapabilities. And then we have a series of teams that would defend her networks in cyberspace. Those are the core contracts from upper working with on the services to developer cybercadre. The key here is training our folks to the highest standard possible. I think thats the most important thing that we are on the road to the most Important Partnership would have with nsa and others in ensuring the training standards for folks at the highest level. I would just like to get a few key points that were doing to develop the cyberstrategy. He mentioned commandandcontrol general kehler, the Service Chiefs and i are looking at how we were to sit the other combatant commanders. Weve done a lot of work on that belief i doubt habituate cybercenters at each combatant command would work with Cyber Command that would push information back and forth and how we have operational control and track supported teams operating in the area. More to do is the teams come online. One of the key things we have to address the situational awareness. How do you see that attacking cyberspace . Today, cnet attack is almost impossible for the Defense Department. Specifically in attack on wall street would not be seen by us. Its going to be seen by the private sector first. Thats a key need for information sharing. It has to be real time to the Defense Department, department of Homeland Security and the fbi are the same time one government team. If were going to respond in time to make a difference, we get to see that in real time. Those companies sharing that information with us at to have Liability Protection. We are also building the operational picture that we would share common Cyber Command would share with the other combatant commands at dhs, fbi and other national leaders. We need a defense architecture and youve heard about the joint information environment uncaused security. Not only is that more defense the ball, it was our folks to come with the most defensible architecture week eight. Its also more secure. Its not perfect. Architecture is perfect, but its better than where we are and its cheaper than something we should push forward. Chairman can you mention authorities, policies and oscar. As you party stated, this is in your area for many of her critics, especially within the administration and congress and the American People. We are being cautious in ensuring we are doing that exactly right in sharing the information we have with congress. In conclusion from my dave, though im just to blame for current current level of preparedness in cyberspace. Many dont understand how serious the threat is that we need to educate people on this thread. We must address this is a team, sharing unique insights across government and the private sector. We must leverage the nations ingenuity during exceptional cyberworkforce and rapid technological innovation. The u. S. Government has made significant strides in doctrine, organizing cybercapabilities and building cybercapacity. The messy work to sustain the momentum and environment for adversary capabilities above as fast or faster than around. That completes my statement. Thank you so much, general alexander. Though having a bit of firstround. Let me start with you. The defense science word released a report in january it has a number of noteworthy assertions and id like you to start with this assertion can comment on it. The report says their Nuclear Deterrent is regularly evaluated for reliability and rowdiness, but it says however those systems have not been assessed against a sophisticated cyberattack to understand weak spots. Can you comment on that . General alexander, ill ask you to comment on that as well. In general terms, i agrees with the report. He pointed out places we need to do better. Let me how then commandandcontrol section for a second. Much of the system today is the legacy system weve had in some ways that helps us in terms of the cyberthreat. In some cases pointtopoint hardwired, which makes it difficult for an external cyberthreat to emerge. However, we are concerned with the potential of cyberrelated attack on Nuclear Commandandcontrol and Weapon System themselves. We do evaluate that. As the defense Science Board pointed out in terms of an end to end comprehensive review, i think thats homework for us to go accomplish. And what we have done to date in the pieces we put data, which has been going on for quite some time, i am confident today than Nuclear Commandandcontrol system and the Nuclear Weapons platforms themselves did not have a significant vulnerability that would cause me to be concerned. We dont know what we dont know and what the defense Science Board pointed out is that we need a more comprehensive recurring way to evaluate such a threat. And on that, i am in agreement with them. I dont want to leave you with the perception i believe theres some critical vulnerability today that stop us from performing their mission are most important they disconnect the president for the forces. I believe we have with the data. I received those reports. Weve done a lot more and i think in general terms for Science Board is right. We need to do better at exercising such diets and we need to do better working with the team to detect such threats, red teaming i suggested would have the way to go here and so we can put a punctuation mark at the end of sentence. Is that underway quickset discontinuous reviews underway . Yes, in fact the pace of increase could we completed a review of the minuteman system thats so very long ago. We have a little different problem of course with aircraft in flight and submarines underway. We are confident the com activity to those. But i think this is something we need to increase the volume of thinking on this whole issue. General alexander, do you want to add anything to that . Just three key points. First, general kehler has had a series working with both the nsa site and Cyber Command