House Hearing, 110TH Congress - The Department of Defense and The Fiscal Year 2008 Budget

THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE AND
THE FISCAL YEAR 2008 BUDGET
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
HEARING HELD IN WASHINGTON, DC, MARCH 6, 2007
Serial No. 11012

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COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET

JOHN M. SPRATT, JR., South Carolina, Chairman
ROSA L. DELAURO, Connecticut,
PAUL RYAN, Wisconsin,
CHET EDWARDS, Texas
Ranking Minority Member
JIM COOPER, Tennessee
J. GRESHAM BARRETT, South Carolina
THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine
JO BONNER, Alabama
ALLYSON Y. SCHWARTZ, Pennsylvania
SCOTT GARRETT, New Jersey
MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio
THADDEUS G. MCCOTTER, Michigan
MARIO DIAZBALART, Florida
XAVIER BECERRA, California
JEB HENSARLING, Texas
LLOYD DOGGETT, Texas
DANIEL E. LUNGREN, California
EARL BLUMENAUER, Oregon
MICHAEL K. SIMPSON, Idaho
MARION BERRY, Arkansas
PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina
ALLEN BOYD, Florida
CONNIE MACK, Florida
JAMES P. MCGOVERN, Massachusetts
BETTY SUTTON, Ohio
K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas
ROBERT E. ANDREWS, New Jersey
JOHN CAMPBELL, California
ROBERT C. BOBBY SCOTT, Virginia
PATRICK J. TIBERI, Ohio
BOB ETHERIDGE, North Carolina
JON C. PORTER, Nevada
DARLENE HOOLEY, Oregon
RODNEY ALEXANDER, Louisiana
BRIAN BAIRD, Washington
ADRIAN SMITH, Nebraska
DENNIS MOORE, Kansas
TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York
[Vacancy]
PROFESSIONAL STAFF
THOMAS S. KAHN, Staff Director and Chief Counsel
JAMES T. BATES, Minority Chief of Staff
(II)
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CONTENTS
Page
Hearing held in Washington, DC, March 6, 2007 .................................................

Statement of:
Hon. John M. Spratt, Jr., Chairman, House Committee on the Budget .....
Hon. Paul Ryan, a Representative in Congress from the State of Wisconsin .............................................................................................................
Hon. Gordon England, Deputy Secretary of Defense; ADM Edmund P.
Giambastiani, Jr., USN, Vice Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff; and
Hon. Tina W. Jonas, Under Secretary of DefenseController/Chief Financial Officer ...............................................................................................
Prepared statement of:
Hon. Jeb Hensarling, a Representative in Congress from the State of
Texas ..............................................................................................................
Secretary England, et al ..................................................................................
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1
3
6
5
7
(III)
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THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE AND

THE FISCAL YEAR 2008 BUDGET
TUESDAY, MARCH 6, 2007
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:05 a.m., in room 210,
Cannon House Office Building, Hon. John Spratt [chairman of the
committee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Spratt, Cooper, Allen, Schwartz, Kaptur, Becerra, Doggett, Blumenauer, Boyd, McGovern, Sutton, Scott,
Etheridge, Hooley, Moore, Bishop, Ryan, Barrett, Bonner, DiazBalart, Hensarling, Lungren, Mack, Campbell, Tiberi, Porter, and
Smith.
Chairman SPRATT. Secretary England, Secretary Jonas and Admiral Giambastiani, we are grateful that you have come here again
to testify about the defense budget. To help us better understand
the assumptions that underlie, the Presidents 2008 discretionary
budget provides $643.7 billion for what we call Function 050, National Defense. That makes this the largest defense budget since
the Second World War. Of this amount, $501.9 billion is for the socalled base defense budget, and $142 billion is for operations associated with Iraq and the global war on terrorists. Nearly $623
billion of the total goes to the Department of Defense and falls in
your domain.
The defense budget has been on an upward, ascending trajectory
over the last 6 years, and the Presidents budget for 2008 continues
this trend. With the retirement of the baby boomers on the horizon,
77 million of them marching to their retirement as we meet today,
and the budget pressures that will bring to bear on Social Security,
Medicare and Medicaid, we have to ask ourselves is the enlarging,
setting and enlarging an unprecedentedly large peacetime defense
budget sustainable?
We are fighting the battle of the budget here on this committee,
trying to balance the budget over a reasonable period of time. We
both said 2012. The President has accepted that goal as the goal
we should all strive to attain, but the question is can we accommodate your defense plans within a budget that comes to balance in
the year 2012.
It also appears that we have underestimated various costs of the
war in which we are now engaged, particularly in Iraq. We certainly did not estimate the magnitude of the aftermath, what
would ensue the active fighting, and the cost there has been enormous.
(1)
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In addition, in recent days we have been awakened to the fact
that there is another cost that we did not fully appreciate or accrue, and that is the cost of treating our veterans who are coming
back with grievous injuries, some of which are mental as well as
physical.
The base defense budget, as we call itthat is, without
supplementalsis $37 billion above the amount that CBO says is
needed to maintain current services for 2008 and $237 billion
above current services for over 5 years. That makes it not just the
biggest single element in the budget, the discretionary budget, by
far but also the fastest growing, faster growing than even most of
the entitlement programs.
These increases capture, however, only a portion of the total increases to the defense budget since the beginning of the Bush administration, total defense spending increase under the administrations policies, which include war costs for 2009, that will exceed
the CBO baseline set in January 2001, when Mr. Bush took office,
by $1.7 trillion. This amount will likely increase because the administration includes after 2009 no funding for our military operations in Iraq or Afghanistan. For the first time, the administration
has requested funding for war operations for the upcoming year
along with its base budget, and for that I commend you for including that request. It has been long overdue.
Using supplemental appropriations to fund war operations has
been problematic for various reasons, but it does require the military frequently to divert funds from regular accounts to pay for war
costs, to borrow from Paul to pay Peter. Until a supplemental is
enacted and it increases, the practice has many effects, one of
which is on readiness, which is a concern to all of us.
The administrations current request for the wars in Afghanistan
and Iraq, $170 billion for 2007, of which $70 billion has already
been appropriated, $145 billion for 2008, are the largest yet and reflect increases of $50 billion and $25 billion respectively over the
2006 funding level. We are very interested in learning the details
that underlie these estimates and are hoping to get your assurances that the budget is not only providing for the needs of our
servicemen and servicewomen while they are in harms way but is
also providing for the needs of those who have been injured and
have returned with injuries that are physical and mental.
I am also concerned regarding our overall security priorities in
the budget. Are we actually putting funds toward those programs
that address the most severe and serious threat we face? For example, the President has stated on several occasions that our number
one security concern is nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass
destruction in the hands of terrorists. If the funding to combat this
threat has been lacking, the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, for instance, which is designed to secure nuclear materials
in Russia and other states of the former Soviet Union, would help
ensure that these dangerous materials have not fallen into the
wrong hands. The one thing they lack is nuclear materials. The 9/
11 Commission recommended that we place the highest priority on
this, but I am concerned that we have not done it. While funds
have been plentiful to finance large weapon systems to combat traditional, many would say, Cold War threats like missile defense,
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funds have been lacking to combat the more likely threat, unconventional, asymmetrical threats posed by terrorists. The 2008
budget cuts the Cooperative Threat Reduction by $24 million. That
is not a lot of money, but it is a significant cut in a program that
addresses what we would commonly concede, I think agree, stipulate, is the largest, most serious threat we face, particularly stateside in the United States.
Secretary England, we look forward to your testimony on the
budget. We hope you can give us a better understanding of the assumptions that underlie it, the assumptions you have used in
building the budget and the long-term consequences. Before turning to you for your statement, though, let me ask Mr. Ryan for any
statement he has to make.
Mr. RYAN. Thank you, Chairman. I, too, want to welcome the
Secretary and the Admiral to the hearing.
In evaluating the Presidents defense requests, it is helpful to
look at it in both a financial and a strategic context because since
the end of the Cold War we have been trying to readjust our national defense posture to meet a vastly different set of security
challenges from those we have been accustomed to. It is what the
Pentagon likes to call transformation. it has been going on since
the Berlin Wall came down, and it is going on today. The difference
is now that instead of managing a head-to-head competition between nuclear superpowers we have a worldwide war against terrorism in which adversaries can strike at any time, anywhere from
Baghdad to London to New York City, and emerging nuclear
threats from smaller countries like North Korea and Iran.
Our struggles with this transformation are reflected in our defense spending patterns of the past few decades, and if you could
call up chart number 1, please, that would be very helpful.
Have you got it, Jose?
4
Well, if you saw chart number 1, what it would be showing you
isyes. Can you see it right here? There you go. I thought we had
this figured out last week.
Throughout the 1990s, we financed national defense for about
$300 billion a year in straight nominal dollars. In fact, it was almost flat through the middle part of the decade until 1999. Then
it grew again, and since 9/11, defense spending shot up. Okay.
There we have chart number 1. So you can sort of see the valley
and the floor for a while. Under the Presidents request, it would
keep rising to just shy of $650 billion this next year. Even excluding amounts for direct combat operations, base defense spending
next year would be nearly one-half a trillion dollars even though
there was no longer a Soviet Union or any other global superpower
for us to deal with, but when we look at these figures adjusted for
inflation the impact becomes clear and the picture becomes a little
more in focus.
Chart number 2, please.
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This chart shows total defense spending in constant dollars, including war costs in the past and in the present, and it reflects how
our defense spending in the 1990s actually declined sharply in real
terms after the collapse of the Soviet bloc and a rapid victory in
the Persian Gulf War. That trend began to change toward the end
of the 1990s, and since 9/11, of course, defense spending has shot
up dramatically, and again, our level of defense spending in real
terms is even higher than it was at the culmination of the Cold
War.
The point is we enjoyed a peace dividend, but that peace dividend was really hollow in the sense that we simply ignored the
threat that was looming out there. Now we know the threat. It is
clearly here. We clearly have to deal with it, and we believe that
I think most of us believe the first responsibility of the Federal
Government is to protect the country in national security. It is our
first responsibility. We have a much more dangerous world we are
5
living in today where threats come from multiple sources, not just
one superpower, but with so much money that we are dedicating
to this primary responsibility of the Federal Government, it is all
the more incumbent on us to watch how we spend this money.
By dedicating so much money and so many increases, which
clearly have a case to be made for them, we have to watch our taxpayer dollars, and this is an area where I think the Pentagon has
a lot of room for improvement, whether it is IG reports, whether
it is GAO reports, because this is the most important function of
the Federal Government, the basic responsibility, because you
have, no matter how you measure it, a need to rise up to the challenge and face these threats. While all of these taxpayer dollars
rightfully soare being dedicated to these, we have to be ever
more vigilant on how these dollars are being spent, and we have
to make sure that this transformation is complete so that our DOD
is structured toward the 21st century threats and not still hanging
onto constituencies within the Pentagon and here in Congress from
the 20th century.
With that, I want to thank the chairman, and I know in one
hearing we are not going to get all of the answers to our questions,
but I think we can get a good start on how we are going to establish accountability and how we are going to fully transform the
Pentagon to mirror the 21st century threats we have, and I thank
the chairman.
Chairman SPRATT. Secretary England, thank you again for coming. We have your written statement. We will make it part of the
record so that you can summarize it to any extent you like, but the
floor is yours, and you may proceed. Thank you very much for coming.
Oh, one thing before you do start. I would like to ask unanimous
consent that all members who did not have an opportunity to make
an opening statement be allowed to submit an opening statement
in writing and enter it into the record at this point.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Hensarling follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT
OF
HON. JEB HENSARLING, A REPRESENTATIVE

FROM THE STATE OF TEXAS
IN
CONGRESS
Secretary England, thank you for joining us again today to discuss the Department of Defenses priorities for 2008. I look forward to working with my colleagues
to ensure that our servicemen and women have all the resources they need for victory. However, I do wish to raise concerns today regarding the Walter Reed Army
Medical Center.
The Washington Post has detailed, through a series of articles, the squalid conditions and neglect that many outpatient servicemen were forced to endure in Building 18. I appreciate Secretary Gates prompt response and I am confident that my
fellow Texan Pete Geren will serve ably as the acting Secretary of the Army. Yet,
this kind of situation must never be allowed to happen again. What concerns me
most are reports that suggest that senior Army medical officers knew of these conditions as far back as 2003.
As Secretary Gates independent review group moves forward, I hope that several
important questions are answered. I would like to know why the broken outpatient
care system at Walter Reed was not reported up the chain of command, and if individuals with knowledge of the situation that predates recent reports will be held accountable for their negligence. I would like to know if the Department of Defense
plans to investigate other facilities in addition to Walter Reed and the National
Naval Medical Center to ensure that such a situation never happens again. Finally,
I would like to know what the Army plans to do in the interim to fix outpatient
care for those servicemen and women that are already in the system. Please address
these concerns in writing to me as soon as possible.
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Secretary England, I agree with Calvin Coolidges maxim, The nation which forgets its defenders will itself be forgotten. We have an obligation to make this situation right, and ensure that our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines receive the
care they deserve when they return home.
Chairman SPRATT. Thank you very much. We look forward to
your testimony.
STATEMENTS OF HON. GORDON ENGLAND, DEPUTY SECRETARY OF DEFENSE; ADM EDMUND P. GIAMBASTIANI, JR.,
USN, VICE CHAIRMAN, JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF; AND HON.
TINA W. JONAS, UNDER SECRETARY OF DEFENSECONTROLLER/CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER
Mr. ENGLAND. Mr. Chairman, thank you, Mr. Ryan and members
of the committee.
First of all, thanks for the opportunity to be back. Hopefully, the
last time we were together was helpful to the committee, and we
are available, frankly, whenever you need us for either private discussions or for any hearing, and so we are pleased to cooperate
with the committee. I do not really have an opening statement because this is our second appearance, but I will make just a comment or two if I can.
You are right. The defense budget has gone up, but it has gone
up because of threats to our Nation. The Nation, in my judgment
and, I think, in the judgment of most Americans, faces a broader
array of security challenges than perhaps ever before, as commented here by Mr. Ryan. Just the threat of terrorism is obviously
a great threat to America. We have been attacked right here in
Washington, D.C. and, of course, in Pennsylvania and in New York.
We are still dealing with countries like Iran and North Korea with
nuclear ambitions and their track records of proliferation of support to terrorists, and then of course we always have concern about
China and Russia, and their future paths are not clear, and we do
have an obligation, obviously, to deter future aggressions. So we do
have significant investments.
Also as pointed out, we did have very, very low investments
throughout the 1990s. As to the comments made about our Cold
War equipment, I will tell you we actually do not have a large
amount of any type of equipment. We do not have many programs
in production today. A lot of our equipment is aging, not getting
newer. So, if anything, the U.S. military is aging. It is not that we
are buying a lot of high tech equipment for other purposes, and of
course, a lot of our expenditures are due to the war itself.
Also, another comment. When comparing to the past, I would remind the committee we now have an all-volunteer force, so we have
members and their families, the spouses and children, and obviously the all-volunteer force is vastly more expensive than the
forces we had in the past. That said, it is also vastly more capable.
So we do have the three requests here before the Congress, and
that is the 2007 supplemental. It is the GWOT cost in 2008, and
it is the 2008 budget. Regarding 2008, the last time we met, I indicated then that the war costs in 2008not knowing if that is going
to be more or less than we have today, we took the approach and
just set a straight line from 2007, and so the baseline for 2008 will
likely change either up or down based on what is happening on the
ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, but that was the best estimate
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that we had in terms of our expenditures based on the 2007 level
going into 2008.
So with that, I believe everybody understands the basis of what
we turned in in terms of these three budget requests.
