With us mr. John roth performing the duties of the understand secretary of defense for comptroller and the joint staff director for forestructure, resources and assessment. The briefing will be 40 minutes in duration and on the record. Well start off with a few opening comments from both gentlemen, then well open the floor to questions. With that. Thank you eric. Good morning or good afternoon almost here. Good to see you all. I am not going to do a dramatic reading of the book. I promise you. Its there for reference in case i have to go to it. So, again, we will walk through our presentation of the budget here. Between the general and myself, well try to answer your questions as best we can. As you know, today the president , president trump, sent to congress his proposed fy 2018 budget request. What we will do here this afternoon is outline the request for the Defense Department. Go to the first slide, please. The message is really, on the first slide, is the intent is that fy 18 budget request be the next step in rebuilding the u. S. Armed forces. Secretary mattis, from virtually the first day that he was in the building, talked in terms of a threestep process here initially on how to get there in terms of getting ready, getting balanced, and getting bigger and more lethal. And so our request in fiscal year 2017 for the Additional Resources and finally culminating in the fy 17 appropriations act was intended to address nearterm readiness. So, with the Additional Resources, we did in fact get in the fy 2017 budget we are in the process of implementing that as we speak. With this fy 2018 budget request we will build on the readiness improvements that will make for the remainder of this fiscal year and add resources in order to balance the force. Well walk you through the examples. Ultimately thats not the end of the journey. Our goal is and in fiscal year 2019 will be to sustain the gains that hopefully we will be able to make in fiscal year 2017 and 2018, and by that time, informed by the new Defense Strategy, well build further to achieve a bigger, more lethal and ready force. Next slide, please. So the numbers. The base budget request is 574. 5 billion. The overseas Contingency Operation budget, 64. 6 billion. For a total of 639. 1 billion. This base budget request is 52 billion above the Defense Departments share of the fy 2018 Defense Budget cap in the current law. The budget and control act. It is absolutely essential for us, in order to achieve the goals and in order to meet the strategy, we must increase the Defense Budget cap. We have to reverse defense sequestration in order to adequately protect u. S. National security. Since enactmented of budget control act in 2011 the world has become a more dangerous place with rising terrorism and more aggressive potential adversaries. Under the budget and control act, the military has, during the same period of time, become smaller, readiness has eroded and modernization has been deferred. Thats not a good place to be. This budget begins to balance the Defense Program and establishes a foundation for rebuilding the u. S. Military into that more capable, lethal and ready force. Next slide, please. So here are some of the major themes in terms from a budget perspective that inform the building of this budget. Again, as i continue to emphasize, improving readiness has been priority one for secretary mattis since he walked in the door. What does improving war fighter readiness mean . What will it result in . More aircraft in the air, more ships at sea, more troops on the field and more munitions on hand in order to rebuild the current force. The budget also addresses the evolving National Security challenges, first and foremost we need to retain our counterterrorism and Counter Insurgency competencies. We want to seek to preserve our competitive advantage versus our major adversaries and we look to sustain our Capability Development for new war fighter concepts. A number of recapitalization areas. One of the highest priorities is to recapitalize and modernize the Nuclear Enterprise across the entire nuclear triad. Focus on innovation as a way to maintain our technological advantage, and we seek to sustain the finest fighting force in the world. Sensitive to the fact that we are asking for an awful lot of money from the american taxpayer, we look to continue to identify and pursue reforms to improve efficiencies and achieve cost savings. Those are the major themes in the budget. Like any good budgeteer, i have a couple of graphs that will make your eyes glass over here for the next two slides. This slide is essentially a picture of the Defense Budget since 9 11. The blue is the base budget, and the gray is the overseas Contingency Operation budget. I draw your attention to the most important thing in the slide are the last two bars on right, particularly the one on the for fiscal year 17. Excuse me. 17 and 18. Again, there is the numbers i just alluded to, the 574 billion. You can see, in addition to being above the budget cap, its also a significant increase over the enacted fy 17 level, which is 523 billion. Youll see on the top in the gray, the overseas Contingency Operation budget. That is a distorted picture. I caution you. I think as many of you are aware, that, as the fy 17 appropriations act was finalized, the congressional the congressional committees put all the Additional Resources we requested for particularly the readiness improvements, they put it all in the overseas Contingency Operation budget. So that fy 17 number is distorted. So that makes your comparisons from 17 to 18 a little difficult. It also offers me an opportunity to, in a sense, apologize for whats going to be a difficult comparison between any of the fy 17 numbers and the fy 18 numbers. It has