say to that of vulnerabilities and addresses. I would tell you theyve done a great job in doing that and i think thats moved in the right direction and the conclusion general kehler just gave. I would also add that our infrastructure, a power in the communications grid are one of the things that is a source of concern. How you maintain. We can go to back up generators and have independent rows, but i cant decay significantly our mission said it gets back to the saber around for how the government and industry Work Together to ensure the viability of those key portions of our Critical Infrastructure. General alexander, whos a real thats going on over at tech elegy and business strategies, intellectual property is by china particularly, not exclusively, but the question is, what is it going to take to stop the this . I will reserve that for later face time. The real question i want to focus on right now is whether the Intelligence Community can determine not only which Chinese Government organizations are stealing intellectual property, but where Chinese Companies may be receiving that intellectual property and using it to compete against u. S. Firms . Walking a fine line, chairman. I see the Intelligence Community has increased at the kelley over the last seven years and i can give you specific examples in a classified setting. Its really important we act. I think there is a consensus in the congress that this has got to stop and weve tried to find ways of preventing it, stopping, responding to never really cant. This is a threat which is at the moment an economic dry, but someday could be a physical and military threat as well. We will take that in a classified setting. General alexander, you mentioned three teams are creating. Is there a timetable for those three teams . Chairman, the intent is to roughly stand up one third of those. The first third by september this year, the next day september the next day or in the final third by september 2015th. In fact, i would tell you great kudos to the Service Chiefs because they are pushing past her. The key part of that is training. Im extremely proud of the rate they are pushing not. General alexander, you mentioned the executive order. Youve indicated information sharing is needed in real time. Give us your personal view as to why Congress Needs to pass favor legislation to and what needs to be in there . What is missing now that needs to be in legislation, which congress hopefully will pass. Verse three key elements that i believe personally needs to be in cyberlegislation. First, the ability for industry to tell us in real time and this is specifically the Internet Service providers that may see an attack starting. They have the technical capability, but they dont have the authority to share information that Network Speed. They need Liability Protection that we share information back and forth and they take action script for third parties are difficult and executive order addresses that. How do we get the networks we were defensible state . Is like your own personal computers. I reset the standards without peds overly bureaucratic so that the power grid bank said the government can withstand cyberexploits and attack. The brazilian state to be builtin. The executive order offers us a way of discussing that with industry led by Pat Gallagher would allow us to sit down with sectors of industry and get their insights on the most efficient way of doing. Coming back and from congress, how do we incentivize them from moving forward some cases the power comes denise, how do we help move through regulatory processes . Just to complete that point, you talk about the ability to communicate. You talk about the authority to share. Do we need legislation to authorize the sharing . Has a privacy piece it . Chairman, it is the authority to share back information on upwards to the government. Thats the part that needs to be in there. Is essentially a privacy or commercial protection of secrets or proprietary information issue . In combination and it goes to previous accident that matter and Computer Protection out there. What we have to do is tell them its okay to share this level of information, specifically for marcasite dave the information we need to share is the fact of the next later attack coming in. We. We need to have it in real time. The complication to get to the point of your question here is on the government shares back signatures, it becomes more complicated because some of our capabilities are classified. We have two ways of giving classified information to protect them if they see that classified information, think of this is going up to new york city new york city on the new jersey turnpike. The easy pass to see a car going by. But we tell the Service Providers at the sea of red car, to a seesaw where you saw it worth going. In cyberspace, they saw the significant event going from this internet address to this target address and they could tell us that Network Speed and stop the traffic. It is important to recognize the rule of industry because government could not easily scale to its Internet Service providers could do. It would be very costly, very inefficient. Raskin industry to do that. Chairman, that does not get into the content of those communications. Its absolutely important for people to understand we are not asking for content. Think of that is metadata. Are aware of the fact the last Defense Authorization putting a requirement that industry that has classified information required to report threats to the government and regulations and rules and you have an input and not . Is that correct . Thats correct. Were working with them. The issues that the Defense Industrial base would be they dont see out the threats coming all the time. Often times the threats we see have gotten him on before. I think we need a total approach. Thats a good step in the right direction. Senator inhofe. Im going