Mr. Chairman, what I would like to do is just myself, Admiral
Giambastiani and Ms. Tina Jonas, answer any questions that we
can for the committee.
[The prepared statement of Secretary England follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT
OF
HON. GORDON ENGLAND, DEPUTY SECRETARY
OF
DEFENSE
Chairman Spratt, Representative Ryan, Members of the House Budget Committee, thank you for the opportunity to meet today to discuss the current defense
budget requests. We all share a common objectiveto protect and defend America,
and to take care of our men and women in uniform and their families.
The Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Giambastiani and the
Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) Ms. Jonas are here with me, and the
three of us look forward to your questions.
Today, America and our friends and allies face a broader array of security challenges than ever before. Terrorists have declared their intention to destroy our very
way of life. Rogue states like Iran and North Koreawith nuclear ambitions and
track records of proliferation and support to terroristspose threats to their neighbors and beyond. And major states like China and Russia, whose future paths are
not clear, continue to pursue sophisticated military modernization programs.
The defense budget requests before you will provide our joint warfighters with
what they need to accomplish their mission of protecting and defending America
our land, our people and our way of life. Specifically, the budget requests support
four major areas:
Modernizing and recapitalizing joint warfighting capabilities;
Sustaining the all-volunteer force;
Improving the readiness of the force; and
Americas efforts, together with our partners, in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, in the war on terror.
There are three requests for the Department of Defense before the Congress: the
Presidents request for Fiscal Year 2008 includes the base defense budget request
for $481.4 billion; and $141.7 billion to fight the Global War on Terror. The FY 2007
Supplemental Appropriation Request for the Global War on Terror is for $93.4 billion. The total request is $716.5 billion.
That is a lot of money by any measureSecretary Gates has called it staggering.
To put the size of the request in historical contextin 1945, toward the end of
WWII, the Departments budget as a percentage of GDP was 34.5%. During the Korean conflict, it was 11.7%; in Vietnam8.9%; and in Desert Storm4.5%. Even
during the Reagan build-up in the 1980s, the defense budget was 6% of GDP. Current defense spendingat about 4% of GDPis the smallest proportion ever spent
on defense during wartime.
The Department understands its fiduciary responsibility to Congress and to the
American people to spend their money wisely. Part of that responsibility is making
sure that the defense enterprise itself runs as effectivelyand efficientlyas possible. So the Department is continually updating, adapting, and improving its processesincluding decision-making, acquisitions, and auditing.
A few words about each of the requests before you:
The FY07 Supplemental covers the costs of contingency operationsprimarily
Iraq and Afghanistanuntil the end of the Fiscal Year. One way to think about it
is that these are emergency costs, brought about by the current war effort, which
the Department would otherwise not have had at this time. This request is based
on near-time informationwith high fidelity. Frankly, the request is urgentif
these funds are delayed, the Department will have to start re-programming, with
all the attendant disruptions.
The FY08 GWOT request provides funding starting with the new fiscal year in
October. Actual requirements will depend on events on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistanso the Department has used projections based on current monthly war
costs to determine the numbers. In Iraqas Secretary Gates has testifiedthere
should be good indications about how well the military strategy is working by this
summer, including how well the Iraqis are keeping their commitments to us.
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The base budget is what we use to man, organize, train and equip Americas
armed forces. It is about sustaining the force and also investing in future capabilities.
As we go forward, it is important not to lose sight of the long-term strategic picture while we prosecute the current war. It is important both to fund near-term tactical expenses and to invest in long-term deterrencesince it is a lot less expensive
to deter than to fight and defeat. Finding the balance requires hard choices * * *
and failing to find it means that the Nation could be at risk.
The Departments greatest asset is our people. America is blessed that in every
generation, brave men and women step forward to serve a cause higher than themselves. The Department responds by continuing to support a high quality of life for
our servicemembers. Success in that regard is reflected in the Services ongoing ability to meet recruiting and retention goals:
All four Services met or exceeded AC recruiting goals throughout FY 2006, and
continued to do so through Jan 2007.
In Jan 2007, four of six components exceeded their RC accession goals (except
USAR, 99%, and USNR, 93%)
In Jan 2007, AC retention remained solid. All but USN met their year-to-date
missions, and USN expects to meet its goals for the full fiscal year.
RC attrition remains well within acceptable limits in all reserve components.
Thank you for your support of our men and women in uniform, their civilian counterparts, and their familiesfor the funding and authorities they need to accomplish the mission.
Chairman SPRATT. Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary.

In my opening statement, I referred to the fact thatand I think
everyone would agreewe underestimated the gravity and the cost
and the complexity of the aftermath of the war in Iraq, and the
question I would put to you this morning is there is another element of cost that we have underestimated and another factor that
we have not sufficiently attended to, and that is the impact on soldiers and sailors and airmen and Marines who have returned to
this country, particularly those with head injuries, spinal cord injuries, PTSD, and injuries like that, some of which are hard to diagnose but are nonetheless real medical problems.
Do you feel that we may have overlooked that aspect of the problem, that dimension of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and are
we adequately providing in our budget request for 2008 the amount
of money needed to make Walter Reed truly the premier Army hospital, to have Bethesda provide the same sort of care? You have
other military hospitals throughout the country and our Veterans
Administration facilities, which should be under purview. Are you
satisfied that we have got enough money in our budget to deal with
that aspect of this problem?
Mr. ENGLAND. Mr. Chairman, I would say at this point uncertain, frankly. We actually have two kinds of medical treatment. We
treat over 9 million people in the TRICARE, which is the insurance
account, and we have about 4.5 million in what we call primary
care for military and their families, so Walter Reed falls under the
latter category. In total in the budget, there is about $40 billion,
so I would say when we put the budget together, you know, our
best estimate was, yes, that handles all of the care we need. However, based on past events here in the past month or in the past
few weeks, obviously there is some question if we will need to shore
up some of those accounts, and in fact we are looking right now in
the 2007 supplemental as to possibly moving some of that money
around just to make some money available in case we need to do
something to Walter Reed in the near term based on the findings
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of these independent commissions and the work going on at Walter
Reed.
So know that we are committed to do whatever we have to do,
and if we have to reprogram or move money or, frankly, ask for
money, we will not hesitate to do that. I would expect that, within
the monies we have, hopefully we can move money and accommodate whatever we would have to do based on whatever the findings
of the various studies and commissions are at Walter Reed.
I am looking at the whole medical health program. So I would
have to say uncertain based on what we have all learned here in
the last month and weeks.
Chairman SPRATT. Could you give us an idea of what you think
may have to be reprogrammed to meet the problem that is now
emerging?
Mr. ENGLAND. Well, near termI mean people are going to be
looking at this to understand, and right now, of course, the only
thing that has come to light is potentially the outpatient care
issues at Walter Reed. That is all that has really been identified.
Now, both the Secretary of Defense and I know the services under
the President are all putting together study groups to look not only
at that but at the broader range. Near term, I would expect that
this is in the tens of millions of dollars if we need to address something immediately at Walter Reed, and we can accommodate that
just by, you know, reprogramming our own funding, but if it is beyond that, I mean if there is a total redo of some sort in terms of
our medical capability, then obviously we would have to reexamine
that when those reports come in, and that is just unknown at this
time, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman SPRATT. Let me ask you about the anticipated
amounts to cover the military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Thus far, we have appropriated about $503 billion for those two
engagements plus operations; namely, the North American air defense and other aspects of enhanced security stateside. This years
budget for 2008 includes a substantial increase, a supplemental of
$145 billion on top of $170 billion that will be provided for 2007
$70 billion already provided, $100 billion to come when the supplemental for this year is passed. That is a rather high level of expenditure in light of the fact that in 2009 you anticipate or you insert a plug number of $50 billion for the cost of Iraq, Afghanistan,
North American security, and enhanced security for that particular
year.
Do you think that $50 billion is adequate? In the outyears, 2010,
2011 and 2012, there is no adjustment at all. Do you think that
is realistic?
Mr. ENGLAND. Mr. Chairman, I would expect there is some cost.
Now, here is the dilemma we have in terms of estimating cost. In
2008, the GWOT costI do not want to call it a supplemental,
but I guess it is, but the GWOT cost that was turned in with the
budget, itself, as you rightly indicated, is $141.7 billion. Now, to
some extent, that is a plug because it is an extension of the 2007
number, and of course events are changing on the ground as we sit
here in both Iraq and Afghanistan. So we took an extension of 2007
for 2008, not knowing what the circumstance on the ground would
be in both Iraq and Afghanistan. So, as I indicated, that number
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will certainly change somewhat, either up or down, and in looking
out into the futureI mean, in the past, the plug was put in in
past years for $50 billion, even last year with the budget, so that
has sort of been what we have done each year in the past on this.
I think it is a number not knowing what the results on the ground
will be, but they will be refined as we know more about it. But I
would expect there is going to be some activity both in Afghanistan
and in Iraq for some period of time, so I would not expect that will
be zero, but I would also expect, as we get closer to that, that we
would give some realistic estimate.
Chairman SPRATT. Well, our objective is to balance the budget by
2012, but in the years 2010, 2011 and 2012, we do not have a number from the Department of Defense for what you think is a reasonable ballpark estimate based on most likely scenarios about deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. CBO has decided, in doing an outyear forecast over a 5- and 10-year period of time, you have got to
have something to stick in there, to put in those particular slots,
that approximates reality. There are conventional forecasting calls
simply for repeating the supplementals, and yet they think maybe
$145 billionlet us hopeis too high a supplemental to repeat indefinitely for the foreseeable future. We hope it will taper off and
come down, and CBO, trying to be realistic, makes that assumption, too. They have one particular model for assuming the cost of
outyear deployments. It is based on a scenario that assumes that
the number of deployed troops in support of Iraq and Afghanistan
will gradually drop off from 220,000-225,000 today to a steady state
of about 70,000-75,000 in 2013. If future costs continue to be split
85 percent to Iraq, 15 percent to Afghanistan, the war cost under
this scenario, according to the CBO, could be $764 billion, which
is $514 billion more than is captured in the Presidents budget.
How does that particular estimate strike you? Is that out of the
ballpark or is that in the ballpark for what we are likely to encounter in those years for which there is either not a full number, 2009,
or no number at all for the supplemental costs in 2010, 2011 and
2012? Is $764 billion for that period of time a reasonable estimate
for what we are likely to incur?
Mr. ENGLAND. Mr. Chairman, I mean I just have no idea. I mean
they have some set of assumptions. I mean I do not know how you
wouldI do not know how they can possibly end upI mean
maybe, as you said, they put a plug number in, but here we are
trying to project for 2008, and we do not know what the number
is for 2008. I mean we just projected for 2007, so I do not know
how you would estimate 2009, 2010 and 2011 at this point in time.
I guess people can put a plug number in.
Chairman SPRATT. Well, how does the Defense Department
since the advent of program budgeting havent you done a 6-year
defense plan or set up a 5 future years defense plan that encompasses this year and 5 future years, and in doing that dont you
have to do scenarios and do takeout coststakeoffsbased on
those scenarios?
Mr. ENGLAND. Well, we do, and we typically base it on a certain
size of the force for our normal operations and whatever our procurement budgets are and our normal O&M operations, but that is
not like being in war, so I mean they are all peacetime numbers,
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basically, that we put in our budget. So it is training; we know how
many steaming days, how many MOs, you know, fuel costs; we
know how many people are in the military; we know our personnel
cost, et cetera.
Chairman SPRATT. And all of those indices are up and trending
upward, are they not?
Mr. ENGLAND. The size
Chairman SPRATT. Flying time, steaming time, tank miles, all of
that is trending upward and does not show any signs of near-term
decline. Surely, you have got
Mr. ENGLAND. It is up. Yes, sir. It is in our base budget. It is
up. In addition, there is the straight line projection for the war cost
in 2008.
Chairman SPRATT. Well, surely in doing the Future Year Defense
Plan, you have made some assumptions about the deployment of
forces. You do not just project these things into thin air when you
have got a certain reality, and the reality is we are heavily engaged
in two combat situations right now, and we have a global war on
terror. That is the main thing. Isnt the Defense Department doing
certain scenarios and doing cost takeoffs from that to be inserted
into a realistic theater?
Mr. ENGLAND. Mr. Chairman, we have increased the size of the
force, so you will see the increased size of the force, 65,000 for the
Army and then another 27,000 for the Marine Corps. So that
growth is included, and that is in our base budget, and the normal
training, equipment and deploying of those forces is all included in
the base budget. So the base budget is reasonably straightforward
in estimating those expenditures going forward along with our acquisition and our research and development program and our personnel costs. So we know that pretty well going forward, but the
war costsI mean how much will we be spending in the war, to
what level of activity we are going to have in the war, how much
equipment will be lost, I mean that is extraordinarily hard to predict, and that has, by the way, been always the discussion about
like a 2007 supplemental and trying to put things in the base
budget. The advantage of the supplemental has been to us that it
is a near term and we can do that with a high degree of fidelity.
We are looking forward. We are just literally sort of guessing the
environment. So I think it would be very, very hard to go estimate
future war costs. Obviously, there are some costs there, but in trying to estimate those costs, you just have to pick a set of assumptions, and they would merely be assumptions that could be either
right or wrong, and I am not sure how one would go about that
with any degree of fidelity.
Chairman SPRATT. Let me ask you about weapon systems procurement. How many systems, if you know, are in the SAR, or in
the Selected Acquisition Reporting system?
Mr. ENGLAND. I believe it is all of ourpardon me. I believe it
is all of our major systems. Yes, ACAT-1-D. So our major acquisition programs are in the SAR, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman SPRATT. Do you have a percentage increase for these
programs, a current program estimated cost as opposed to the baseline cost when the program was approved for advanced develop-
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ment and production and procurement and went into the SAR reporting system?
Mr. ENGLAND. Well, the SAR changespardon me.
Mr. Chairman, the SAR changes depending on, for example, how
many units we decide to buy. So those numbers will change dramatically as programs mature and you go into production and you
change both your schedules and your acquisitions.
Chairman SPRATT. How about on a program unit cost basis?
Mr. ENGLAND. We do
Chairman SPRATT. Do you have any estimate of how much the
SAR system subject to the SAR reporting have increased on a program unit cost basis from the date of the initial estimate?
Mr. ENGLAND. Yes, we do know that. We know that on each program, and eventually that is what makes up the SAR.
Chairman SPRATT. Have you got an overall percentage increase
for those?
Mr. ENGLAND. I guess that isI mean we can get it. It depends
on over what period of time, so there is a baseline each year established
Chairman SPRATT. A baseline to the most recent reporting period, which I guess would have been December 31st. I am talking
about SBIRS, for examplethe space-based infrared satellite systemwhich is a replacement for DSP, the increase on a program
unit basis. There are only a few of those, a handful or a dozen or
so, if that, 315 percent. The F-22, 188 percent. Not all of this happened on your watch. I will say, for both of those programs, I think
their origins were before your administration, but what are we
doing to rein in, police and control the cost growth in these major
acquisition systems?
Mr. ENGLAND. Let me first turn it over to the Vice Chairman because across the board, Mr. Chairman, there is a lot of effort underway in terms of all of our processes, methods in DOD because
we are aware of the cost increases, some, frankly, predicted because quantities change and programs change, some just cost
growth. So we are doing a lot of process changes, and a lot of that
falls into the requirements area, and so, if I can, let me turn it over
to Admiral Giambastiani because that is where the requirements
are determined.
Chairman SPRATT. Admiral.
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. Mr. Chairman, first of all, I am going to
speak to you as what is called a Chairman of the Joint Requirements Oversight Council. It is a group of which, as I said, I am the
Chair, and the four Vice Chiefs participate, the four Vice Chiefs of
the Services. We set and validate military requirements for systems.