to do with sort of the tyranny, what was happening in the calendar and when we had to lock this fy 18 budget and the fact that the fy 17 appropriations process had not concluded yet. And so, as in late april early may, as we were wrapping up this budget, we didnt have the final fy 17 appropriations. So, depending on which book you have, we have and are providing an overview book and weapons book and the like. The numbers you see there for the fy 17 column are the fy 17 budget request number. They are not the enacted numbers. Thats because we didnt have those numbers available to us as we put those books to bed. If you look at the office of management and budgets documentation, all the books that they have, virtually all their fy 17 numbers are essentially a mathematical calculation of a yearlong continuing resolution. And so its a mathematical number that doesnt have any particular problematic basis. So that distorts all the comparisons between 17 and 18. And as we go forward here, selectively, where hopefully we had made some sense for example, in this graph i did pick up the enacted numbers, but be aware that we have been playing catchup since we locked this budget in terms of trying to catch up to when the actual fy 17 budget was enacted and we were making our final decisions here on fy 18. Its unfortunately just the nature of the timing as we have put these two processes through their paces. Next slide. Just basically, a bit of an expansion on the previous slide to show you the plus 52 billion. You see it there on the right. That the calculated budget and control act. D. O. D. Cap for fy 18 would be around 522 billion. Our request is 52 billion above that. Some of you may have seen numbers in the press in terms of plus 54 billion. That is the whole defense function, which includes the department of energy portion of the budget as well. That is also particularly in the omb material, youll see the plus 54. Our portion of that increase was the 52 billion you see on this graph. Let me pause and hand off to the general to walk through a little bit of our readiness story. Next chart, please. The fy 18 request picks up after the supplemental appropriation for fiscal year 17. 17 was about addressing immediate war fighting readiness. In 18, we want to continue to build a baseline from which to move forward from regarding readiness. You see continued significant investment in the aspect of unit preparedness. Training, maintenance and modernization, to restore war fighting readiness while setting conditions for future sustained comprehensive readiness. When we say comprehensive readiness, this being the balance between the capacity, the capability, and Mission Preparedness of our units. This budget also supports combat and commander exercises and engagements to increase joint training capability, invest in critical aviation munitions and command and theater activities. Next chart. This describes the service just highlights servicespecific increases, or investments, intended to increase readiness. So you see here under each of these Service Entries areas that would be that we will invest in regarding training, equipping, maintaining the force at higher levels than we had been under previous years. Where decisions were made to ensure that the force is always ready to accomplish the mission to deploy to the theaters of operation that we are engaged in today, while in some ways sacrificing the longterm readiness of the force and the modernization of the force. Fiscal year 18, as we say, fills those holes and allows us to recover readiness in the aspect of full spectrum readiness. Readiness to operate in different theaters against different adversaries, over different periods of time. This budget allows us to be able to recover that readiness and, as ive said, establish a baseline from which to move forward looking to the future. Next slide. Very busy slide with lots of numbers. Mostly just to provide that for your information. I draw your attention really, the only Important Message on this slide is the right hand column and the bumper sticker. What this budget does is pick up and sustains essentially an increase in end strength over 56,000 from what the 18 column in the fy 17 budget was. To some extent, particularly the Army End Strength increase was inherent in the fy 17 authorization act. We pick up and continue to fund that. There are minor increases in the middle column in navy, marine corps and air force. For the most part is continues the momentum to building the force. Well first work on the National Defense strategy and well figure out what is the appropriate forestructure to execute the new Defense Strategy when thats done and it will inform the fy 19 budget. Next slide. This gives you a Market Basket of some of the major Acquisition Programs, its not inclusive. Its the big ticket drivers, if you will. The dollars on this slide are a combination are a combination of procurement and r d dollars in the base budget. In terms of aircraft, you see the biggest Acquisition Program we continue to have is in fact the f35 joint Strike Fighter program where were requesting 70 aircraft in fiscal year 18. Those 70 aircraft are broken down into 46 aircraft for the air force variant, which is the f35a. We are asking for 20 aircraft for the mostly cloudy variant, the f35b and four for the navy variant, which is the f35c. Youll see there Market Basket, asking for four f in 18s and others. The b 21 are r d. We dont start procuring that until 2020s. We have essentially eight combat ships. Eight Battle Force Ships were requesting in fy 18. These are the six biggest ships here, in addition there is a fleet oiler. And a towing salvage and rescue ship as well. Were asking for eight battle shichs ships. Two submarines, two destroys and lcs. This