to ask for some brief answers to a couple questions here. General kehler, there seems to be unanimity in the relationship between the Nuclear Reductions in nuclear modernization. Its been stated several times and i will quote secretary gates when we had more confidence in the viability of our system than our ability to reduce the number of weapons that we must keep in the stock is enhanced. You agree with that in the linkage in general im referring to quick yes, sir, i do. Would you take that last statement when we have more longterm viability, is there reason to believe we have more confidence . Havent done whats necessary to earn the confidence of the existing system . In the deployed weapons today in the stock pio that provides the sustainment spares and hedge against any technical failure we might experience. Every year the commander of my predecessors prior to me and i are responsible to provide her assessment of the stock pile. They make you feel youve had resources necessary to do that to your expectations than two hours . Yes, although the resources were to lead to an unacceptable point. That make it into the home and Missile Defense. Weve said for quite some time that theres overconcentration or less concentration on the homeland part of the Missile Defense referring to of course a number groundbased is going down under the administration and 44 to dirty. There were 10 of them that would have been part of the polling groundbased interceptor, which wouldve been more for protection of the eastern parts of the United States. In my Office Yesterday we were talking a conversation we had not too many years ago, where he made the statement and said are you sure . If we put our radar system in the Czech Republic and agree and do whats necessary in poland for a groundbased interceptor for the western european eastern United States that he wont pull the rug out from under us and of course they said yes, but we did anyway. Now we are looking at where we are today. I would ask you, general kehler, are you satisfied with the numbers weve gone down to in terms of our groundbased interceptors and do you think we should be a lot of options in a minute . Are you satisfied with the number of ground this interceptors . I am satisfied that we can defend against a limited attack from the korea today with dirty. I am confident that we can defend against a limited attack from iran, although we are not in the most optimal posture to do that today. I think youre being a little too cautious not cautious enough. When our intelligence has shown us that her brain is going to have the capabilities by 2015, we look at what we have today with the options on the east coast and an option on the groundbased or us. I think you probably say its not necessary. To enhance our capability. I am concerned this value is set and going onto a back to to the poland operation with what was going to happen as far as the east coast of the United States. I know youre a somewhat cautiously confident. How would you characterize . Your level of confidence in the protection of the eastern part of this country with the capability we have today . Again, it doesnt provide total defense today. What about a third site in the United States . It is consideration as import money the sensors that will be important for the threat from iran. But to witness those that the data would expect to 2018. Is that correct . And the capability ive been concerned about with the rent is 2015. I would share with you i thank you have sent about what our capabilities in that time. General alexander first of all you can very hopeful to make in bringing to my attention some of the things some of the shortfalls that knowledge is second stu on this whole issue. Yet i consider to be so incredibly important. Brightness are well aware the mainframe can. While it could be considered a relic of the 80s and 90s of the past, they are still integral to our Core Infrastructure and have unique security vulnerabilities that are not as well appreciated at this endpoint. Do you agree that layered defenses to ensure our main frames received comparable attention on the vulnerability of protection it seems to me the focus is on for the data is stored in all the new stuff coming on very adequately protect the good mainstream the mainframe components of our system . Senator, as we discuss, theres more work thats done in connecting mainframe commanders about portion of the total infrastructure. Its not the only vulnerability and probably not the most frequent when we but it worked but to address because its at the heart of many systems is one of the ones we dont firmly look at. But it is one that her information folks are addressing them as you stated is key to a layered defense. The it is important because youre the new system coming on board than the mainframe. Im glad to know youll be paying adequate attention to that relative to the new innovations received. There is an article in the wall street journal yesterday i talked a little bit about the banks seeking help on the cyberattack. Financial firms have spent millions of dollars responded to attacks according to Bank Officials who had they cant be expect good to fend off attacks from a foreign government. Further in the article that says u. S. Officials have been weighing options including whether to retaliate against syrian Officials Say the topic was discussed at highlevel a few weeks ago. A u. S. Official says all options on the table. Can you address this for me . Senator, what i can do is get more theoretical in a close section address more specifically the question. But this gets to the heart of how we defend the country and when does the Defense Department step in to defend the country and what are the actions providers can deal with the most logical approach to this . Nyc logical is that distributed denial of Service Attacks are hitting wall street. Those types of attacks are best