One of our problems in the pastand it continues todayis that
sometimes we in the military set unrealistic requirements which,
frankly, cost the taxpayer and cost us programmatically more than
we should have signed up for. There are a variety of reasons for
that. Some of them could be, for example, that we have technologies out there that we are trying to chase because they will
give us a tremendous capability difference.
So what we have done in this inside the JROC is to look at cost
drivers across all of these. I do not want to get too technical here,
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but I could give you chapter and verse on this in a very long answer, but we have gone after cost drivers. We have looked at technology readiness levels. We have looked at what can be delivered
within cost and schedule limits to provide additional capability. Let
me give you a couple of real world examples of where we have gone
back and looked at programs where we had a requirements problem.
One of them is the Joint Tactical Radio System. When I arrived
at the Pentagon 18 months ago, we were faced with a potential
Nunn-McCurdy breach on this program. The cost was going to rise
from about $3 billion to an estimated $6 billion for the whole program. This is a very important program for the Department of Defense and for our military forces. It gives us a networking capability to network all of our forces. We went back and did a requirement scrub. We looked at the program, and we actually kept it
within its $3 billion cost estimates, and we went from 33 separate
wave forms that were required down to 8. Now, what does that
mean? We could probably meet 80 percent of our requirements
with these 8 wave forms, and to get to the 33 total it would require
a substantial amount of money and a lot of time, plus the technologies were not available. So we have looked at these cost
growths. We have looked at risk factors, and we have tried to contain them inside the JROC side.
We also are trying to bring together in all of these communities
acquisition requirements and resources, all of us together in each
of these forums so we are not independently looking at what a program will do, and Ken Kreig and myself as the Cochairman of the
Defense Acquisition Board have brought this into play with a repeated number of programs that we have been reviewing. The Deputy has been very supportive of these efforts, and we have been
able to rein in a number of other programs, a weather satellite program where we had considerable growth, and we changed the requirements as opposed to holding them steadfast that it was the
Holy Grail we had to chase.
So what I wanted to let you know is that we have been working
very hard here over the last 18 months, since the Deputy and I
have been in office, to make sure that we can constrain cost growth
on these programs and get to the problem early.
One last comment I would give you on the JROC. There are congressional requirements for Nunn-McCurdy breaches on all programs that I have already spoken to. We have instituted in the
JROC a requirement for the services and agencies who are building
programs to come to the JROC if there is a 10 percent cost increase
and talk to us about requirements before it is too late in the process to make a difference in what we are buying and what we are
building.
Mr. ENGLAND. Mr. Chairman, if I can add also, there has been,
I believe, like 120 studies in terms of how to improve acquisition
in the Department of Defense, and there have been two of them on
my watch, frankly, and our conclusion, having gone through literally one of them, was to go through the prior 120 and pull out
all of the issues and make sure we understand them.
Our conclusion is that it is primarily a process issue in the Department of Defense. That is, we do actually get to control this ei-
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ther by how we set the requirements or how we do the acquisition
or how we deal with our supplier base. So we have major efforts,
and we just turned in a report to the Congress. We have major efforts in the Department of Defense in terms of how do we improve
our processes within the Department of Defense to get a better return on our investment in our acquisition area.
That said, I will tell you that it is very difficult. Everything we
deal with is pretty much advance technology, and therefore, I mean
it is a hard environment for us, but we can do better and we are
working to do better in this regard.
Chairman SPRATT. Just two final questions because I am taking
up all this time with these things that I think are necessary for
us to cover. Both are with respect to additional costs. One is the
recent decision to surge the troop level in Baghdad and to conduct
intense urban operations within the City of Baghdad, which requires 21,500 combat troops. CBO has said that that 21,000 does
not include a full complement of support and logistical backup support troops.
Number one, is that correct? Number two, what is the overall
cost of this latest strategy, this surge strategy, including the complement necessary to provide adequate support?
Mr. ENGLAND. Mr. Chairman, the CBO estimate, I believe, was
like 35,000 troops or something like that above the 21,000. It was
an extraordinarily large number. We did not agree with that number. When the Chairman testified for the 21,000when the Chairman and the Secretary of Defense testified for the 21,500, they said
that it was 21,500, but it could be 10 or 15 percent higher in terms
of added support troops, and that is likely the case. I mean our estimate is we will be above the 21,500 by about 10 or 15 percent.
Now, also, there are requests in the fieldI mean the war is a dynamic. It is not something you can estimate everything every day
going into the future, so the commanders on the ground always
have different requests coming into the Department of Defense,
and we do have some requests from the commanders in the field
General Petraeusbut those numbers are still relatively low. I
think the maximum of his request, not all validated, is still less
than about 7,000 troops. So, at this point, our expectation is the
number of support troops could go above 21,500 by about 4,000,
maybe as many as 7,000 if the commanders on the ground request
and they are all validated, but it will be much lower, in our judgment, than what the CBO estimate is. So, while there will be some
variation
Chairman SPRATT. Can you give us an idea of costs with the support troops included?
Mr. ENGLAND. Yes. If you add those troops and you add whatever
else we know is being asked for at this timeI will say validated
at this pointit is somewhere over $1 billion.
Chairman SPRATT. That is between now and September 30th?
Mr. ENGLAND. Yes, between now and September 30th, and that
is the onlyand by the way, the only costing for the plus-up for
the 21,500 is until October 1. In other words, there is no funding
in the 2008 budget. We did not fund anything. The Secretary of Defenses view is that we will know shortly, and certainly by this
summer we will have a very good idea of how the plus-up plan is
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working in Iraq, and therefore we have not funded anything in the
2008 budget for that plus-up, so
Chairman SPRATT. Now, the General was quoted in the Washington Post on February 16 as saying that the increase of 17,500
Army combat troops is only the tip of an iceberg and will potentially require thousands of additional support troops and trainers.
Is he misquoted there?
Mr. ENGLAND. I am not sure what the 17,500 number is, and I
do not know what the General was referring to. I know that if you
look at all of the requests we have in the Department of Defense,
the total requests at this point is 4,000 to 5,000. There is one other
request for some aviation assets, but they have not been validated
by the Joint Chiefs. So of everything that I know that has been requested, the number in terms of support troops is about 7,000, but
those that have been validated total about 4,000 troops, and that
is a little over $1 billion, but our expectation is we would not ask
for new money. I mean, for the purposes of the budget, we would
just reallocate to cover those funds.
Chairman SPRATT. One final question.
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. Mr. Chairman, if I could, I would like to
add that I think the Deputy Secretary has accurately described the
requests that are currently outstanding.
Chairman SPRATT. One final question.
As to the replacement, repair, refurbishment of equipment that
has been badly damaged, worn out or otherwise abandoned and destroyed in the battle theater, these costs are fairly substantial.
Could you give us just some ballpark notion of what the reset expense is going to be this year and next year and into the foreseeable future?
Mr. ENGLAND. Do you have the specific numbers?
Ms. JONAS. Yes.
Mr. Chairman, we have in the supplementalin the 2007 supplemental, we have included $13.9 billion. That would bring the
total, given what was provided in the Title IX funds to 2007, to
$37.6 billion, and we have an equal amount requested in the 2008
GWOT request.
Chairman SPRATT. $13 billion? $14 billion?
Ms. JONAS. $37.6 billion for the entire year of 2008, and for 2007,
the amount pending before the Congress right now in the supplemental is $13.9 billion. If you add that to what has already been
appropriated for 2007, you come up with $37.6 billion.
Chairman SPRATT. And that amount has been requested for 2008
as well then?
Ms. JONAS. Yes, sir. Uh-huh.
Chairman SPRATT. And is part of it in the supplemental? Is all
of it in the supplemental?
Ms. JONAS. The $13.9 billion is requested in the supplemental.
For 2008, we have got an OA GWOT request that covers 12
months.
Chairman SPRATT. So some of it is in the supplemental, and
some of it is in the base budget.
Ms. JONAS. Correct, sir.
Chairman SPRATT. Going forward, what is the likely expense
there? I will say that the Commandant of the Marine Corps and
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the Chief of Staff of the Army told the Armed Services Committee
that if we stop tomorrow you will still have probably 3 years,
maybe 4 of expenses at this relative range to catch up with all of
the equipment problems.
Mr. ENGLAND. Okay. I believe we have saidI am surprised at
the 3 or 4 years. The discussions that I have had in our planning
is, once the war ends, there are 2 years, and those 2 years are in
the order of $15 billion to $20 billion a year, so maybe that is 3
or 4 years, but I would expect a residual amount is probably about
right, Mr. Chairman. So it is probably $30 billion, maybe $40 billion, again depending on the war itself, but there will be a residual
cost once the war ends of all of the equipment still in country to
come back and be refurbished and reset.
Chairman SPRATT. Okay. Thank you very much.
Mr. Ryan.
Mr. RYAN. I want to ask a couple of questions about the supplemental request.
You have two F-35 Joint Strike Fighters in your supplemental
request; is that correct, Mr. Secretary?
Mr. ENGLAND. Yes, but frankly, Mr. Ryan, we are reconsidering
that. I mean we had some feedback from this committee and from
other committees, so we are looking at that, and as I said before,
there are some other requests we have. For example, I just mentioned this over $1 billion for, you know, the support. So we are
looking now at perhaps restructuring that because it is a valid
point. I mean they do not show up in time to affect a war.
Mr. RYAN. That is why I was going to ask the question. When
are they even going to be ready?
Mr. ENGLAND. Well, they are ready in about 2010.
Mr. RYAN. 2010?
Mr. ENGLAND. But nonethelessI mean there are lower priorities and other things, so we would defer those, but I do want to
comment that there is a principle that is very important here, and
that is, as we lose equipment and we are not buying the old models, we do need to recover the cost of the equipment lost, and our
practice today is to buy whatever is in production. In the case of
the airplanes
Mr. RYAN. The F-16s are still in production, are they not?
Mr. ENGLAND. But not an Air Force version, so you have to go
back because we are not buying F-16s for U.S. Military today. They
are all international sales, so you would have to go back and build
a unique model for literally one or two airplanes, which would not
be reasonable. So we try to cover what I call either the loss or
the accelerated depreciation cost, recover the cost so we can reinvest it.
Now, if we do not do that, it is true it will not affect us this year
or next year, but at some point in the future, we will be short
equipment, and we will have another problem in terms of our asset
base. So there is a principle that is important, but we can reallocate and reprioritize, and we are working to do that right now. So
I expect because of other pressing needs we will move those to the
bottom of the priority list, and we will put other needs in place of
them.
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Mr. RYAN. Yes, I would encourage you to do that. I understand
the principle. It is a logical principle, but it is obviously not something that you are going to get into the production and what we
would consider as crossing the threshold as being relevant in the
supplemental.
You also had five C-130s in the supplemental request. Have we
lost any C-130s? Have we lost any C-130s in the last year?
Mr. ENGLAND. I believe we have lost, but we have also been
using them at a much higher rate. So, again, this is the accelerated
depreciation. However, this falls in the same category. Basically,
other than the helicopters and UAVs, all of the fixed-wing airplanes we are now looking to move out and reprioritize what is
going to be new in the 2007 supplemental.
Mr. RYAN. I would encourage you to do that because we are looking at what should really be on the base side of the budget and
what ought to be in the supplemental to really measure the war
costs, and maybe our line of definition is a little different than
yours, but I would hope we err on the side of, if it looks like it
ought to be in the base, it ought to stay in the base and not in the
supplemental.
Mr. ENGLAND. But help me here, Mr. Ryan, because what happens is, when we go to war, I mean we fly those C-130s maybe 10
times the hours that we would in peacetime. So, at the end of the
war, we have a whole lot of C-130s that are now near the end of
life that need to be replaced because of the war, so they really are
war costs, and again, they are costs that need to be recapitalized
at some point, so
Mr. RYAN. I understand that, and I know with BRAC you have
got more coming in. Heck, you have got a bunch coming from Milwaukee, you know, in the hope that you are going to use them that
are from the 1980s. You know, we flew on 1963 vintage C-130s 10
days ago in Baghdad, so we know you are using old stuff, but the
point is that that is something, from my perspective, that is really
base spending. If a Humvee or a Stryker gets, you know, hit by an
IED, that has got to be replaced in the supplemental. That is totally legitimate. If a 1963 C-130 is getting worn down because it
is flying more, you know, I would think that that is something that
you could better prepare for in the base than in an emergency supplemental, and knowing that you have more C-130s coming into
your pipeline because of the way the BRAC is working, I would just
encourage you to take a look at maybe pushing some of that stuff
back into the base budget. Especially if we are going to come up
with more money for the surge, hopefully that can be offset with
some of these other things that you have in the supplemental.
I just simply want to put that out there for you because it is
much easier to pass a supplemental here in the House if it is really
truly supplemental, if it is truly emergency spending for the war
and not perceived as base spending irrespective of a very legitimate
principle you just articulated, but I just wonder sometimes.
I wanted to go on to one more thing because I want to stick to
5 because I know a lot of guys here have to ask questions and
women as well. I did not mean it in that way there. Walter Reed.
Chairman SPRATT. Do you want to restate that?
Mr. RYAN. Yes.
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A lot of membersexcuse me. I saw Betty over there. A lot of
members have questions.
Walter Reed. Look, this is on the top of everybodys minds. We
have seen the appalling cases on television. I think just about
every one of us has probably gone up there ourselves. You know,
I go to the Malone House and the hospital, and we have seen good
quality care, and we have gotten reports from constituents, but we
have also seen just these appalling reports.
Please tell us what exactly is being done now, and where are you
on all of this? We have seen a lot of changes in the last week.
Where are we?
Mr. ENGLAND. Mr. Ryan, I will tell you. I mean, obviously, the
simple things, cleaning up rooms and fixing rooms and all that,
that is straightforward. It probably has been done. The question is
really more fundamental than that, and that is specifically how do
we deal with outpatients, and are we doing that adequately. I
think the conclusion isand it is obvious we are not doing that
adequately. I mean it is unacceptable. The Secretary said that. You
know how the Secretary feels about holding people accountable. So
that is unacceptable and will be fixed, and both the Secretary, as
I commented, and the President and within the services all have
independent teams now looking at this, so whatever issues they uncover, I mean, we will fix. We will fund. We will fix because it is
unacceptable. We want the absolute best care for our men and
women who serve and their families. So I mean there is work to
be done in this regard to find out, you know, exactly how deep this
problem goes, but however deep it goes it will be fixed. I mean
there is no question about that. We will do whatever is required
and are committed to do it from the President down into the Department, into the services themselves. So we will do whatever is
necessary and take those steps and do it quickly.
Mr. RYAN. Well, I have got several other questions, but I am
going to yield just in the interest of time to let the other members
ask. Thank you.
Chairman SPRATT. Mr. Cooper.
Mr. COOPER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Secretary, I was glad to hear you just say that you and the
Pentagon will do whatever is required to fix the problem. My guess
is that is going to require you to reverse some of your prior testimony today because what we heard at Walter Reed yesterday was
that due to the Base Closing Initiative Walter Reed is about to be
shut down, even the fine hospital, the inpatient facility, that no one
has questioned the care of, and that patients will be transferred to
a larger, new facility somewhere on the Bethesda Naval Hospital
campus, and that all sounds fine in theory, although General Kiley
said that he had recommended against the closure. He warned us
it would cost billions of dollars; he did not know where the money
was going to come from, and I hate to think that we are going to
be asking veterans to sacrifice a known and excellent facility in
favor of something that is unknown, unbuilt and, as far as we
know, unfunded.
The disconnect is this. You told Mr. Spratt, our chairman, that
the Pentagon and the administration still refuse to estimate war
budgets in the outyears. You are fine estimating a base budget, but
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you want to be precise and you do not know what wars will cost.
So even though we are 5 or 6 years into this one, you refuse to plan
for the outyears.