is the second of the ford class aircraft carriers, uss enterprise. The continued investment in space programs. Three launches are being financed in fy 18. All three will be procured under competitive acquisition process. Next slide. These are the preferred munitions. As we closed out this budget over the last two, three weeks in particular, a great deal of concern was being raised with current inventory levels, and particularly given some of the expenditures in the centcom areas of operation as we talk. The secretary mandated and insisted that we fully fund to the maximum extent possible the full production capability for certain selected preferred mu munitions. This really only half the story. This is the base budget. There is another billion dollars of preferred munitions in the overseas contingency budget as well. You see selected ground systems particularly for the amphibious combat vehicle for the mostly cloudy marine corps and army. Missiles out of the missile Defense Program. The total missile Defense Program is 10 billion in 2018. These are the two major programs in that portfolio. Next slide. This is just a selected set of examples. Largely because, a, they were unclassified and b, just to give you examples of some of the things weve done in past years in terms of focus on technology and innovation. In our mind we have funded a pretty robust science and technology program, 13. 2 billion. And then we offer you here just a couple examples in terms of the alternate navigation technology, directed energy kinds of efforts. Highspeed strike weapons, lowcost Unmanned Systems and, in particular on the bottom there, reacting to current changes in the threat in the field, were investing across d. O. D. To counter the illicit Unmanned Aerial Systems that were encountering even today. This is a Market Basket of our continued concern with investing in new innovation and new technologies. Next slide, please. Were pretty pleased with our situation with facilities investment. This is an area where, when you get constrained budgets and you have lower top lines you tend to take risk, and you tend to defer. Sort of like youre going to wait to fix that window until the next year as long as the roof is not leaking or Something Like that. So we have had pretty anemic military construction facilities budgets over the last four or five years. This year reflects a 25 increase in the military construction budget going from 7. 8 billion to 9. 8 billion. There is a readiness nexus with this as well. Were investing in operational and Training Facilities and maintenance and production facilities in particular. As far as overseas, we continue to invest in the infrastructure to support the relocation of machines from japan to guam. And my footstomp on this slide is that we are seeking the authority, once again, to commence a new base realignment and closearound in 2021. We need to in order to get a round done in 2021 you have to begin the analysis and begin the process here. It has been over ten years since we have had a brac round. 2005 was the last year. The sum total of the four or five rounds that we have had since the 1990s and 2005 has resulted in approximately 12 billion a year in savings by having done that. That is a gift that keeps giving. All were asking for at this stage is the authority we cant even do the Detailed Analysis under current law. What we have is a parametric estimate that tells us weve got about 20 excess capacity. If that number is anywhere near correct we estimate we could save about 2 billion a year that we can reinvest into readiness and modernization kinds of requirements. So we are foregoing, we think, a very significant opportunity to get some savings. Its a very structured, systematic, rigorous process that ultimately congress has the final say on. So, again, we are asking for the authority for brac. We think were getting signals from committees that theyre more amenable to it so well be pushing that pretty hard. Next slide. Were also, again, as i noted, we continue to look at our business processes. The secretary, when he came in as well, said that he had a rebuilding and reform agenda that he has in mind. So there is a number of ongoing activities that we continue to pursue. Were continuing to look at the major headquarters and to reduce them by 25 . We continue with acquisition reform, particularly to better buying power 3. 0. We continue to look at take a hard look at our Service Support contracts and make sure that theyre appropriate. And particularly for us in the Financial Management world, 2018 is an extremely important year. We are going to move from getting ready for an audit to actually beginning the audit. Thats an extraordinarily important year. Were going to learn a lot from it. There will be wins and losses that come out of that process, but what i always describe a little bit spring training is over, we need to get on with the season. Okay. We need to get on to actually doing the audits and we think well learn an awful lot in terms of getting us to where we need to be. Next slide. Similar here with the what the theme in this slide is just some of the reforms that came out of the 2017 authorization act. As many of you are aware, we are reorganizing the Acquisition Community into two undersecretaries. A chief Technology Officer and another in charge of acquisition and sustainment. We are in a process of standing up a chief management officer. Were going to elevate the Cyber Command into a standalone combat and command and develop and implement a plan to reform the administration of Defense Health agency and the military treatment facilities. Smart things to do in terms of reorganizing the department. And hopefully well illicit savings. We have a relatively modest set of compensation reforms this year. Mostly sort of tweaking things at the margins. The goal here throughout this in terms of our compensation packages is to maintain the health of the force through a competitive compensation package that reflects the unique demands and sacrifices of our service members. So our sense is this budget does that. This budget is going to ask for a 2. 