at the nuisance level mitigated by Service Providers. The issue we way its meant as a nuisance become a real problem and what are you prepared to step in for that . Does so with the administration is going through right now in highlighting that. In order to do that, get back to the chairman asked about information sharing. For us to stop the Network Speed, weve got to stop the networks need and that will be key to helping the banks and others. I believe this is one of the problems the antivirus community and others have brought forward to say heres what youre going to see in 2013. What we see with the banks today im concerned its going to grow significantly throughout the year. We have to address it. I appreciate that. Ive been concerned about our allies losing confidence in the strength of our umbrella vents out there that we all remember during the s. T. A. R. T. Treaty, which i oppose, the president was specific on that hangs he was going to do. I look at these things and see if they have with specific reference to the b. 61 bomb, the warheads at 78 and 88 and the air launch cruise vessels and los alamos for processing facility a row behind the schedule back and then you s. T. A. R. T. Treaty. For the record id like to have you evaluate what weve done that we should have done, were told was going to be done if a treaty with us. If you would do that for the record. Yes, sir, i will. Thank you, center and off. Senator reid. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you for your service. General kehler, you talked about the capacity to withstand it limited attack from a country like north korea or iran. I think its important to determine what that means. Is there existing capabilities would allow them to mount a limited attack or in limited attack in something more than that. Are we capable of defending today against what they have and at what point do you go they could go beyond attack . Been a split that into two different questions. The feeder in the theater class Ballistic Missiles, where the numbers are large and may continue to deploy capabilities to be able to blunt such a large Ballistic Missile attack in the theater. Should not be against the United States. Allies and forward forces, et cetera. And in some cases qualm and other u. S. Territory. The second question is a threat to the United States and the Missile Defense system is limited in two important ways. Number one in terms of the size they could deal with in terms of the technological capability of it. Our system is limited. It is limited in terms of the size and before it acts number of Ballistic Missiles, but i can say is we are confident we could defeat a threat in north korea today. Given the potential progress we are seeing from nonis considering right now whether we need to take additional steps. Today you feel confident you could protect the confidence of the United States attacking us their take on sheet how fast it evolves and consider racy mast. And members of the theobald in terms of intercontinental threat and working with the Intelligence Community to see if we cant scope that. That has our attention. Third tribute to our attention and concern. Thank you. Let me shift gears slightly tca redland. One aspect of the Ballistic Missiles slipped a bit. Can you give us your assessment of can we allow slippage or the something we have to get on with . We have to get on with replacement for the ohio class submarine. I support the triad. I think what it brings to us or the three big attributes, survivability, flexibility and responsiveness and that compounds an attacker. That continues to surface about and the most survivable is the ohio replacement and as far as in the see in the future will require a replacement for the ohio class. Heres the interesting part. They will reach a date certain that they are no longer capable of being is the way they are used today. The navy is working hard to make sure we understand that. We intend to keep separate longer than any weve ever had before. I think we will reach a point that we must have a replacement and i believe we understand what that point is in the Current Program puts us right about there. Thank you. A question to both of you and sells the triad. The most triad is the submarine. Theres been lots of discussions of the potential for disruption of the elect were great as some of the major reasons for damage on the United States. To what extent are your landbased asset, the missile silos and the airfields depended critically on the local grid that could be taken down and therefore it either wittingly or incidentally to be knocked out without an explicit kinetic flow. Sir, a Nuclear Deterrent force was designed to operate through the most extreme circumstances they could possibly imagine. Im not concerned a disruption of the power grid would disrupt our ability to continue to use the force of the president chose to do that are needed to do that. I am concerned about some other facets. One is a continuing need to make sure protected against the elect are magnetic poles and any kind of interference but sometimes we have debates over whether thats a cold war relic and i would argue it is not. We need to be mindful of potential disruptions, but im not concerned about disruptions to the power grid or other Critical Infrastructure pieces impact enough for us. General alexander come to your comments about this potential threat. I agree with what general kehler said in the way we do this specifically. What it really impacts the senate to look at command that trains, now theres an ability to communicate would be significantly reduced and would complicate our governance in our ability for the government to act. I think which general kehler has to be intact. The consequence is the cascading effect and to operate in that environment that concerns me mostly. General alexander, let me raise an issue that is senator lieberman excuse me, senator