Well, how are we going to be planning for a new veterans hospital for the casualties of war 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 years hence unless you
have some estimate of the casualty flow and their needs? Because
an elaborate amount of planning is involved, and if the Defense Department refuses to plan and disclose those numbers to us, then
you force agencies like the Congressional Budget Office and others
to come up with their own estimates, and they are not the Pentagonyou presumably know better than we doand in order to
make sure that our veterans are cared for, that our troops are
cared for, we have to have some sort of outyear estimates of war
costs, and yet judging from the Presidents budget, a couple years
from now everything is over and there is no more war even though
the President himself has called this the long war.
You know, I think our job is to come up with a 5-year budget,
and we are not even being supplied with 5-year war numbers by
the Pentagon. So we have to solve this disconnect if only for the
sake of the troops.
Mr. ENGLAND. A comment first about the BRAC.
Mr. Cooper, the BRAC money is in the budget, and the plan,
which had basically all of the support, I believe, in the Pentagon,
was the military was to build a new hospital at Bethesda, which
is very nearby, but of courseyou know, I mean Walter Reed is an
old building. So the objective was to build another facility attached,
to refurbish and rebuild a lot of new physical plants at Bethesda,
and at Bethesda we also have the medical school where all of our
doctors train, and NIH is right across the street where they spend
tens of billions of dollars in medical research. The whole objective
was to have a world class, one world class facility for all of our men
and women who need medical care. So rather than have two facilities, each one partially used and spread out, it is to have one world
class facility in terms of medical research and tie it in with NIH
and everything we could.
So that was the objective, and the plan is that that would be
transitioned in 2011, so we would actually start building the facility, you know, as part of this planning process. I mean it all has
to be finished by 2011 in BRAC, but the funding is in there to do
that, and so all of that planning is in place, and that is how we
would proceed, and I understand people are going to take a look
at that again, but the rationale I think, at the time at least, was
sound.
Mr. COOPER. What is the casualty flow estimate for 2009, 2010,
2011, and 2012?
Walter Reed today is currently overcrowded. It is not a halfempty facility. We need to know what the Pentagons plan is for
the long war, and you should share that with this committee and
the American people. What is the casualty flow in those outyears
that you are expecting to be able to serve at these hospitals?
Mr. ENGLAND. Okay. I do not have that, but I will give you that,
which is the basis of the new facility that would be built at the Bethesda location. Where we now have the Bethesda Naval Hospital,
that would be the National Walter Reed. It would be the Walter
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Reed National Military Hospital. Again, I will get you the specifics,
but a lot of work went into that for at least a years work to prepare for that and to make sure that we had, you know, the right
approach. But again, I mean, based on recent events, all of that
will be looked at again, but it was a sound basis in terms of those
decisions.
[The information follows:]
The planning to satisfy the base realignment and closure requirement to build
new medical facilities in the national capital region included an analysis of potential
requirements for bed capacity, using historical numbers, an understanding of the capacity of the Military Health System in total, and a surge capacity factor. These determinations show that the proposed Walter Reed National Medical Center at Bethesda and the new facility at Fort Belvoir will meet the requirements for the patient population in the national capital region.
From a planning perspective, we do not project casualty flow data in the fashion
implied by the question. Instead, we use Service-provided casualty rates to generate
future medical planning requirements within operational scenarios. Wartime medical force capabilities are determined using the Medical Analysis Tool and compared
to the current force structure to identify capability requirements.
Force size, time, scenario, posture, medical threat, and medical planning factors
are entered into the casualty generator model (currently the Joint Integrated Casualty Model) which produces population at risk, time, unit locations, and casualty
(battle and non-battle) data that is then provided to the Assistant Secretary for
Health Affairs for use. Alternatively, output from the Analytic Agenda can be provided for studies focused more in the near term. The Services then validate the analytical results/models.
Mr. COOPER. I see that my time has expired, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman SPRATT. Thank you, Mr. Cooper.
Mr. Barrett.
Mr. BARRETT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Secretaries and Admiral, thank you for being here today. Let us
change the subject just a little bit.
I know in the current budget there is an increase of troop
strength by about 92,000, Mr. Secretary. I have had some concerns
over the years of whether we had enough active duty soldiers, sailors, airmen. We are relying more and more on the National Guard
and Army Reserve and all of our reservists.
Is this number, the 92,000, enough? I know there is news about
the possibility of funding another Stryker Division in the National
Guard. Can you comment on both of these two areas?
Mr. ENGLAND. Well, I mean, again, Mr. Barrett, I guess events
will dictate if it is enough, but based on the projection today in
terms of brigade combat teams and based on the best estimate of
our combatant commanders and what they foresee for the future,
the 92,000 appears to be the right number. I mean that is how we
got to that number. There are also some increases, also small, for
the National Guard and the Reservesthe Army, National Guard
and Reserves. I do not see that we have a problem, frankly, neither
with the Air Force or Navy. The Navy has actually come down in
manpower. The Air Force is planning to come down in manpower,
and of course the Air Force Reserveor Guard, I guess. It is
Guardis an integral part of the service itself. I mean they fly regularly as part of the Air Force itself.
So I will be happy to open this up to the Admiral because, again,
it really is a military decision in terms of sizing, but all of the work
last year led to that. We had various options in terms of sizing. We
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finally ended up with the 92,000 total growth, the Army and Marine Corps combined.
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. From the overall numbers, as the Deputy
has stated and as you have mentioned, it is 82,065 for the Army
over a period of about 5 years, 27,000 for the U.S. Marine Corps
over a period of about 5 years, but what also exists inside this is
an increase in our Special Operations Forces. For example, the
Presidents budget for 2008 has about 5,800 within that 92,000
that will be an increase in Special Forces, and with the type of conflict we are seeing today and that we could project out into the future, growth in Special Forces/irregular warfare is very important.
So what I would say to you is these are our best estimates. I
think both the Commandant of the Marine Corps and the Chief of
Staff of the Army are comfortable with this. Both the chairman and
I are comfortable that this is about right and that, within that
number, having some of these specialty units created is very important. So there is movement not only on the top line but on what
is inside it.
Mr. BARRETT. Okay. Let us hold on the Stryker question. Let us
get to a program that is important to South Carolina and to the
Nation, the MOX Program, which is taking some of this weapons
grade plutonium and taking it off the market and turning it into
fuel and mobilizing it.
Where are we, Mr. Secretary? I know that we have pushed it
from the South Carolina delegation, the Georgia delegation. We are
getting some pushback in the House. Do you have any idea whether the Department of Defense is involved in working with this
MOX Program at all?
Mr. ENGLAND. Mr. Barrett, it does not sound familiar. It just
does not ring a bell with me, so I will have to look into it. Maybe
it is an energy program. I am just not sure. So I will have to answer back to you. I am just not knowledgeable of the program, sir.
Mr. BARRETT. Okay. I know it is primarily done by the DOE, but
there has been some involvement with the Department of Defense,
and if we could get some push from you guys on this program, that
would be fantastic. If you could get back with me on that, that
would be great.
Mr. ENGLAND. We will get back with you.
The Mixed-Oxide (MOX) program is a Department of Energy program, but the Department of Defense maintains an active interest in the strategic material reserve,
which includes weapons grade plutonium, the feedstock for the MOX program. DOD
and DOE work together via the Nuclear Weapons Council (NWC) to assure interagency agreement on the sustainment and disposition of the reserve. Material that
is in excess of the strategic reserve can be jointly released and would be available
for the MOX program.
Mr. BARRETT. Okay. One last, quick question. I do not have a lot
of time.
Equipment. I know we are chewing it up left and right. Some of
it is being destroyed. Some of it is just getting flat worn out. Are
we keeping up with the equipment replacement, making sure that
what we have got is up and running and all of that good stuff?
Mr. ENGLAND. We are now, although I have to tell you, Mr. Barrett, that we fell behind because we did not have any substantial
money in the supplemental for the reset until the 2005 budget. So
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we were fighting the war, and we did not have significant funds,
maybe $5 million or so, and then we started putting substantial
funds in in 2005. So, at that point, the result was we ended up
with damaged equipment sitting at the depot doors but not enough
money to put them through the depots. Now, since then, frankly,
we have asked forand the Congress has been very supportive,
and as Tina said, I believe that total now iswhat?$63 billion,
Tina, total?
Ms. JONAS. Yes. We have invested $63 billion so far in addition
to what we are requesting now.
Mr. ENGLAND. So now a lot of money has flowed, and so the
equipment is now in the system and flowing out. That has left
some shortages while it flows out the back end of the depots in
terms of the refurbishment, but I believe the funding is in place
now. You know, the organization is in place. It is just a question
of pushing that equipment through the depots.
Mr. BARRETT. Fantastic.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman SPRATT. Thank you, Mr. Barrett.
Mr. Becerra is not here.
Mr. Doggett.
Mr. DOGGETT. Thank you for your testimony.
While the number of American troops in Iraq today is about
139,000 and escalating, the number of troops from other countries,
I believe, is about 14,000 and shrinking. The British have, of
course, announced that they are beginning a phased withdrawal.
What is the best estimate that you have of the number of troops
from other countries that will be deployed in Iraq at the end of this
year?
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. If I could, Congressman, I would just say
that that number that you are quoting is fairly accurate. However,
the trend actually is now going to go back up. We see this go up
and down. It has been going down for a period of time in small
numbers, but the Georgia government has decided tothis is not
the State of Georgia but Georgia, the country. It has decided to put
a brigade combat team into Iraq, so this will beI do not know exactly the size of their brigade, but it is probably somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000 people, and that will be a big addition, if
you will, to come into Iraq. There are some other countries that we
typically do not talk aboutthey have asked us not to talk about
them publiclythat contribute to this operation, and I would say
that those numbers are not counted for. They are small, but they
are in there.
Mr. DOGGETT. So what is the best estimate of the number of
troops from other countries that will be there at your end?
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. I will have to give you the best record.
I looked atthe number you quoted is about accurate. If we take
a snapshot today, I can give you, in a classified setting, where we
think we are going to go here, at least in the short term, in the
next few months.
There is no unclassified information about
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. There is some classified information. I
can provide you that also.
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Mr. DOGGETT. Okay. Can you just give me the best estimate, unclassified, of what the number will be at the end of the year?
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. I dont have it here. I will get it for the
record for you.
Mr. DOGGETT. Okay. Well, if you are going to submit it hereafter
then, would you do it for the end of the year and for the end of
the fiscal year, September 30 of next year?
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. If I could, because each of these governments has their own Parliaments, their own Congress.
Mr. DOGGETT. I am not even asking you to identify by country.
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. We will get you the best estimate we can
by the end of the year.
Mr. DOGGETT. And for the end of the fiscal year as well, two
numbers.
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. Yes, sir.
[DELETED]
Mr. DOGGETT. But over the short term, you are able to say that
you think that the country of Georgia will basically substitute for
the reduction the British are making?
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. I wouldnt say they did it as a result of
what the British are doing. They have decided to bring a brigade
forward, and the British are taking down about 1,600 of 7,000-plus.
As you know, they are going to move 1,400 or 1,500 of them to Afghanistan, and they have announced that publicly, and the Georgia
Government will about double, I would estimate right now, based
on the size of the brigade, about double what the British have
taken down.
Mr. DOGGETT. There are reports in several papers today that the
Department plans to ask for another supplemental. Do I gather
that that is inaccurate and that you will simply reprogram moneys
to pay for these support troops for other purposes?
Mr. ENGLAND. Yes, sir, that is our best estimate.
Mr. DOGGETT. Your best estimate is that we have seen the last
supplemental for Iraq for this year?
Mr. ENGLAND. That is my best estimate. Yes, sir.
Mr. DOGGETT. And you mentioned the fact that there is no
money programmed for the escalation next year and said that was
because the Secretary has said that you will know by this summer
if this escalation plan is working.
Mr. ENGLAND. That is correct, sir.
Mr. DOGGETT. And is there already underway a plan for what to
do if it does not? I know there are no failures in Iraq, but if it has
to have some adjustment, is there an adjustment plan already underway?
Mr. ENGLAND. Could you repeat the question for the admiral?
Mr. DOGGETT. Yes, sir. You say you will know if it works by the
middle of the summeror by the summer, to be more precise. Do
you have underway a plan in case it does not meet your expectations?
Mr. ENGLAND. Sir, let me answer first and then you can fill in
if you can. Sir, I will tell you the plan at the Department of Defense is to execute this and execute it to a satisfactory conclusion,
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which is why we have no money going forward because our expectation is it will work.
Now the question is: Is there an alternative? There is none I
know of, but let me ask Admiral Giambastiani if he knows of any
other approach.
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. What I will tell you is that a commander
always has a plan. They put together what we call branches and
sequels. These are alternate routes if something happens, which
way do you move? When conditions change, you move in a different
direction to respond to those types of conditions, and I expect that
General Petraeus and his staff are doing those types of things right
now.
Mr. DOGGETT. Have you found the planis there any plan that
would cost out withdrawal of troops, such as Mr. Allen asked you
about at the last hearing? He asked for you to come back and tell
us about what the cost of withdrawal of troops would be.
Mr. ENGLAND. There is no effort underway to do that, Congressman. There is no effort underway to plan for a withdrawal from
Iraq. We have no such effort underway in the Department of Defense.
Mr. DOGGETT. So you dont expect to be able to fulfill his request?
Mr. ENGLAND. I dont expect to be able to fulfill his request.
Mr. DOGGETT. Thank you.
Chairman SPRATT. Mr. Lungren, I believe.
Mr. LUNGREN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Maybe I am
the only one here who thinks that the amount of money we are
spending on our national defense is insufficient for the requirements of the threat that is out there. But I recall being here in the
last 2 years of the Carter administration when we reached, I think,
the lowest point in GDP spending for national defense in modern
history at that time, and we were required to do the Reagan buildup. And yet I look at the numbers I have got before me, and we
are far below where we were during the Carter administration before we began the buildup at 4 percent GDP.
When the figures I have in your statement, Mr. Secretary, are
that we are spending about 4 percent GDP, does that include the
supplemental request?
Mr. ENGLAND. Yes, sir, it does.
Mr. LUNGREN. One of my concerns is the maintenance of an allvolunteer force, which in some ways has to sustain itself by allowing for our consideration of our greatest asset, as you say, Mr. Secretary, our people. In order for us to keep our recruiting and our
retention goals, it seems to me we not only must equip them with
the best equipment and you spend a lot of time talking about the
technology side of things, which I think, frankly, gives us the edge,
but do we spend as much attention in preparing the budget for our
people? And what I mean by that is how can we possibly allow
something to happen as we have seen at Walter Reed?
I watched the testimony yesterday, and I saw two Army generals
take responsibility, and I appreciate them taking responsibility.
But it is after the fact. It is like when I used to convict guys and
send them to prison, and they found God after they were facing
prison. And I believe in conversion, but I would have rather had
them find God before they were facing a jail cell.
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Does this budget have as much concern for the health and welfare of our troops as it does for technology? I mean, do you plan
as much for that, for modernization and recapitalization of our
warfighting capability? I am reallyI am just at a loss. I have
been out there talking to my constituents about how we would
never, ever let our troops down. And I have been out there to Walter Reed, and I guess I was shown the good side of Walter Reed.
But I, for the life of me, dont know how I can answer that question
when I go home and have my next town hall meeting. Because you
have come here and you have talked about how we do war planning, how we do budgeteering, how we go forward, and I believe
all that. DOD has the most impressive mechanism for budget going
forward of any of the agencies and departments of government that
I have seen, absolutely.
So how can we have this fall through the cracks with our troops?
And I dont think we can wait 5 months. I mean, I have heard we
are going to have a commission, and I understand Senator Dole
and Donna Shalala are going to be the two cochairs of that commission, but I cant go home to my constituents and say, in 5 months
we will have the answers for you.