1 pay raise for military members and a 1. 9 pay raise for civilians which is the governmentwide rate for all civilians. Well seek some modifications to military health care system. We continue to look at efforts, and for example, to rely on telehealth and additional nurse advice lines and those things to try to improve the beneficiarys experience with the process. We would like to exempt from any cost share or increase the medically retired and family members of those who die on active duty. We think thats a tweak in the law that perhaps the hill has overlooked. What we did get from last year, and both in fy 16 and 17 we did get a fair amount of revised and simplification of the Fee Structure in the military health care system. But they grandfathered the provision for anybody who comes in january 1, 2018. What that did is, in effect, pretty much wiped out any of the nearterm savings and created what we think is an awkward twotier system from those who will be under one system and those under another. Well ask congress to consider eliminating the grandfathering. And were very pleased with where we are with the blended retirement system. There is a widespread education and Training Program that is going on as we speak in order to educate the members in terms of the kind of choices they now have, which are very similar to the choices many civilians have and the like. We are going to ask congress, if they would, the current law basically ends the matching for the military members at 26 years of service. And were going to ask at least for enlisted members that they be allowed to have the matching beyond the 26 years of service. Next slide, please. There is nothing particularly new on this slide. Just want to emphasize we continue to have what we think is a very healthy and robust family assistant program. A family of benefits that you see there. We are investing 8 billion in this range of services. Everything from spouse education, career assistance, morale recreation and welfare, and things like the schools and co commisaries and the like. To emphasize continued support to members and their families. As far as the oversees Contingency Operations request, 64. 6 billion. Basically supports the level of Ongoing Operations in afghanistan, iraq and syria. It also includes some additional Security Cooperation money for looking at that counterterrorism Crisis Response and other things throughout the globe. It reflects a force level structure in afghanistan of about 8,448. Forestructure in iraq of 5,776. In particular, there is a major commitment to the european reassurance initiative. That goes up from 3. 4 billion in fy 17 to 4 4. 8 billion in f 18. I would caution that there are a number of plans in terms of change of plans under consideration by both the building and the white house right now that are going through the vetting process and the discussion stage and like. This particular request does not reflect approval of those plans. And so once those plans are approved well have to take a look at this and reassess what the Resource Requirements might have to be and work with both the white house and congress to see if there is any changes to the request that might be necessary. Next slide, please. So, at the end i want to talk briefly about one concern that has been raised in the runup to this rollout briefing, and that is whether or not there would be a futureyear Defense Program plan for not. What i am here to tell you is, what we have done to date under that threestep process that i alluded to on the very first slide is we have focused on getting a budget ready for fy 17 and were very pleased that we finally got an appropriations act for fiscal 17 and we pivoted and worked on getting the fy 18 budget done in order to meet this date as well. The secretary has not spent any time at all looking at anything beyond fy 18 to date. In large part because, what we have stood up, as i alluded to earlier is we have begun the process of developing the new Defense Strategy, and the intent and goal was that the new Defense Strategy would inform anything beyond fy 19 in terms of the fy 19 to 23 program, for example. What you have and what omb provided to date for the Defense Department is a flat topline beyond fy 18. Which is simply the fy 18 number thats extrapolated and inflated across the outyears. That is not the top line that we will be seeking here, particularly as we go to the fy 19 budget. That line that you have the flat line is not informed by strategy, and its not informed by policy. And so i actually feel that any analysis or any comparisons of what is in that outyear profile is a relatively empty exercise because one of the standard answers are going to be, were going to have to go back and look at that this fall. That is not the number. You will not see a growth in force structure. You will not see a growth in the ship building clan. You will not see a robust Modernization Program in the socalled current fita. I caution anybody from trying to make comparisons. I am actually of the school that providing it and is really doesnt provide anything thats particularly insightful. Where is makes sense in terms of the acquisition exhibits and military construction exhibits and all, we will be providing outyear data, but it is all tempered by the fact that i essentially have a flat top line that goes anything beyond fy 19 at this point. So, my get off the stage comments are we need to