levin, the legislation was not successful. Its very important because right now we have essentially a voluntary scheme and one of the arguments thats raised by the opponents is that would impose too much cost on the business community, et cetera. Your knowledge of the potential state and nonstate ability to disrupt the economy in the United States, not Strategic Command, but atm machines, et cetera. Have you done a calculation of the cost of the economy if someone decided to can direct not an intermittent attack on the banking system, but a concentrated attack . Senator, the attack on our bank is here now with the significant. It would have Significant Impacts. People cant get to their money. The impact is huge and youve seen it discussed the idea. What im concerned about is the Service Attack could accomplish that. He could make it difficult for people to do online and came, online trading and others. Theres the cost of losing that. If you think about amazon, one hour of amazon cost 7 million in profit. Theres also a cost that complicates legislation in each of our Critical Infrastructure portions of our industry have Different Levels of cyberreadiness review of. So the banks Internet Service providers are generally pretty good. The Power Company is not so good and so the cost for fixing them is significant. They are concerned on creating an overpeer credit regulatory process. I do think what the administration has put forward is to talk to them on the way to address this is a great way to look forward. It allows us to say here so we think needs to be done. They say look for that to do that, but thats going to cost more. The point and final going from your perspective right now if an attacker which is conceivable to place the cost to the company could be many times the cost of preemptive action today and may still object to that cause. The probability has to have 1 . That might be of reasonable judgment. The impression i get from your testimony consistently as fat percentage of probability goes up and up each day so we reach a point where we do the math and if theyre not investing in protecting themselves as Financial Institutions have, the corsair to shoulder will be catastrophic. They dont seem to get that point. I think thats accurate. Just as hed said it increases every day. Thats the concern anything that private industry saying the same thing. I think we have to have the public debate. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Senator a. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I want to thank both witnesses for leadership and service to our country. That wanted to followup, general kehler, on the issue of the intercontinental Ballistic Missile threat to the country that senator inhofe and senator reid asked you about. Use the term of not to them in terms of the challenges we face there. Just so its clear to people, if we were headed to the west coast, we would get a look at it, correct because of our Missile Defense system . We dont have a Missile Defense system. If iran develops Ballistic Missile capability, we dont have the same capacity on the east coast of the country . I hate to say the answer is it depends. It depends what a country that karen would do, et cetera. The intent is as time passes, additional features are added to the Defense System that are capability to defend cruz. So were clear, as of today, am i not correct in saying west coast north korea we dont get the same capacity on the east coast if iran, you know, some analysts believe this icbm capability bassoonist 2015 may or may not be correct. At this point our Missile Defense is the capacity is different on the east coast versus the west coast. Is not true . I are i tentatively say yes you for the record. The National Research council this year recommended an additional Ballistic Missile site on the east coast. Its not right . Yes, they are one of the organizations whose looked at this. I was certain id like to hear your view more specifically eschew white east coast Missile Defense site would or would not enhance capability to address a missile from iran. Particularly protecting the population and east coast of the country. Id be happy to provide that for the record. As i understand last week he testified in the House Armed Service committee that any potential future or Nuclear Arms Reduction should be bilateral nature. Is that fair . That is fair. My father question is should they not be bilateral verifiable . Is verifiable important if we were going to take arms reduction based on what we were going to count on a bilateral understanding that the russians . I believe verifiable is important. Why is verifiable critical or important when we think about entering misunderstandings with the russians or any other country for that matter with regard to nuclear arms . Senator, from a military dead, i believe we have bent on a successful and deliver a pathway with the russians that has allowed us to reduce the threat to the American People and to our allies was the same time be able to perceive our object is. I think thats a winning combination of things. Verification has proven to be for us, i believe from an insurance standpoint and i think it is important as providing second and third order benefits in terms of transparent the indication that with russia, which is very valuable. General, are the russians in full compliance with all existing arms control agreements for the United States right now . United states view is they are not in compliance with the conventional forces. If any other treaty obligations not in compliance . Ill provide the official answer. Theyre a couple other treaty story of questions about the way theyre going about it. The only one weve said we do not believe officially are complying with his conventional forces in europe. I can to you so hard all of the indications i have a pair act compliant. I would like to follow up with the