What are the answers now? And what can we do now? And if we
can reprogram money for these other things, why cant we reprogram money in the budget right now to fix the problem, so that if
I have a constituent call me and say, I am getting the runaround,
and they are talking about paperwork, and I cant go to this Army
hospital, how can I tell them that within 6 weeks or within a
month we are going to see real change? What do I say?
And I address that both to you, Admiral, and Mr. Secretary.
Mr. ENGLAND. We are going to do everything we know to do. So
every single thing identified will be fixed immediately. Everything.
We are putting money, we are moving money right now in the supplemental to have money available to handle whatever may have
to be done at Walter Reed near term. So we are doing that. We are
physically right now working that issue, and reprioritizing within
the budget so we will immediately have money available to deal
with any issues at Walter Reed. So we wont wait.
My only comment was, depending on what they find in terms of
longer-term funding, we may need to make changes, obviously, depending on the extent of the findings. But in the meantime, anything that is found will be fixed. I would say that you are embarrassed, as is everyone else in DOD
Mr. LUNGREN. I am not worried about being embarrassed. I am
worried about these guys who are out there, the men and women
who we have promised and now it looks like we have failed. I just
want to find out from you, and I would like to find out from the
admiral how much time the Joint Chiefs of Staff spend on worrying
about this issue.
Because I mean, another question I would have, even though my
time is up, is why do I hear from veterans and why do I hear from
folks who say Bethesda is far superior to Walter Reed? And I have
heard that for years and I basically thought it was just Navy guys
talking over Army guys, but now it looks like it is true.
So, Admiral, how much time do the Joint Chiefs of Staff spend
looking at this? And this is a priority. And what can we say to our
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constituents is going to be done within the next couple weeksnot
with a commission, God bless the commissionbut I have been
around here long enough to know what commissions do and how
long they take. It is our responsibility as Members of Congress, and
your responsibility, all of us together, to fix this as soon as possible.
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. Well, first of all, let me say as a member
of any service, not just as a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
this situation is unacceptable. You know that already, we know
that. But let me just say, you have heard repeatedly, I did a press
conference after visiting Walter Reed right after the story broke
with Secretary Gates. He said at that time, I continue to say, we
continue to say, that this situation is unacceptable. But it is a leadership failure, and I think we need to go a little bit below what
that means.
I have learned over many many years as a military officer that
you get what you inspect, not what you expect. I learned that over
30 years ago. And what I would say to you is this fundamental lack
of leadership up and down the chain here is, frankly, getting in and
delving into problems.
Now, as a member of the Joint Chiefs, but also as a senior military officer, I and my wife spend a substantial amount of time, like
the other chiefs do, visiting with these wounded. I have done it four
or five times within the last 2 months.
I was just, for example, at a dinner on Friday night, and we encountered a problem with a spouse who is having difficulty finding
temporary housing for her child and herself. And her husband
could not speak with us because he was heavily medicated at this
dinner. In fact, he was sleeping. And we are currently working
with General Cody and the Army staff to find them a location. That
is just the real-world example.
These types of things go on all the time where we go out and look
for problems. What has been missed here is the systemic problem
of taking care of outpatients that have moved from the phenomenal
inpatient care that they get at all of our facilities. We had insufficient caseworkers assigned here. General Cody has testified to this,
and has talked to me and I have talked to him personally about
it. The caseworker loads are unacceptable when there are 1 to 125.
There is no way, no matter how good the caseworker is, they can
handle 125 cases. It is just not possible. So they have been working
to reduce that to about 1 in 25 or 1 in 30. That is one example.
Another one is who, in fact, does these simple inspections? I have
been doing barracks inspections through my entire military life,
and I just simply dont understand how we could have a failure of
leadership to do those types of things.
So these are the things that us senior folks are talking about.
Why we missed these is unacceptable. As the deputy said to all of
us, it is embarrassing. It really is, because that is not the way we
were brought up.
So where did we fail within the chain of command? So many of
these are not resource problems. Frankly, they are leadership problems. And that is what I want to tell you as a military officer. That
is why we arent happy about the situation. We expectedI mean,
I have been dealing with the wounded for a long time. We do find
problems all the time, and we do try to take care of them with the
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appropriate staffs. We didnt have the right ombudsman system set
up. It is a very confusing maze of bureaucracy for some of these
people. All they need is a single number or a single person to talk
to and it makes their life much easier so we can route the problems
in the right way.
Chairman SPRATT. Thank you, Mr. Lungren. Mr. Blumenauer.
Mr. BLUMENAUER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would just say I
share Mr. Lungrens frustration, but I would like to focus, if I
could, on two items here. One, there was a reference I believe, Mr.
Secretary, to the expense associated with an all-volunteer Army,
military; that it is more expensive and it distorts slightly some of
the cost comparisons.
I guess my questionand I dont expect that you would have it
right now, but I would like to have supplied some analysis about
how much more expensive is the volunteer Army, particularlyand
if you can parse out how much of that expense is because we have
weakened our standards, we are bringing in less qualified people,
we are forcing out qualified people because of their sexual orientation. We are having to pay higher benefits to meet our recruiting,
the whole series of things that are associated with that.
I wonder if you could for me provide an answer of how much is
just the all-volunteer force that we had before, and the extra costs
that are associated with the recruiting and retention problems now
that have resulted in the things that I talked about.
My second question was touched on by the Chairman earlier
when he referenced what is probably the biggest threat that we
face, the weapons of mass destruction getting into a terrorist network. I think we all agree that that is the single most terrifying
prospect that has the potential of inflicting more damage on this
country. In fact, I think it was President Bush who said a couple
years ago that the biggest threat facing this country is weapons of
mass destruction in the hands of a terrorist network.
Yet the budget that has been given to us finds over $4.5 billion
for F-22 Stealth fighters, sort of Cold War weapons. It finds $3 billion for the Navy DDG 1000 Stealth destroyer, but cannot find
enough money to maintain even the current level, which is only
I think it is only $372 million that has been cut 6.5 percent; $24
million for the cooperative threat reduction.
What thinking goes into investing in Cold War weaponry of billions and billions of dollars and shortchanges the cooperative
threat reduction, cutting it by $24 million?
Mr. ENGLAND. So the first question dealing with the
Mr. BLUMENAUER. I would be happy to take something in writing.
Mr. ENGLAND. Well, there is a GAO report, Congressman, it
came out last year, on the costs of the all-volunteer military. It
serves a whole analysis which is on the record; and the average
cost, all that is included. And we have some supplemental data if
you need that. But they undertook a comprehensive study, and so
that is all document available. We will make sure you get that report, and whatever other comments we have on the report.
Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Secretary, the extra costs associated by
declining standards, by increased benefits, the changes that have
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taken place because of the stresses on the military in the last couple years, is that in that report?
Mr. ENGLAND. No. But I dont believe there is a cost there. We
dont have declining standards. I believe that that is not appropriate.
Mr. BLUMENAUER. Is that a myth that we are bringing in people
with felony records that we previously would have denied; that
there are people that dont have the training skills that previously
would not have been accepted?
Mr. ENGLAND. No. The people all meet our standards. This is a
question about do people get a second chance. We have a whole
program, by the way, our National Youth Get Challenged program
where, across the country, I mean, we workwe bring 70,000, so
far, young people who have had problems in the past; we bring
them in, help them get education, help them geta lot of them
come up, not a lot, but a number of of them go into the military,
they get jobs, we rehabilitate. So certainly we dont have a policy
where because people have had some problem in the past, they are
barred from the military. I mean, if they meet our standards, and
we give them an opportunity, the military has always been helpful
to people who have had problems in the past, but we have not
changed our standards but we will address that with you. But your
other question
Mr. BLUMENAUER. With all due respect, in my district I have
watched you recruit two autistic kids into the forces. And to suggest that there hasnt been a reduction in standards and there
hasnt been pressure to drag people in because of declining enrollment, I beg to differ.
But to the second, about the threat reduction, I see my
times
Mr. ENGLAND. Can I ask the admiral just to make a comment
first?
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. I would like to tell you, Congressman,
that I served in Vietnam and we had wonderful people serving at
that time. But I have lived in this military, and as soon as I came
back to Washington in 1975, I went into the All-Volunteer Force
Recruiting Command. This military today has much higher standards than we have ever had since I have come into the service. I
have been wearing my uniform for 41 years, and I have some experience with this. I have sat on waiver boards back in 1975, 1976,
and 1977. I have looked at a lot of kids. We issue a lot of waivers
because we want to look at young kids who use marijuana, for example, one time and we want to talk to them about drug usage.
We want to talk to them about misdemeanors.
There are some people and there have always been people in the
last 30 years or so that we have brought in with felonies. But we
look very carefully at them. We have initiated Second Chance programs.
Mr. BLUMENAUER. With all due respect, I said that I would request thisthis is the part that I wanted in writing, because there
was a difference, and parse out what the difference is in terms of
the pressures in the last 2 years and the changes that have been
taking place. Whether you think all of a sudden now we are in-
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creasing the rehabilitative efforts altruistically or whether it is the
result of failed policies
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. I think you have misinterpreted my comment.
Mr. BLUMENAUER. What I am interested in is the costs associated over the last couple of years of the all-volunteer. I had hoped
to get in my time a response to the issue that the Chairman had
raised earlier about billions and billions for Cold War weapons and
we cant fully fund the cooperative threat reduction.
Mr. ENGLAND. I have your answer, sir. Could I answer your
question? Last year we had in the Cooperative Threat Reduction
program, we funded $370 million. This year our request is $248
million. And the reason there is a reduction is becauseand the
reason it is a reduction is because they have completedthe chemical weapons destruction facility in Russia has completed that job.
So we were funding them to destroy chemical weapons. They completed that task, and based on that cost no longer being there, it
came down to budget this year. So that was based on the completion of a program in Russia.
Mr. BLUMENAUER. I note that we have had the bipartisan panel
chaired by former Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker, and
former White House Counsel Lloyd Cutler suggested we could
spend up to $30 billion over the next 10 years. And so it seems a
little ironic that we have this one little piece that has been taken
care of and that there arent larger, more important threats to deal
with.
And I would, Mr. Chairman, hope that we could maybe seek a
little sense ofif the Department of Defense thinks that this problem has been solved, that there isnt billions and billions of dollars
worth of problems that could be dealt with.
I appreciate your answer about why you dropped that out, but
it begs the question about a vast problem worldwide that appears
to be being shortchanged.
Thank you for your courtesy.
Chairman SPRATT. Mr. Becerra.
Mr. BECERRA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you very much,
Mr. Secretary, for being with us. I know some of these issues have
been covered, so I am going to try to go through some of this quickly.
First, just to be on the record, I want to express my outrage and
distress at what we are learning about the treatment of some of
our Active Duty personnel who have been injured and many of our
veterans who seem to not be receiving the highest quality, not just
care, but attention that they deserve.
Yesterday I was at Walter Reed to visit one of the service members who is from mynot just my district, but my town of Eagle
Rock in Los Angeles, California. And it is disturbing when you hear
some of the reports that are out there.
So I am glad to see that the Secretary of Defense is moving forward along with the Secretary of the Army to try to resolve some
of these matters. But without using words that are not appropriate
here in public, I would say that many of us hope that this gets
taken care of as quickly as possible and with whatever money we
have, and I think you have indicated that where you need to, you
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will reprogram dollars. We need to make sure that happens as
quickly as possible.
Mr. ENGLAND. We will do everything and anything necessary,
Congressman.
Mr. BECERRA. Appreciate that, Mr. Secretary.
I would like to focus on a couple things. I would like to put up,
if I could, chart No. 9, because to me it is distressing to hear that
we are having to appropriate another close to $100 billion for the
war in Iraq, and some of it for Afghanistan as well, at a time when
we see very little end in sight in terms of what the President continues to propose.
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And to me, chart No. 9, this chart that you see now, is extremely
compelling. This reflects the costs of the Gulf War which George
Bush Senior initiated on behalf of this country. And when you take
a look at the gross cost of $61 billion, that right there is minuscule
compared to what the costs are today of this war in Iraq and Afghanistan. But when you recognize that, that 1991 Gulf War ended
up costing us about $2 billion to the Treasury because we got reimbursement from some of the countries that didnt necessarily contribute as many troops, and we also were able to get some in-kind
contributions as well. By the time you take into account what we
got back by our partners, our Coalition partners, our costs to have
gotten Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait was a lot less than what we
initially paid.
What distresses me and the reason I bring up this chart is we
find none of that with this war which George Bush, the son of Senior, has taken us to in Iraq where we can expect to have not just
participation by the so-called Coalition partners in the war effort,
but certainly in terms of reimbursing us for the yeomans work that
our men and women in uniform are doing when others arent willing to contribute the forces to do so.
31
I wish we could say that we are going to have a net cost of $2
billion for this war in Iraq, but I daresay that that is going to be
the case.
When we put up chart No. 10, this will tell you why I am extremely distressed. Not only can we not expect to have moneys reimbursed to us from the work men and women are doing in this
war in Iraqand this may be tough to read because the print is
smallbut when we are not getting the best use of our dollars for
the work that we are doing, then you really have to be distressed.
When you see that our men and women on the ground dont have
all the equipment that they need, the armor that they need, that
their vehicles havent yet been equipped with the armor they need
completely when they are taken out to the field to battle. It is distressing when you read that some of our other projects, which will
do nothing today to help our men and women on the ground in
Iraq, are over budget by over 100 percent, it has got to make you
think, what the heck is going on?
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Our principal focus should be on our men and women and making sure they are the best-equipped, best-trained and best-protected
troops that we have out there. But when I take a look at the fact
that the Space Based Infrared System, a project which was supposed to cost $4 billion is now estimated to cost over $10 billion;
when we were supposed to get five satellites and now we are hoping to get three; and the cost has escalated more than 315 percentor the future combat systems which was supposed to cost
$82.5 billion now is estimated to cost $127.5 billion, a 54 percent
increase, you go on and on and on and on.
There is not much of a question here because there is not much
time for you to try and answer this. I hope what you will all do
is go back and discuss with folks at the Pentagon that we seem not
to be quite as focused as we should be. We obviously need to have
the systems that will protect our people and others in the world
and provide them with the freedoms that we so cherish, but not at
32
300 percent over the initial cost. And we have to figure out ways
to do this right, because when you have got soldiers at Walter Reed
Hospital who are not getting the medical services that they need,
when you have heard in Walter Reed Hospital stories of how rats
and vermin are infesting some of the rooms where we have some
of our soldiers, and when you hear the fact that some of our soldiers are going into Iraq without all the body armor that they need,
it makes you wonder why we are spending 300 percent over cost
to some of these systems that are costing tens of billions of dollars.
So I hope you will take that back and know that this Congress
is hoping to try to resolve this, to be as supportive as we can of
the men and women in uniform without wasting the taxpayer dollar.
I will yield back the time, Mr. Chairman.
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. If I could, sir, I just want to talk about
armor for a moment, because I think it is very important. This is
a very good example of where congressional support for funding
has helped us tremendously.
Mr. BECERRA. Please, Admiral, go right ahead.
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. We went into this Operation Iraqi Freedom with under 500 nontanks, armored vehicles that werent tanks
or Bradleys, for example up-armored Humvees, we only had under
500 across the entire military. Today we have 42,000, just to give
you an idea. Nobody operates outside of a forward operating base
out of their base when they are inside Iraq or Afghanistan without
going out with the proper armored vehicles.
Number two, with regard to personal body armor, helmets and
the rest, we do not allow people to go outside without the proper
equipment, period. And we outfit them properly with all of the
right equipment. When they do what we say, we call it going outside of the wire. All of these folks do this. And with your support
we have produced hundreds of thousands of sets of this armor that
go out there.