sustain and build on readiness improvements that were begun in fy 2017. We need to begin the process of balancing the force to become bigger and more lethal, and we absolutely, essentially, need to reverse defense sequestration, increase the Defense Budget caps in order to support the National Security strategy and any new Defense Strategy as well. So we have a few charts there, some pie charts that break it by appropriation title and military department. Those are there for your information. And so, we are open to answering any questions that you might have. I know most of you but not all. If you could, when i call on you, name your immediate affiliation and give us your name, please. Yes, maam. I just wanted to clarify something. In a few months back a general was talking about the possible delay that could occur with f35 testing. He said that his office, the jpo would take money out of modernization to finish sdd. Is that still the plan as of this budget . It seemed from the recent g. A. O. Report on f35 in april that theyre not going to finish that testing on time. I would defer to discussing it with particularly with the air force and navy. Theyll be following us in turn in terms of those details. We looked at the f35 program as we finalized this budget. We did adjust procurement and r d funding appropriately to bring it up to date with where the program is today. I would say mostly intuitively i think weve in fact accommodated what the general was alluding to but i defer to the air force and navy to fill in the blanks for you. Funding for the counter Islamic State campaign. I see 1. 7 billion. Could you talk about the train and equip fund and what the rationale for that was. The rationale, again, is in fact to provide our our idea in terms of fighting the campaign is essentially a by, with and through our partners kind of a campaign. The train and equip money continues to be very important. All we really did, the only change in it ill defer to the general to fill in some more blanks here. All we did from a budget perspective is we had a separate iraq train and equip fund in the fy 17 request and a separate syria train and equip fund. What we did, with approval from last years authorization act, is combined those into a single train and equip fund to give us somewhat more flexibility. The 1. 8 billion request for that right now, our estimate is 1. 3 would be for iraq and. 5 for syria. But those are just notional estimates at this point. I dont have anything to add. Aaron meadow. A couple quick clarifying things. One, i think you said i want to make sure the munitions request you put in was the maximum amount that the companies could handle producing. For those selected munitions, yes. Number two, there are a bunch of Reform Efforts mentioned in am s some of the budget documents. Are any of those new for fy 18 . For the most part there were no particular new ones. We havent stopped looking is the partial answer to your question. The ones you see that were alluded to on the chart that were in the overview book and those kinds of things for the most part are a continuation of efforts we already had on hand. So, again, part of this has to do with the short period of time that the secretary has been here. He has made it very clear this is important to him, so well continue particularly as we stand up, the chief management officer, okay, and well continue one of their charters will be to look at the business processes of the department when, in fact, we get a new deputy secretary that will be pretty much one of his jobs will be to take that on in terms of looking kind of end to end in terms of our business processes and where and try to seek savings and improvements where we can. One last real wonky one. There is a note in the budget documents about nnsa funding. Essentially it looks like d. O. D. Is shifting funding from d. O. D. To nnsa. Can you clear that up. Thats always thats been an annual we have we in the past had some money set aside to help support nnsa. The thinking there is we drive a lot of the requirement. So, in putting this budget to bed, this year essentially we shifted that top line to nnsa now. Okay . So their budget stands on its own. Our budget stands on its own. Marcus wiseberg with defense one. You two gentlemen have been through this a number of years. Whats your level of confidence this year that this budget will get enacted at the levels that youve proposed them . I mean, its hard to predict. Let me start take the chicken way out and say its hard to predict. The answer is, i think weve made our case, okay. I think our Service Chiefs have been up there over the last few months on many different occasions testifying before the Armed Services committee and before the appropriations committees and have laid out the concerns and the erosion of readiness that exists today. I think there is a in my personal opinion, i think there is some recognition on the hill that there is a mismatch between what were being asked to do and the resources that have been made available in order for us to do what were being asked to do. That said, it all gets embroiled in the political process, okay. So asking for elimination of the defense sequestration is not an easy thing. I understand it will probably take some tradeoffs on the hill. That is frankly outside of our control. The answer is i am actually fairly sanguine. A lot of the reaction we have gotten so far from our meetings with some of the members is, why didnt you ask for more kinds of a thing. For a budget guy, thats always good to hear. Why didnt i ask for more. Okay. So well have to see. Its going to obviously, its going to take a lot in congress in both the house and senate, to try to get it done. And were here to help any way we can. Well make our case. What