question of whether they are in full compliance with all existing arms control agreement with United States. All provide that for the record. Thank you, general. You and i talked about this when you came to see me in my Office Yesterday, which i appreciated to talk about the issues, an article that appeared in the sunday New York Times titled cut his path to military and in that article, the article essentially said they would give the administration for sequestration cuts to allow the administration to call for deep reductions in programs and president of homicides and among those programs are reduction in the played deployed weapons stockpiles and are restructuring the issue i want to ask you about is an additional reduction and deployed to their weapons. Can you tell me right now in the article it said that the joint chiefs had agreed we could trim the number of active Nuclear Weapons in americas arsenal by third inmate detachments that bio weapons. Is there any attention by the administration right now that you are aware of or in a recommendation pending to significantly reduce directed Nuclear Weapon arsenals by a third or make a cut thermostat pile of our backup with outlined in this article . Senator, i cant comment on the article. What i can say its in the posture review forward, certainly the administration has undertaken a study to look at what alternatives may exist beyond new start, for reductions beyond new start. We participate in the conversation. In fact, we were fully involved and to my knowledge, no decisions have been made. Let me say obviously preserving our Nuclear Deterrent is very important in making significant reductions right now at a time with whats happening in north korea with the threat we face from iran and also the situation where we find ourselves i think in the world that obviously i hope if theres any reductions made, for example, with the russians, that will be done through the treaty process. The new start was stunned three treaty process and one of the things the article says that there could be reductions with the russians about a treaty. So i dont know whether you all would weigh in on whether we should go through the treaty process. But in my view, congress should have an ability to weigh in on these issues. As a followup, i wanted to ask you, general alexander, the role of the guard saber reissues. Where do you see a guard in general, not just the air National Guard, but all of the cards play and what role they would play with regard to how we meet the challenges facing us for cyberattacks and what role could be liana stapes is working with your obvious to you, general trained to engender alexander and how could the guard help in this . Thank you, senator. I sat down with all the generals and talk about the role and responsibility in cyberspace in this to keep things they can do. First, by setting Protection Platoon centimes in training the same standards gives us additional capacity that we may need in a cyberconflict. The second part provides us an ability to work with this phase of the joint Terrorism Task words and cyberforce with dhs to provide additional technical capacity for resilience and recovery. In those two areas, the guard can play a huge role. The same as string in that same standards with the cards cheat. They agree with that and we are working towards that object is. Thank you both. I appreciate it. Thank you, senator ayotte. Senator nelson. Tram one general kehler, you spoke very crisply about us having the ability and our command and control to control our nuclear response. And i appreciate that. That is assuring. Even though we might have a cyberattack that would take out of luck or create some sort earth and so on. What about the russians and the chinese . Do they have the ability to stop some cyberattack from launching one of their Nuclear Icbms . Senator, i dont know. I do not know. Mr. Chairman, i think thats a question that we are at to see to what degree we could answer. It reminds me in the disintegration of the soviet union. It was the United States that took the initiative and nonlucre to go in and try to secure those ends. And that turned out to be a very successful program. And in this new world of cyberthreat, we of course have to be responsible for hours, or we have to worry about those others on the planet that have a Nuclear Strike capability of protecting bears again sat outside player coming in and suddenly, general alexander, do you have any comment . Senator, if i could add one additional point. Because we worked with the russians over the years with decent transparency, i think we in the stand they are very careful about Nuclear Command and control and how they provide nuclear sureties why we want transparent transparency with china in the military context that we have pushed for some time. As we go into this session dull stock with china, what about the brits . French . Do they have the ability to stop a rogue cyber attack and mess up command and control . General alexander, you must me one of the most frustrated people on the planet because you know, the threat of cyber a adhere congress cannot get anything done because there is not passage of legislation. What is it about Liability Protection that the private sector feels comfortable and so realtime we have to have the private sector respond to attack with information in realtime in order to meet this present it increasingly dangerous threat. Senator i will give you my answer for the record because i do think this is important. Liability protectioprotectio n has two parts. With the providers act as an agent of the government and subject to lawsuits they spend a lot of money time and effort responding when we ask them to do something to defend the nation. Is theoretically we send a signature that says stop this piece of traffic like the virus that hit but we mischaracterized that stops some traffic but we make a