I was just in Iraq and Afghanistan about 3-1/2 weeks ago. I went
out and took a look at the new types of body armor, for example,
that we have got on marines. I looked at a squadron just going out
on patrol. They had full-length body armor. They were using new
Nomex suits which are fire retardant, and we have got significant
orders.
The only thing I would tell you is that we cant get some of this
stuff that you all have appropriated money for fast enough to them,
but we are producing them as quickly as possible.
I also rode in these latest V-shaped up-armored vehicles. I have
done that repeatedly over a number of times at the National Training Center in Iraq. I have gone on improvised explosive device
training courses in Iraq and driven these vehicles personally. My
point to you is that we dont allow them outside without the appropriate equipment. That is the way we equip them.
Mr. BECERRA. Mr. Chairman, if I could just say thank you to the
admiral for his response. I think you would find a very receptive
Congress if this is what we saw you telling us that you needed that
extra money that you didnt expect because you have to make sure
that the troops have the up-armor they need, that they have all the
equipment that they need. But when at the same time we see the
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massive overruns on some of these other systems defense systems,
it makes you cringe, because we know that there are still stories
of men and women coming back saying they didnt have everything
they needed.
So I appreciate the response. Looking forward to continuing to
work with you. But there is a need to have more accountability at
the Pentagon, because the men and women, when they follow their
orders and they go on the ground, they expect that we will have
done the best we can with the dollars we have to make sure that
they are prepared.
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. Yes, sir, that burden falls on us as leaders and managers here to make sure that we have the appropriate
accountability. I would just solicit your strong support for this fiscal year 07 supplemental to help us as soon as possible. There are
a lot of armored vehicles. There is a lot of armor. There is a lot
of equipment in there to equip our troops, and we can use it as
quickly as you approve it.
Mr. BECERRA. Thank you.
Chairman SPRATT. Thank you Mr. Becerra. Mr. Tiberi.
Mr. TIBERI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am sorry I was late and
I apologize for missing your testimony. I look forward to reviewing
it.
I just have one question, Mr. Secretarythank you for coming
todayone I know hasnt been asked, because it deals with a central Ohio issue. I have been working with the Ohio National Guard
over a FYDP issue for a new Guard Training Center in central
Ohio, in Delaware, Ohio. And the proposed facility was originally
on the future years defense plan for 2011. However, that was originally. However, now it has been pushed back to 2013. It was originally for 2010, been pushed back for 2013.
I know you may not be able to answer the question right now,
but this has a huge impact on the Ohio National Guard which is
being asked to do more and more in our war on terror. The State
of Ohio has appropriated money to share in the cost of the facility.
That money now is in jeopardy because of this being pushed back
on the FYDP to 2013 and I, with other members of the delegations
of the Appropriations Committee and Armed Services Committee
tried to work to move it back. But I would hope that the Department of Defense would work with the Army to begin the process
of restoring that money, because it is critically important as the
Guard is being asked to do more by the Department of Defense.
So I know you may not be able to answer the question now as
to why it happened and how we can correct this problem, because
it is having an impact on our men and women who serve in the
Guard, but I hope that you would get back to me on that particular
issue, the Ohio National Guard in Delaware, Ohio.
Mr. ENGLAND. Mr. Tiberi, you are right; I dont have the answer.
But you are also right, we will get back with you so we will have
somebody
Mr. TIBERI. Thank you very much, sir. I look forward to working
with you.
Mr. ENGLAND. Thank you.
Chairman SPRATT. Ms. Sutton of Ohio.
Ms. SUTTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
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Secretary England, I just have several questions and they are
sort ofthey are all related but yet individual in their own right.
We have heard a lot of talk today about the conditions at Walter
Reed, and I would just like to add my voice to those that have already been raised here. The problem that seems to be missed,
though, in your response, Admiral and Secretary England, is it is
not enough to just say that we are going to look at what we need
to do and we are going to correct it. The question that my constituents want to understand and I want to understand is how in the
world could this have happened, and people in positions such as
yours, who are accountable for making sure that these facilities
have what they need and are executing their responsibilities, didnt
see any red flags or had to wait until the paper broke this story.
Mr. ENGLAND. First of all, let me just say it is not a resource
issue. I think the generals have both testified yesterday, and you
heard the Secretary, this is a leadership issue. But like the general, however, I mean for 5 years we have been dealing with our
veterans and we go out to the hospitals regularly and we meet
them at dinner and ballgames and all sorts of things, and it has
never come up. It is sort of a strange but it hadnt come up to us.
So I didnt know about it. No excuse, but didnt know about it. I
guess other people didnt know about it.
So that said, we have a problem. And the systems werent working right. Now if the systems were working right, we never would
have had this problem. It would have been fixed instantly. People
at the low level and, like the admiral said, somebody would have
inspected and we would have had enough feedback. And I will say
this: Over the years, I mean my office and, I think, the admirals,
whenever anybody has an issue that comes to us, we fix the issue.
And I guess it was always my view that, you know, some people
sort of of fell through the cracks.
Well, it turns out, I guess, if you look at all this over a period
of time, it has probably been enough people that you should have
had some indication that there was a systemic problem rather than
just random cases. There will always be a random case. So we
missed the signals. And I wish we hadnt. We wouldnt be here. We
wish we had known this earlier, we could have fixed it. But it is
not a resource issue. It is an issue, I thinkthe admiral said, it
was the first time I heard that expression, it is not what you expect, it is what you inspect. So it didnt happen right and people
have been held accountable. And the system is being fixed and everything at Walter Reed will be fixed and anyplace else will be
fixed.
Ms. SUTTON. With all due respect, I like that phrase too. It is
what you inspect, and I think this Congress needs to inspect how
this could exist without people knowing about it and addressing it
before it broke in the paper.
The second question that I would just kind of like to raise, I was
struck by your testimony, Mr. England, about our joint warfighters
with what theylet me just read it from the beginning:
The defense budget request before you will provide our joint
warfighters with what they need to accomplish our mission of protecting and defending America; our land, our people, and our way
of life.
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So am I correct in understanding that that is what any war that
we are involved in, one of those purposes is served by every war
that we are involved in, protecting and defending America, our
land, our people and our way of life?
Mr. ENGLAND. So I am not sure, what is the question?
Ms. SUTTON. The question is, are those the three purposes that
any war that the United States of America is involved in should
be about?
Mr. ENGLAND. Well, it is to protect our citizens, to protect our
friends and allies, it is to promote freedom and democracy. I guess
I could write a dissertation, but at the core that is what we do. Our
job is to protect and defend the country, our citizens, and our
friends and allies and to deter and prevent wars in the future. So
we try to defer, we try to prevent wars, we try to work cooperatively with countries, and so we have funding in there to work with
countries around the world to establish ties with their militaries.
So it a broad-based mission. At the core it is to defend the country
and our way of life over a long period of time.
Ms. SUTTON. Well, thank you. That is obviously much more expansive than the words on the paper. So I appreciate that. And just
following up on that, Secretary England, on July 16, 2006 the DOD
comptroller sent a guidance memo to the military services that required that they provide 2007 supplemental estimates by September 1, 2007. And when you received those estimates on September 1, I would be interested in knowing how much those services supplemental requests totaled, and then I would like to understand why 2 months after those estimates were due to the Office
of the Secretary of Defense, why you sent out a guidance memo to
the services submittingasking them to submit war estimates that
included requirements for a broader definition, again, of a longer
war against terror. What was the purpose of that memorandum as
the follow-up to the first request?
Mr. ENGLAND. Okay. So first of all, requests come in from the
services, what we call raw requests. It comes to the comptroller
and the comptroller vets those. So some things may be in the base
budget, some things may have been funded in the past. So we
make sure there is no double-counting and all that.
But we would be happy to provide you those numbers. But we
make sure that when requests come in, it is not something that is
already funded, it is something in another budget, et cetera.
So the comptroller vets all those numbers and typically they
change, typically they come down quite dramatically because just
maybe fund another bucket and all those things that people making requests didnt know about. So we go through a long vetting
process in the comptrollers office, and then the requests I put out
later was because we had some very specific requests by our combatant commanders.
And if we go into the base budget for the global war on terror,
then, of course, you know we have a long lead time.
So, for example, we did a 2008 budget last year, worked on it
during the year. It will be debated this year. It will become available basically next year. So it could be a 2-year delay in terms of
actually having funds available. We had some needs that we felt
needed to be addressed. It was the global ear on terror. So we said
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lets address them, because there is something that needed to be
address.
That said, as I indicated earlier, we are reprioritizing and those
funds will be lower in terms of their priorities. So just like our airplanes, you know, we will likely reprioritize those funds just because they are a lower priority. But the intent was to address the
needs identified by our military of things they feltequipment,
whatever they needed to prosecute the war in their part of the
world.
Ms. SUTTON. Thank you.
Chairman SPRATT. Mr. Scott.
Mr. SCOTT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Secretary England, I understand the monthly costs, beginning of
Iraq 2003, were $4.4 billion per month; monthly in 2004 was about
$5 billion per month; 2005 was $6.4; 2006 was $8 billion; and this
year with the increase of about 40 percent, we would assume it is
about $11 billion per month for being in Iraq. Does that sound
about right?
Mr. ENGLAND. That is about right. I believe that is correct.
Mr. SCOTT. Is 2008 expected to be more or less?
Mr. ENGLAND. I believe it is less because of thewell, again,
based on, quote, the place holder we have in 2008, it is $143 billion, $141.7 billion, it is less than the total for this year.
Mr. SCOTT. Okay. Now we dont expect a supplemental in 2008,
is that right?
Mr. ENGLAND. So let me be clear because it gets a little bit confusing. We turned in the 08 GWOT at $141.7 billion, which is an
extension of the 2007 again, because we dont know what the
events on the ground will be next year.
Mr. SCOTT. Well, we are fighting a war so we dont know. But
we dont expect a supplemental in 2008.
Mr. ENGLAND. I would expect that the $141.7 will be modified either up or down before we actually get to this stage next year, just
because we will know more at that point in time.
Mr. SCOTT. Does the budget include sufficient funding to avoid
any further delays on CBN 78?
Mr. ENGLAND. Yes. That is in the base budget. My understanding
is the Navy has funded that, so there is no further delays. I believeI will have to go back to the Navy, though, and confirm that,
Mr. Scott.
Mr. SCOTT. Is there sufficient funding for maintenance of the
ships that have already been built in the budget?
Mr. ENGLAND. Yes. Now I say that yes because we increased
the O&M accounts in 2008. So the O&M accounts are higher in
2008, so my expectation would be that they are fully funded. Again,
I will get the Navy to confirm that for you.
Mr. SCOTT. We have a real tight budget. We are charging veterans additional fees and everything. It is a real tight budget.
There is a proposal to move one of the carriers home-ported in
Hampton Roads down to Florida at a cost that has been estimated
at hundreds of millions of dollars, maybe a billion dollars. Could
you consider leaving the ship there in Hampton Roads to save a
billion dollars that could go to shipbuilding or other important
costs?
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Mr. ENGLAND. Mr. Scott, I will have to sort of put my old Secretary of the Navy hat on here and go back to when those decisions
were made. When we decided to retire the Kennedy, we still wanted two ports on the east coast and two ports on the west coast we
could have our carriers, just for the security aspects of it, so that
we didnt have everything in one location. So at least when I was
in that position, the rationale and my commitment at that time is
that we would move a carrier to Florida so we would continue to
have a higher degree of security for our fleet.
Mr. SCOTT. Your chartyou didnt know you were going to be
charging veterans to pay for their own health care back then. I
mean, you didnt know the budget was going to be as tight. So we
will be seeing how that moves along.
On BRAC, is there sufficient money in the budget to clean up
Fort Monroe? The costs of that were estimated at hundreds of billions of dollars. And I thought it was an absurd decision to make,
but it was made. Is there money in the budget to pay for the cleanup?
Mr. ENGLAND. Mr. Scott, I will have to get back with you.
Mr. SCOTT. As you know, there is a reverter clause, and when
you give the property back to the Commonwealth of Virginia, it has
got to be cleaned up if you stop using it as a base. So I will look
for that answer.
Mr. ENGLAND. We typically do include those costs, but lets confirm it and I will make sure to get back with you.
Mr. SCOTT. I just have a couple seconds. I wanted to get in another question. You are aware of the good services we have in modeling and simulation in the Hampton Roads area. Are you using
modeling and simulation to the extent practicable for planning and
training?
Mr. ENGLAND. Let me turn it over to the admiral who is more
of an expert than I am.
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. The answer is, what I would say is it is
adequate for what we are doing. There are some desires to do
more. We are doing a tremendous amount though. And that is
what is significant.
As you know, Mr. Scott, from my time down on the Joint Forces
Command, the Department has invested heavily in modeling and
simulation. We have extended it to training. We are extending it
to intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance predictive tools.
This is a burgeoning market, and frankly we are going to do more
in the future. We are going to continue to do more. It is a growth
industry. That is the bottom line.
Mr. SCOTT. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman SPRATT. Mr. McGovern.
Mr. MCGOVERN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank you
for being here once again. I want to associate myself with the comments of some of my colleagues here on the whole Walter Reed
issue, and I wasnt going to go down that road with questioning,
but after listening to some of your responses, I wanted to make a
couple of points.
You know, Admiral and Mr. Secretary, you both have said that
this is a leadership problem. Well, if it is a leadership problem,
then a hell of a lot more than two people need to be fired, more
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than an Army Secretary and more than a two-star general. The
fact of the matter is, this is not only a leadership problem, it is a
systematic problem, it is an institutional problem. And as The
Washington Post pointed out yesterday in their story entitled It
Is Not Just Walter Reed, there are examples of neglect and mistreatment and poor conditions all over this country. And so when
you say it is not a resource problem, I dont know how you are
going to be able to fix all that you are going to need to fix, because
it is widespread, without additional resources.
I mean, we have stories ofyou know, we learn about the Walter
Reed stories about the mold, mice, and rot in Walter Reeds buildings, but that is not the only place where you have those conditions. We had a woman quoted yesterday, a mother who was horrified when her 21-year-old son was discharged from the Naval Medical Center in San Diego a few months ago and told to report to
the outpatient barracks, only to find the room swarming with fruit
flies, trash overflowing, syringes on the table.
You have situations where there are not enough nurses, where
you have wounded or injured leading the troops, stories from Fort
Campbell, Kentucky, talking about yellow signs on doors stating
that our barracks had asbestos.
To fix that is going to require millions and millions, if not billions, of dollars if in factwhat really should have been known a
long time ago, and I cant believe that the stories havent trickled
up because, you know, this is not a new phenomenon and notwithstanding the fact that the newspapers have kind of broken this
story. I mean, it just takes my breath away when I hear you say
that you just didnt know about this. And you know, we make a big
deal about going before the American people during this time of
war and saying, you know, our men and women who are serving,
you know, are our first priority. We are going to take care of them
not only when they are over there, but when they come home. And
you haveagain, this is not just about Walter Reed. I mean, this
is all across this country.
And so I would say to you, with respect, that it is not just a leadership problem; that it is a systematic problem, that it is an institutional problem, and it is a resource problem. Because when Senator Dole and former Secretary Shalala finished their recommendations, I can bet you that the cost of fixing what needs to be fixed
is going to be phenomenal. So with all due respect, I would not say
it is not a resource problem, because I think indeed it is going to
become one and it is going to cost this country a great deal to be
able to fix. If you want to respond, I would appreciate any
Mr. ENGLAND. I guess we are waiting to see. I dont know if this
is a systemic problem. Maybe you are right, Mr. McGovern. I just
dont know. I guess when people look at it, we will find out. My
comments: It is not a resource problem means that if something
needs to be done, funds will be made available. To the best of my
knowledge, in the past we have made the funds available that were
requested and needed. And so if there is a shortcoming, we will fix
it. I mean, it is clear
Mr. MCGOVERN. Part of what this committee is about is to figure
out how much we need to devote to these issues, and so if you are
coming before us and saying it is not a resource problem, when in
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fact I think we all know it is going to require a substantial amount
of money to fixthis is not just Walter Reed.