youll see here over the next two or three weeks, each of the military departments, both the secretary and Service Chiefs, will go up and testify and lay out their case. And i am very comfortable we have a good case to make here. Brian. Ryan brown with cnn. To follow up on that quickly, i mean, why didnt you ask for more . Obviously capitol hill has already sounded that the number is too small to address the readiness shortfalls currently faced by the services. Could you explain the delta between what capitol hill is saying is needed and whats been proposed. Its a bit of a judgmental thing to be honest. There is not a point total that anyone can point to to say thats the perfect number. What i will say, again, largely is the fallback on the threestep process that we think were in. We asked in s17 for what we thought was politically palatable and we didnt get everything we asked for but we got a healthy increase and were pleased and thankful for what the hill provided. In a similar fashion were asking for an increase. 52 billion. I would argue is not chump change. So thats a pretty significant increase in the Defense Budget that were requesting here. Were not done. Well take a look once we have the new Defense Strategy, well look at what seems to be the appropriate amount of resources to support that strategy and well probably go in with a request that will have some degree of growth from fy 18 as well. Were not going to solve the readiness problem in one year. Were not going to modernize overnight. All this is a multi what we need more is sort of a stabilized multiyear commitment to defense spending more than anything else. Thats what were seeking. The erosion of readiness did not occur in one year and we are not going to be able to satisfy the requirements in one year. It will take a while to be able to do that, with sustained funding. David wood from huffington post. Mr. Roth, would you talk about the audit that you say is going to start. When will it take in how long will it take . When will it be finished . What do you have to say about you have been here probably as long as i have, can remember the last time an audit was successfully done. First of all, how can we have confidence in the numbers you have here since theyre unaudited and what makes you confident, if you are, that this audit will get completed . Fair questions. I love references to how old i am. So thanks for that. But beyond that, okay, the answer is, yeah, we cannot pass a clean audit yet. We are the last federal agency to do so. Thats not a good place to be in. We recognize that. There is a lot of issues in terms of complexity and the number of systems and the legacy i. T. Systems we have that well have to work our way through. The answer to your question is, we have been spending particularly in the last five to six years, management actually turned to and focused on this as a priority. One of the reasons we are where we are is for about 20 years no one really cared. So thats why we didnt move the ball. Basically, somewhere in the last six or seven years, particularly with secretary gates and beyond, it became a high priority for the entire department. This isnt something that only a comptroller and financial manager can do. It needs buyin from the entire enterprise. We have had that, so therefore we have made an enormous amount of progress getting, quote, ready for the audit. Now the answer is to begin the audit, okay. To answer your question, thats not were not going to get to a clean audit in one year. I dont want to oversell this, okay. We wont know until we start the audit. So, as we start the audit well get whats called disclaimers, good audit opinions and frankly well get some bad audit opinions. Those will lead to remediation efforts and look being at changing business processes or changing accounting processes and the like. The answer is i dont have its going to take more than a year. I dont have a good feel. Anything i would predict now would be foolish. I try most of the time to avoid being foolish. So its going to take more than a year to get there. So but we have to start. Thats the importance of 2018. As far as the trust and credibility. We do, in fact, know what we spend. The problem is we cant technically pass a clean audit. I take that as a point. Thats something we need to correct. We do, over the years, know exactly where we spend the money by every appropriation to the decimal point. What we have to do is build up the credibility in terms of actually passing a clean audit. And we understand that. We have time for a couple more. Tony bertuca. The budget has been criticized on capitol hill for only being 3 more from what the Obama Administration had planned. What is it about this budget thats a departure from what the Obama Administration had planned . How can you say the 3 is taking us in a different direction . What would you say to those critics s critics . 3 is not inconsequential. We had a notional budget at the tail end of the Previous Administration that hadnt gone anywhere, and by the way the important fact is the budget and control act of 2011, those caps are still in place. Okay. They kick in again. We had a couple of years here where we had an amended budget. That the bca had been amended which gave us a little bit of head room, but not a lot. So the important thing is something has to be done about the Defense Budget cap. There is your commitment, okay. The 52 billion is real. Its a real request. Anything before this was just a notional paper exercise up to this point. So it is a significant increase. As you saw when i showed you on the graph in what was actually appropriated in fiscal year 17 was somewhere around 523 billion. We are asking for 574 billion. Thats a significant increased commitment on the part of this