mistake. They will happen. With realtime emergency concerns, some traffic maybe impacted then the Internet Service providers could alter the signature to get a right. Some traffic has been delayed or disrupted that also could be a subject for lawsuit so in that venue we need to give them immunity. Not broad general immunity. When they deal with the government in good faith we should protect them for what we ask them to do. I will get you a more specific the answer of the technical side from legal. This should not be that hard because we have been through this before with the question in a few years ago to intercept traffic in order to identify the terrorist, wherever it was. Clearly, when we dealt with it before so we should get this one. Senator, there is broad consensus on protection but it gets uncomfortable with regulation standards, what the government does the hard part because all sectors are so different. That really puts the step forward with the executive order gives us an avenue to start discussing that. Any legislation shall the incentives to have a more resilient infrastructure. Thank you. Now it is senator blood to. Thank you chairman. General alexander, with the staffing of Cyber Command that you need to expand in a significant way with your staffing needs and how you meet those for the people in the private sector now. Thank you. There are two issues. Were not talking about significantly increasing the Cyber Command staff per se but the Service Components to field teams to do three missions to the nation from attack and support combat commanders and project our network with cyber platoons and those are the big growth we talk about. We work closely with each of the services to set training standards for those. The big news so far they have met every goal. I give my hats off to the Service Chiefs to do that. We are in line and on track 1 4 to be completed by september than onethird 2014 and the last one third by 2015. We take the most serious threats addressing those first. Those are already online and actively working on the field thanks to the army, air force, and a navy to set those of. Up. So we can take young adults with great aptitude. Data and have to be cyber experts. People to have the desire, we have the machinist mate. How did you get your . I really wanted to, he is one of our best. We ask the navy to give us all machinist mates. [laughter] just kidding. But how do we keep them or incentivize them. We work on the program to do that. A concept to talk about and think about that this committee along with senator koons and were looking at legislation to create more Cyber Warrior opportunities in the National Guard. These are people who are actively in this work every day anyway who would be available to react, a trained, you have a sense of that in the future . Were actively working with the guard. I sat down with the generals of all states how to train everybody to the same standard. To quickly summarize, summarize, vhs, fbi, recovery comment and how they work with us in a cyber conflict. We do not have enough with the National Guard just like the rest. Like the machinist mate decides they dont want to be in the full time force but have a great skill level to take that to the guard. If i may pile in, it is important to remind ourselves whether growth of cyber or replacement for the submarine, no matter which peace is sensitive to budget decisions. Sequestration totals will impact all of this. There is some gross and under way in the services have been generous, there will be impacts across the board breaches cannot predict until the budget is redone. Have you talked about sequestration and continuing resolution component . People have talked about it is important to update your spending request. We are in favor of as much certainty as we can put back. And that will be very beneficial. The most Immediate Impact for us with Strategic Command is the impact we see on civilians. That is not insignificant and we have to be mindful of the potential damage those impacts will have then the readiness accounts it is like a slowmotion movie with. With strap, it is like watching slowmotion. We do not see the fact yet but we will as the months progress. Failure to update the priorities by refusing to appropriate has come together by cutting those priorities on a line by line basis. Impacts Cyber Command in a similar way. With the envoy told budget but we now send up the teams than the five big hot for that is 25 percent of the budget. Onethird of work force where for civilians that will be impacted. Here are the folks we ask to do this tremendous job now we will furlough. But for these and a career field. What is the impact of dividing work force between the uniformed and civilian personnel . It works well together. But when one takes a furlough. It has Significant Impact they say why are we being targeted . It is a Smaller Group sample sides agree this is the wrong way to handle it. General kehler said we need to give the military and flexibility where we take the cuts now just by activity comment that is not how we would do it if it was an industry. I agree. I was at the Airforce Base the commanding general said the civilian force is in your goal we do not need to send a message theyre not as intricate to what happens every day. He showed Good Management concern high you keep your Team Together when one part takes the hit provide not suggesting we do anything to the uniform force but this is the law of unintended consequences you thank you protect uniform but then all personal obligation goes to the other side. Anything what to say . I could not agree more. The role of civilians has changed the dramatically. There interco to what we do is under leaders, occupy Senior Leadership positions and represent the expertise and experience we dont have in the uniform to force with Cyber Command, and the Nuclear Enterprise where senior civilians represent