Mr. ENGLAND. If it needs it, we will do it. It is that simple. If
they need money, we will fix it and do it. I dont know the extent
until somebody looks at it. But again, it is not a resource issue in
terms of people wanting the funds to fix it. I mean if we need funds
to fix it, we will do it. It is our highest priority. We will do it. So
there is no question we will apply whatever resources we need to
this problem. I dont know how widespread it is. I dont know if I
arrive at your conclusion, but we will find out and do whatever it
takes.
Mr. MCGOVERN. Again, it kind of again stuns me when you, you
knowyou read and you hear, you know, that there are facilities
that have signs up that say, you know, Stay Away, this is asbestos filled. When you hear stories of soldiers going back and going
into situations where the conditions are not even sanitary. I mean,
these are our men and women who we are putting in harms way.
And so, you know, we are going to need to makeyou are right,
we are going to need to come up with the resources. And it is going
to add substantially to what we need to do in this Congress, but
it also, again, it just never came to our attention, none of these stories ever trickled up to the level where we thought we needed to
take action.
I mean it is clear, I mean just read The Washington Post story
yesterday, you know, this is a widespread problem. And it is just
again, it takes my breath away when I hear it never got up to our
level. Who is everybody talking to? And we also havethe Post
talks about, you know, scare tactics used against soldiers who will
write sworn statements to assist soldiers and their medical needs.
Clearly some of these people are told just to shut up.
So I wasnt going to pursue this line of questioning or make a
statement because I know my colleagues did it more eloquently,
but this is more than a leadership problem. And if you believe it
is a leadership problem, you are going to have to fire a lot more
than than two people.
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. If I could from a military perspective, it
is a fundamental leadership problem, and the reason why I will tell
you this is that there are root causes for these failures. There are
root causes. There are systemic problems that you must go look at.
And that is what we are doing now. We can fix certain things immediately, but the question is, why didnt our leadership at the
high levels, the mid-grade levels and the lower levels determine
that we had a problem here? That is why we will say in general
terms, and as I said before, it is much more than just the mantra.
It is a leadership problem.
You must look through this entire chain of command to figure
out why we werent addressing these. Let me give you an example
Mr. MCGOVERN. If that is the assessment, then our current leadership at every level has failed miserably.
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. We clearly have failed with regard to
how we are taking care of our outpatients. There is no doubt about
it.
Mr. MCGOVERN. Thank you.
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Chairman SPRATT. Mr. Etheridge.
Mr. ETHERIDGE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Secretary, welcome. Thank you for your service. I appreciate
your testimony before this committee and I dont envy your task of
defending this administrations budget and record. And I associate
myself with the comments that have been made as it relates to our
veterans, and I suspect you are going to have a lot of Members visiting a lot of VA hospitals. And I have been to some and a lot needs
to be done.
I would like to note that the Presidents proposed Defense budget
of $622.8 billion is the largest budget that we have had since Japan
surrendered in Tokyo Bay, and that has already been talked about
this morning. And let me just say that since I have been in Congress, I have voted for every Defense authorization bill, every appropriation bill and every supplemental. So I want that as a part
of the record.
But the vast amounts of sums being consumed by the Defense
Department is staggering. I say that becauselet me just read
something for the recordbecause I think it needs to be on the
recordbefore I ask my question, because the ongoing war in Iraq
and other places is driving this troubling budget train.
Four years ago this month, your predecessor testified in front of
the Appropriations Committee and he saidand I quoteThe oil
reserves for that country, talking about Iraq, could bring between
$50 and $100 billion over the course of the next 2 to 3 years. We
are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon. We are dealing with a country that
canexcuse me.
Now, you cant be held responsible, and I recognize that, for what
your predecessor had to say and I appreciate that. But I would like
to note for the record that Iraq is not financing its own reconstruction. Foreign countries like China, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Libya and
others are financing the reconstruction and our war in Iraq by buying Americas debt. The bill will come due not on this administrations watch, but our grandchildren will be left with this bill. And
I think that is a pretty sorry record when we look at it in that regard.
Mr. Secretary, you stated in your testimony that improving the
readiness of the force is the number three priority in this budget.
I am very concerned about the effective readiness for our troops.
I happen to represent Fort Bragg and an awful lot of Guard and
Reserve soldiers who have been in Iraq, and I have heard from
them the stories of how they did not have body armor and other
stuff. We are hearing reports that military equipment is wearing
out much too quickly, and much quicker than was anticipated, and
reset costs are well beyond what was expected. Our sources report
the supplemental process, as we have just heard in the Pentagon,
was expanded greatly.
So my question is this: Can you tell us what measures you have
in place to maintain the readiness of the force and how the status
of those things are measured, how we are measuring it? And secondly, how do you prioritize and determine the needs of such necessities such as simple things like body armor and the things that
really protect our troops on the ground, creating the humongous
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number of casualties and wounded men and women who are coming home?
Mr. ENGLAND. So, Congressman, we get our requests from the
services coming on their budget request. And take armor. I mean
we have had a lot of iterations of both body armor and vehicle
armor. As the admiral said at the beginning of this war, we had
less than 500, quote, armored vehicles; we now have about 43,000.
But those 43,000 are iterations of armored vehicles as we have gotten better and better at this.
Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Secretary, how in the world do we send
these men and women into harms way, though, without the equipment that was necessary? I think that is the question the American
people would have me ask today.
Mr. ENGLAND. I think if you listen, the Army will tell you they
went through this whole nineties, right? I mean the procurement
budgets were pretty much savaged, and they started out the beginning of this administration $56 billion in the hole. So when this
war started there was a deficit, a big deficit, d we have been working, I mean, we have been working hard through these supplementals to build up all that equipment so we now have, as the admiral said, 43,000
Mr. ETHERIDGE. We kept being told we were ready to go, nothingthere would be no problem. We can march in and it would all
be over. All of a sudden we are finding out not only do we not have
the right equipment but we dont have enough of it.
Mr. ENGLAND. The adversary has a say about how things unfold.
So the adversary had a say, and it is a very lethal adversary and
they have very lethal weapons, and so we keep going through the
iteration of our equipment, which we do all the time, so we can provide the very best we can for our soldiers, so we keep getting them
better sets of body armor, we keep getting them better sets of armored vehicles. We are still doing that today.
There are new iterations always coming out to provide them the
very latest we can provide them, and those funds are in the
supplementals.
Now that said, in the 2008 baseline budget you mention readiness, the budget in the 2008 baseline, there is an increase of $16.8
billion to improve force readiness. And that is more training in the
base budget in addition to what is in the supplemental, that is
equipment repairing and replacement, because some of that is in
the base also and in intelligence and support. So the 2008 budget,
there is significantly more funds in 2008 than there was in 2007.
But again, I would iterate the comment that the Vice made, the
2007 supplemental is crucial. There is a lot of money there. It is
for equipment and it is for armor and it is all sorts of things. And
if the one thing I could encourage would be for the Congress to
pass this supplemental as soon as possible, because it is funding
that we need to protect our men and women who are doing this
fight every day. So I mean that is one way you can be extraordinarily helpful to us is to get this supplemental out as soon as
possible, but by the middle of April would be ideal, frankly.
Mr. ETHERIDGE. Thank you Mr. Secretary. Thank you, Mr.
Chairman. I just hope in the future we will get numbers that will
show us also what the costs, the residue costs are as we talk about
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our men and women who are in these VA hospitals and others who
are really having problems. Thank you sir.
Chairman SPRATT. Ms. Schwartz is not here. Mr. Bishop of New
York.
Mr. BISHOP. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you, Mr. Secretary, Admiral. A couple of things. First, I certainly want to associate myself with the remarks of all of my colleagues on both sides
of the aisle with respect to the outrage at Walter Reed and elsewhere within the medical system. And I guess one of the things
that bothers me the most about thisthis is really a comment, I
am not asking for a responseis with the tens of thousands of people that we have working for the Department of Defense, the tens
of thousands of people we have working for the Office of Veterans
Administration, that it took two reporters from the Washington
Post to bring this issue to the level of attention that it has received.
Mr. Secretary, you have described it as fixing it as our highest
priority. Respectfully, I would say that, if caring for our soldiers as
they recover from their wounds were such a high priority, this
would have been discovered and acted upon by someone in the employ of Department of Defense. We would not have to rely on two,
I would say, courageous reporters for the Washington Post, and I
will not ask for a comment. You have commented enough on that.
There was a report released, I think last week or the week before, that suggested that 90 percent of our Guard and Reserve
forces were not ready for deployment. Either there was insufficient
equipment, insufficient training, and so on. My question is: A, do
you accept that number? Do you agree with that number? If you
do, what are the plans to rectify that situation given the enormous
dependence we now have on Guard and Reserve?
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. If I could, Mr. Bishop, first of all, as a
former Commander of U.S. Joint Forces Command where our National Guard forces report to Joint Forces Command when they
come under Title X authority, they must report their readiness.
They report their readiness in a classified system. So, to your question aboutI think, actually, the estimate was 88 percent, is what
it said, were not ready, and what I would tell you is it is the statement that they are not ready that is incorrect, okay?
What I would then tell you is there were references to, I believeand I did not read all of these articles completely, but there
were references toand I talked with Mr. Panaro, who is the
Chairman of this Commission on the National Guard, about this
statement. About half of the forces within the National Guard are
ready at all times to respond to State emergencies. Now, that was
not stated anywhere in this article, and General Blum would testify to that, and he would come up here and tell youand I confirmed before I came over here todaythat in fact about 50 percent
of our forces are ready immediately for any type of State emergencies. What the readiness these units report on through the Federal side is their readiness to meet wartime conditions, and their
required readiness is to go out and be able to respond to a wartime
situation.
So what I would say to you is that the 88 percent number is
correct if you modify it from not ready to that they will respond to
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wartime crises with the equipment and the training and the rest
of it that they go out to.
Mr. BISHOP. I just want to be clear.
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. I just want to be sure you understand
they are not ready; they are not fully ready equipmentwise.
Mr. BISHOP. I am trying to understand the distinction.
So, in response to the question of what percentage or what proportion of our Guard and Reserve troops are ready to respond to
a wartime situation, what is that number?
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. I have asked the question for our system
to give me the exact number, and they have not done that, but let
me just explain the reason why I do not have that answer to you.
I talked to General Smith, as a matter of fact this morning, from
Joint Forces Command, on it. Our readiness system, once again, on
the classified level has C1, C2, C3, and C4, and what I want to
read to you is what C3 is. All of our National Guard units are supposed to be units that possess the required resources, and the unit
is trained to undertake many but not all portions of the wartime
missions for which it is organized or designed, and then there is
a level below that of C4. Most of our units for equipment readiness
are in the C4; whereas, they are supposed to be at the C3 level,
what I just described to you. So, to correct the equipment part of
the equation, what we have done is put a huge amount of money
and I would ask the Comptroller to tell you how much. It is in the
$20 billion to $30 billion range for equipment readiness problems
that we have funded over the last series of budgets.
Mr. BISHOP. I am sorry. As to the $20 billion to $30 billion number that you are citing, it is in the base budget or is it in each of
the supplementals that aggregates to one of your
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. It is a combination of all of the above.
Mr. ENGLAND. No. No. I can answer that.
In the 2005 to 2013 budgets, there is $36 billion for National
Guard and Reserve equipment.
Is that right?
Ms. JONAS. That is right. From the fiscal year 2008-2013, about
$22 billion is in the base budget. We have another $2.7 billion between the 2007 and 2008 GWOT requests for about $24.6 billion
for the Army Guard. We have another $5.3 billion for the Air
Guard. Your total across all three bills is about $30 billion for 2008
to 2013. What the Deputy quoted was the 2005 number being
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. To give you an example, the Presidents
budget for 2008 has $4.5 billion for Army Guard and Reserve
equipment. The 2007 Title IX Appropriations Act had $3.3 billion.
Those are subcomponents of what the Comptroller just gave you.
Mr. BISHOP. Okay. Thank you very much.
Chairman SPRATT. Isnt there another component, and that is the
training component, the individual unit training, the joint training
component that frequently becomes a deficiency when the unit is
shipped out to another theater and simply cannot maintain the
training for its basic assignment?
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. Yes, sir. That is correct. There are certain types of training that somebody may be trained for to do, but
they have been redirected from, say, full spectrum warfare to
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counterinsurgency. So they train for counterinsurgency, deploy for
counterinsurgency, and they may not have the full spectrum side
of this. That is correct.
Chairman SPRATT. Thank you, sir.
Ms. Hooley.
Ms. HOOLEY. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Deputy Secretary, for being here and for your
service.
Mr. ENGLAND. Ms. Hooley.
Ms. HOOLEY. As I understand it, the current MEDCOM policy is
that all soldiers who mobilize or demobilize at a base are required
to go to that base for follow-up care. Because Oregon and a dozen
other states have no bases, our Guard troops must remain for
weeks at the base they were deployed from for follow-up care, bases
that can be hundreds and, in most cases, thousands of miles away
from their families and their homes. As a result, Guardsmen frequently deny injuries during their demobilization process to avoid
having their deployment extended far away from their homes and
their families, taking a chance they can seek treatment later on
from the VA.
Let me give you a couple of examples of what happens when
these Guard troops request treatment upon demobilization.
Take an SFC with the Oregon Guard, who is on the East Coast,
with medical issues. He has a wife and 6 children, and the separation of the deployment has strained their relationship to a breaking
point. He has seen his family once in the last 3 months. My question is why wasnt he sent to Fort Lewis, which is much closer
150 miles away. Why cant he use TRICARE to have his injuries
looked at and treated at home with a local physician?
Another story involves an Air Force Specialist with a wife and
2 young children, who has seen his young family stateside 3 times
in the last 3 monthsonce because the Army sent him home for
convalescent leave and the other 2 times over the holidays because
his wife drove she and her children out to the East Coast because
they could not fly to see him. Why wont the military structure
change to the new reality of an operational Reserve and allow them
to be treated closer at home?
An Oregon soldier with no family at home has not seen a medical
professional for 3 months because he is waiting for an administrative board to look at whether he is retainable or not. The Army has
90 days to review this before making a decision. All of his personal
belongings were left either in Afghanistan or in Oregon. Because
the soldier must wait for a van shuttle to get around he purchased
another vehicle. Why is he not waiting for a decision, again, at
Madigan or Fort Lewis, which is much closer to home?
If 4 out of 10 soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are Guard or Reserve, isnt it time for DOD to adjust this MEDCOM policy and
make improvements to the demobilization process for Guard members in States like mine that have no military treatment facilities?
I am going to ask a couple other questions, and you can answer
them all at the same time.
The Independent Commission on the National Guard and Reserve, a document I am sure you are familiar with, has outlined in
their most recent report to Congress a plan to begin to address the
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problem with the Guard. Their price tag is $39 billion. Yet, your
plan calls for $9 billion to address the very same problems. How
do you explain the cost difference of this well-respected objective
commission in your estimates?
The National Guard and Reserve equipping needs received additional funding in
the last few years and is projected to continue to receive funds toward equipment
shortages.
The Fiscal Year (FY) 2008 Presidents Budget Request has $5.7 billion for the
Guard and Reserve equipment procurement with $3.7 billion going to the Army National Guard (ARNG) and $760 million going to the Air National Guard (ANG). Additionally, the FY 2007 Supplemental Appropriation provided $1.0 billion specifically
for ARNG procurement.