administration to defense spending. Thats really the answer to your question. I was going to say, reflected in terms of size size increases in the force, additional capabilities in the services and the joint force that result, you know, in the cumulative effect of both the 17 budget and supplemental appropriation and this budget request. So our footing is firmer where the comprehensive readiness of joint force is concerned from which we would then depart from to become bigger and more lethal. Quickly, for 19, should we expect that question, then, to go to congress and say, this is how much above the caps the department would like to see congress raise the caps for defense spending . Well, i would hope. I am not here to tell congress. I would hope they would increase the caps. When they do tackle the caps, that they would do it over multiyears. Thats what happened when they amended the budget the last couple of times. They did it in twoyear windows or four or fiveyear windows. We would hope the caps would be increased before we get to fy 19. The answer is, if not, then yes, wed have the same dialogue with fy 19. Last question. Eloquent disclaimer about the fita. Need to ask you, the services are all telling us that they cant do fita figures for major Acquisition Programs for the comptrollers offices send a word, dont do it. The navy budget books has a lot of white space from where they would have had five years. Looks like an 18minute gap in the fita. Will you allow them to give out the numbers for the columbia class b21, a lot of the big programs . Your office cast a pall over the services on specific figures. Where it makes sense i think we should poirovide out year numbers but i would caution that theyre constrained by what we call a place holder number in. I think the guidance we had provided to the navy was, for example, that where appropriate they actually should show the outyear numbers. Particularly we are asking for a couple multiyear contracts, for example, b22 being one. They need to show the sevenyear profile for the v22. I think there has been a bit of a misreading of the guidance from this office. What i am not particularly crazy about is providing an entire fita at this point in time because i think it has no analytic standing. Where appropriate, we ought to provide the information, yes. The tomahawk. Any outyear number will be constrained by the fact that we dont really have a real top line. The elephant in the room that you havent addressed is that the chiefs they made their case before the headlines came yesterday of major cuts to medicaid, the equivalent sfood food stamp program, the 54 billion youre speaking is to be offset by domestic spending. Among the many of the people in the United States that arent dependent in the military depend on those programs. To what extent do those cuts now complicate your efforts to gain support among the 98 of the public who arent connected to the military . Its not my place to comment on the politics of the matter so others will have to work to through the plan. That gets into the political dynamic of dealing with the political control act and how you balance. Theres a lot of impairtives at play here. This addressing as previous zreegss were committed to balancing the budget as well and those kinds of goals and objectives. All i can tell you is and all i can do and the only thing appropriate for me do is to outline what the Defense Department needs and requirements are. And then let it go into the public forum and let people debate that as they will and should. Youre going to sell a budget to a lot of people that arent connected to the military and they say why should we by the f35 if youre going to be cutting our food stamp equivalence . Its our responsibility to advocate for the force, for the need for a joint force that can do what the nation asks douse to defend the nation. And so the world say very dangerous place these days and i think theres a compelling there is, i dont think i know there is a compelling justification for this budget to enhance the readiness of the force to the levels at which we request. Thats all the time we have, folks, thanks a lot. Appreciate it. Thank you. [ indissti [. This Holiday Weekend on cspan 3, at 10 00 p. M. Eastern on real america the 1977 documentary men of bronze infanlttry known as the harlem hell fighters. April 2,400 germans attacked. Roberts got shrugged almost immediately, and johnson fought them off. He shot and he cut and he swung his knife around and he defeated the 24 germans. All the ones that werent wounds and kill cut out. He had 21 wounds in his body but he refused to die. Sunday elizabeth cobs. Now in france before they got the line up that meant to the local operator had to speak to a french operator. They had to par lay view, and most doe boys did not par lay view. So they had to get byling we will american women that do do this job. And monday at 9 00 a. M. Eastern well visit the National World war i museum and memorial in kansas city, missouri, and talk with the curator and the museums president and ceo matthew nailer. What we seek to do here is to tell the story through the lives of people, ordinary people, men and women, volunteers as well as those who served in the armed forces from all sides. For our complete American History tv schedule, go to cspan. Org. The congressional budget aufts u Office Released its score of the republican Healthcare Plan to replace the Affordable Care act. The bill passed by the house earlier this month would leave more than 23 million uninsured according to cbo. We talked to a reporter about the updated cbo score released today. Mary Ellen Mcintyre were just seeing the report out on the budget office, their core, youre take a
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