these types of highly technical, a complicated places. Certainly in the space part some are very important parts so my concern begins with the intentional and unintentional and tax we may see of the work force. We have had a successful Internet Program to entice graduates to enter civil service. It has been very successful. These youngsters just starting are looking around and wondering if it is their future. Thank you. Mr. Chairman and general alexander and general kehler. Thank you for your service. General alexander, does the private sector have the same skills that your team does in reacting to cyber security, Cyber Attacks to protect themselves . The private sector has tremendous talent which we need to leverage so there are two parts to answer accurately look back 70 years ago with the making and breaking of codes the predecessors to nsa we have a partnership to vulnerabilities that we can share backandforth. That area is the most important for those that could impact the industrys said the antivirus community is very good. But you say put those do together which is one of the key things. A huge amount is due steel intellectual property. In developing products with your ability but Cyber Attacks are not your thing if you are the company, what would you recommend to protect themselves . First like semantic and others that have great experience with the industrial base. That is one step. Senator in half brought up the good point of failure defense today more resilient and projected architecture like antivirus on your computer. That is the key thing. We know things about the network to protect those but we cannot do is so wide the the at this theory goes we know that or we lose that capability that part custody properly in the classified form that they can use for the network. You mentioned before being on offense are their Communications Made to those countries organizations that have done Cyber Attacks against us that are consequences to what we can do . The president made that publicly in 2011 with the broad range of options and some have been talk to privately that is the first logical step if you do it will upset us. One but i know the injured Agency Process does work that. General kehler with north korea and what we have seen at this point what adjustments to posture are needed then natalie friends in south korea but allies are protected . Senator, we look across our range to see if adjustments need to be made but featuring north korea from acting will rationally is our number one priority and that begins on the peninsula with our alliance with iraq and conventional forces and other forces in the cedar, it extends ultimately all the way back to our Nuclear Deterrent and today my assessment is here capable to offer a full range of options with every he chooses to use and think we can make available to him. Were looking at the pace of the north koreas threat to that the limited Missile Defense won the theater and the United States is on the right to pathway to see if there is a more complete assessment to cause us to make any adjustments. With some areas moi you can determine here is what we expect them to do next as north korea made it difficult to determine what steps they will take . I believe it is difficult one especially with a new leader that frankly i think were still getting to know. There are great debates but for us it is a question about readiness messina ready in a way that could be appropriate i am confident we can respond as lee purchase a pate and exercises with the command on the peninsula moi so i belief we dave and a straight to our capability. D. C. Court nation between north korea and iran in the efforts to develop further technologies and korea bandits efforts . I prefer to have that conversation in a different setting. Thats fine. Senator fisher is next. Thank you, mr. Chairman chairman. General kehler it is a pleasure again. Earlier you said we can protect the continental United States with resources we currently have. Is that correct . Against a limited threat. Would you agree that would rapidly change if others to develop technology to detect our submarines and other governments more hostile to us . If we dont maintain the systems that we have to . Anytime a threat changes to make adjustments, yes. Are we addressing those concerns now . Yes we are. Are we maintaining our Nuclear Arsenal to the standards you like to see . We are today with a caveat that all along where for the last two years remain a point of agreeing forcefully with the need to modernize a deterrent to make sure the enterprise is capable to sustain. With those caveat we are capable of maintaining a successful deterrent. With that caveat you can perform the mission youre asked to do right now . Yes. Do you agree with the statement the more determined to value they have been a less likely they will be used . Generally i would agree but i say the more credible deterrent that we could employ it if there were ever in a situation the president asks us dimity believe our conventional forces today could execute a mission currently performed by Nuclear Weapons . In some cases theyre capable of executing, producing a military results similar to what a Nuclear Weapon could do. But deterrent effect is interesting. In some cases, yes, some strong conventional forces clearly can improve the overall deterrent just like other factors. But Nuclear Weapons occupy a unique place in our defense strategy, National Security, and global perception. They continue to occupy a unique place. From your response, i assume you agree we need to maintain the balance we currently have with conventional forces . Is that a good balance right now . Is a good point . I believe we are and they are complementary. And what has happened since the cold war is won increases in conventional capabilities and one power project projection has made a difference in the role of our Nuclear Deterrent