The Departments procurement plan for Guard and Reserve equipment over the
Future Years Defense PlanFY 2008-FY 2013 is $36.6 billion with $22 billion for
the ARNG and $5.2 for the ANG.
The next question is I hope that you are looking at governance

structure and changes, and I guess what governance structures are
you implementingchanges are you implementing now to address
the fact that the Guard is now an operational Reserve rather than
a strategic Reserve?
Mr. Deputy Secretary, right now, due to equipment not being
rightfully transferred back to States, again in my State, Oregon,
the Oregon Guard supply unit of trucks, equipment and people is
at 44-percent capacity. Our governor is getting ready for and has
had flood season. Fire season is coming next. Because of the DODs
policy of not returning what should rightfully be at our States disposal, my State does not have the equipment or troops it needs to
be fully prepared for these likely events. When is this vital equipment going to be returned not only to my State but to other States?
Last, it my understanding that a military standard for helmet
liner pads was written which lowered the standard of performance
from the performance of the original helmet liner pads in order to
provide for competition and get the pads at a lower cost. How much
money did you save, and do you really think it is worth it given
the number of traumatic head injuries that we are seeing?
Mr. ENGLAND. There are a lot of questions there, Ms. Hooley.
Ms. HOOLEY. Right.
Mr. ENGLAND. I mean, first of all, it would be terrific if I could
have your paper just so we could respond to your examples.
Ms. HOOLEY. I would love to have you respond to them.
Mr. ENGLAND. Good. Could you, please? That would be very helpful and particularly your specific cases, so I can get people to look
at them and understand it. That would be very helpful. A couple
of them, thoughso, if you give me that, I will definitely look into
it and close the loop with you on that.
As to the governance, you know, we have changed the policy for
Reserves and Guard in terms of time so that we have actually
changed the 1 in 5 so that it is 12 months deployed and 5 years,
basically back, but whatever it is it is a 1 to 5 ratio, so that was
announced by the Secretary in terms of the deployment.
As to the equipment, I would like to talk to General Blum about
that. My understanding is that the combat equipment is in theater.
Obviously, I am not sure what all the specialty is of the Oregon
National Guard, but as for the trucks and all of the things they
need for a state-type response, my understanding is that the
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Guards do have that. I mean the question of readiness is, one,
readiness at the State level; the second is readiness for Afghanistan and Iraq, and the third is readiness for accord in an all out
war-type thing with
Ms. HOOLEY. Well, we do not have readiness for any of those.
Mr. ENGLAND. So we need to get with General Blum. We will do
that. If you will provide me with that data, I will follow up with
General Blum for you and also follow up with the Army with your
other specific questions.
CARE FOR DEMOBILIZED SOLDIERS AT MTFS CLOSER TO HOME
Reserve Component Soldiers released from active duty can seek care through
TRICARE if they have an approved line of duty (LOD) condition. The unit commander must complete the LOD investigation and provide it to the Military Medical
Support Office (MMSO) in Great Lakes, Illinois, or the local Military Treatment Facility (MTF). MMSO can authorize care for LOD-related medical services in the civilian TRICARE network. The local MTF can provide services in the MTF for the
LOD condition.
Active or Reserve Component Soldiers assigned to a Warrior Transition Unit may
request assignment to the MTF closest to their home or family.
Also, Reserve Component Soldiers who are on medical retention processing orders
and assigned to Warrior Transition Units (WTUs) may be referred to a Community
Based Health Care Organization (CBHCO) with duty near home.
The specific criteria for assignment into the CBHCO are:
(1) Soldier requires at least 60 days of clinical evaluation, treatment or convalescence.
(2) Soldier has a medical condition(s) that can be reasonably managed by the
CBHCO using available TRICARE-approved providers and within TRICARE standards in the Soldiers community.
(3) Soldier has been assessed for mental health and social support status, and has
been cleared by a licensed behavioral health provider. Behavioral health clearance
does not imply the absence of issues, rather that issues can be safely managed with
the available community and family resources. High risk Soldiers or Soldiers with
high risk Family members are not suitable candidates for remote command and
medical management.
The CBHCO program is currently serving approximately 1,300 Soldiers around
the country.
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. If I can, Deputy, I would like to add to
one thing, though.

Ms. Hooley, about 85 to 90 percent of the equipment that we are
operating on inside Iraq is active component equipment. Some National Guard and Reserve component equipment was brought to
theater, about 10 to 15 percent of the total. That is mainly combat
gear, bridging gear; in other words, things to go across rivers, small
streams and those types of things, specialty gear, but generally, as
the Deputy has stated, lots of the trucks and other thingswe
have brought some of that over, but most of this equipment is active component gear, so that tells you that we had a deficiency in
equipment before. We knew that, and that is why we have put this
$30 billion plus into buying more.
Ms. HOOLEY. It would sure be interesting for me to look at or to
have you look at whether or not, before somebody becomes a flag
officer, they should serve a year with the Guard or Reserve since
they have been so important to our operation in this war against
terrorists so that there is a better understanding with the military
about some of these problems that I have talked about today. I
mean the simple thing is, when you are on MEDCOM, that you go
back to the base where you are deployed from and not to the one
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closest to your home or going to your home and using TRICARE.
I mean those are things that I think the Department has to begin
to understand and to recognize.
Mr. ENGLAND. Ms. Hooley, if you, again, will provide me with
your paper, I will look into each one of those issues, and we will
getfirst of all, it would be helpful. I mean I appreciate the input.
It is helpful input.
Ms. HOOLEY. Okay.
Mr. ENGLAND. So that would be terrific to provide that, and secondly then, we will close the loop and get back with you on it, but
I think it would be helpful just to understand that there are a couple more cases that we can have the folks look at
Ms. HOOLEY. All right. Thank you very much.
Mr. ENGLAND [continuing]. To better understand this issue.
Ms. HOOLEY. Thank you. Thank you for your time.
Mr. ENGLAND. Thank you. It is helpful. I appreciate it. Thank
you.
Ms. HOOLEY. Okay.
Chairman SPRATT. Mr. Moore.
Mr. MOORE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Mr. Deputy Secretary, thank you for being here today and the others as well, and
I just want to ask a couple of questions here.
As you know, since September of 2001, the United States has
spent more than $500 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service estimated in September of 2006 that the Iraq War costs taxpayers almost $2 billion a week, nearly twice as much in the first year of
the conflict, and 20 percent more than the last year. Despite the
huge sum of money that is being spent on this conflict in order to
provide equipment, in some situations our troops in harms way are
still lacking the protective gear they desperately need. According to
an Associated Press story which appeared in the Kansas City Star
on January 31 of this year, the Defense Department Inspector Generals Office pulled up, roughly, 1,100 service members in Iraq and
Afghanistan and found that they were not always adequately
equipped for their missions, and I want to read just a portion of
this story to you. Again, this is dated January 31 in the Kansas
City Star Associated Press.
Hundreds of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan have experienced shortages of key protective equipment, including armor vehicles, roadside bomb countermeasures, and communications gear, a
Pentagon survey released Tuesday showed. The Defense Department Inspector Generals Office pulled up 1,100 service members
and found they werent always adequately equipped for their missions. The troops were interviewed in Iraq and Afghanistan in May
and June of 2006. Those surveyed reported shortcomings with the
vehicles outfitted with armor, cruiser weapons, which are weapons
that take more than one person to handle such as artillery or a
large machine gun, electronic countermeasure devices such as
equipment designed to foil roadside bombs by interfering with cell
phone signals that may be used to detonate them and communications equipment.
Mr. Deputy Secretary, I do not for one minute think that you do
not want to provide everything we need to our troops, and I think
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you feel exactly as Members of Congress do, that we should do everything we can to protect our troops, but I am very discouraged
when I read articles like this.
Mr. ENGLAND. Mr. Moore, I, actually, followed up with the Army
on this issue. I can tell you cruiser weaponsI mean we have an
enormous number of cruiser weapons. I mean the Army does not
understand that comment. We have huge numbers of cruiser weapons.
The electronic countermeasures, without going to classified
areas, for the counter-IED, because the threat keeps changing, we
keep changing to fit the new threat, but that is like, you know,
measures and countermeasures, and that is where we are, and we
have, I believe, in the budget this year $4.8 billion in this counterIED. But I mean, look, the adversary is good, and we have to adjust to them, and so we are building all kinds of equipment, and
they keep moving on and we keep moving on, but I can assure you
that gets addressed, but at any given time you are not always
going to have the latest equipment because we are constantly developing the latest equipment and fielding it, and there is obviously
time to get it out of the factories and into the theater. I mean
armor vehiclesas the Admiral said, nobody goes, quote, outside
the wire without having the right armor vehicles, and we keep improving and buying new versions of that also, so we keep upgrading and at any given time you are absolutely right. I mean nobody
has the latest equipment every day because it is just not possible
to do. I mean, unless we were to hold things static, then we would,
but we do not want to do that, and neither do our men and women
in uniform.
So, I mean, there is probably some validity in this, but I think
it is a mixture of things. I mean it is not just as clear as that article portrayed. I can assure you that
Mr. MOORE. This article is based, of course, on a poll of 1,100
troops serving in Afghanistan and Iraq, and that is what they believe, rightly or wrongly. That should be a concern to all of us, I
think.
Mr. ENGLAND. Admiral.
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. If I could, Mr. Moore
Mr. MOORE. I hate to stop you, but I have got 1 minute left, and
I have got another area I want to cover very carefully and at least
get this out and give you a chance to respond.
I talked to Secretary Rumsfeld in a small meeting of about 10
or 12 Members of Congress, and Secretary Rumsfeld was there
and this was, I think, a couple of years agoand I said, Mr. Secretary, I am very concerned about the stress we are putting, our
country is putting, on our Guard and Reserve units. Our active
people knew what they signed up for when they signed up. Our
Guard and Reserve units have been used in ways, I think, that
were never contemplated when most of them signed up. They have
been deployed and redeployed twice and sometimes as many as
three times now. It is putting incredible stress on families. It is
putting incredible stress on job situations back home, and I have
tremendous respect for all of our troops and whatever unit they
serve in and whatever active Guard or Reserve, but I am very concerned about the devastation I think we may be doing to our Guard
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and Reserve units, and I just wonder if we can count on some sort
of change of policy or at least a study of this to decide what we
need to do in the future.
Mr. ENGLAND. The Secretary, Mr. Moore, did announce a new
policy because of the issues you cite, so recognized issues, and now
the policy is, as I commented before, 1 in 5 for every Reserve and
National Guard so they can plan, and so the units will be called
up as a unit, and they will be 1 in 5 so they know that once they
serve, 1 time in, 5 times out, but I also have to tell you it will not
happen immediately. I mean that is the long-term policy as we adjust to getting there, but that had been announced by Secretary
Gates when he came in office, to provide better stability and better
planning by the people who serve and also by their employers.
Mr. MOORE. Thank you, sir.
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. Mr. Moore, if I could, just to respond to
you on the equipment issues
Mr. MOORE. And I was not trying to cut you off.
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. I understand, sir.
What I wanted to just mention to you is that I do not know exactly the number of, for example, counter-improvised explosive devices that we had, these jammers, if you will, but it was probably
less than 1,000 when we went into Afghanistan and when we went
into Iraq.
Today, we have about 28,000, and we are building them as fast
as we can produce them with the best software code and also the
best hardware capabilities that we can put into them, and we are
just rolling them out as quickly as possible with the very substantial help of Congress here. As the Deputy said, we have put $4.4
billion into this most recent request here for counter-IED stuff.
Like armor, we are producing it as fast as we can.
As a commander, when you are in the field and if you do not
have a sufficient amount of jammers, for example, you will compensate for that by not operating as many vehicles to do that. So
I am sure there is truth to what some of these troops are talking
about, and we run these down. There is no doubt about it. Every
time the enemy has a vote and they change their tactics or change
their weaponry, we will respond also or try to anticipate with new
armor, new equipment so that we can do it as quickly as possible,
and that is why we have tried to break down a lot of bureaucratic
barriers to deliver this stuff with your support here in the Congress.
Thank you.
Mr. MOORE. Thank you, Admiral.
Chairman SPRATT. Ms. Kaptur.
Ms. KAPTUR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, very much.
Hello, Secretary England, and both of your colleagues.
Mr. ENGLAND. Good morning. Is it still morning?
Ms. KAPTUR. I guess so.
I wanted to thank you for your service, first of all, all of those
who are in the room here with you, all of those under your command. We all know you are following orders.
I want to say for the record I do not agree with the orders you
are following. I think that the orders by this Commander in Chief
were reckless. He miscalculated the enemy, and he miscalculated
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and was unprepared for the nature of this invasion, and I use as
some of my evidence for that the fact that your supplemental this
year is larger than your base budget request. That is another sign
to me of total lack of preparation for what our soldiers are facing
and what this department is facing in theater. When you come up
with a supplemental of 93 point, I think, 4 or 5 and the base budget was $70 billion and you look at the relationship there
Mr. ENGLAND. No. No. Ms. Kaptur, you are confused there. The
budget last year, the supplemental, the first part of the supplemental, was $70 billion. This part of the supplemental is $93 billion. So those two together are supplementals, not the base budget.
Ms. KAPTUR. Yes, but I am talking about the global war on terror, and the point is you are constantly supplementaling us. You
are not providing the request in the base budget. So the budgeting
on this has been very arcane, in my opinion, and I do not remember in my years in Congress ever seeing a budget piecemealed like
this, and that shows to me you are trying to tack on every time
there is a shortage or you need something out in theater and coming to us with a supplemental, so I totally disagree with this.
I disagree with your statement where you say that we are spending very little on this war because it is only 4 percent of GDP. I
do not want to get into this in too much detail, but let me just say
that the GDP is an improper number compared to World War II
or any other decade when the United States was independent financially. Right now, we are owing so much to the rest of the world
we are borrowing to fund this government. We have got a debt of
nearly $9 trillion, and that does not count the debt in the private
sector. America is borrowing her way forward. We are not paying
these bills, and then we knock a full point off of GDP because of
our nearly $1 trillion trade deficit, and we are watching our currency fall all over the world in relation to other currencies. So the
result here at home is stagnant incomes for our families. The middle class is falling backward, and we have extraordinary rises in
poverty. So I take exception to what you are saying that this is not
a lot of money piled on to the type of GDP that we are experiencing
today. Those are not my questions. Those are my statements.
My questions are: I know so many soldiers, and they are so
brave, and I have just met with so many of them again over in the
Middle East and here. We know victory means one-third military,
two-thirds diplomatic, political and economic, and it is that twothirds that is missing, so we keep pushing it on our soldiers to
solve all of the problems over there.
Mr. Secretary, do I have your assurance, of the brigades that are
going to be deployed into theater, are they going toand the ones
that will be deployed into urban warfare in Baghdad, will they all
be trained at 29 Palms at Fort Ord in California?
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. I think I should answer that, Ms. Kaptur, and the answer is some will be. The answer is no. Some will
be trained by the units from these locations in their home stations.
I think you know this from the State of Washington.
Ms. KAPTUR. Well, I wanted to say something about that.
I know a Marine who was trained on a Howitzer. He is going to
be deployed in about 3 weeks. He is down at Camp Pendleton. He
is not out there in California. They told him he is going into Anbar
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Province, and he is going to be doing door-to-door clearance. All
right. I do not like that. I think that if we send anybody into that
environment they ought to have full training, and so I am going to
submit some questions to the record on who we are sending and
what they are being trained on. One of my
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. Please submit them, maam, and we will
answer each one of these individual ones, but when we take a Marine or a soldier or a sailor or an airman to do another jobwe call
that in lieu of jobswe will take somebody from a different area.
We train them for that job before we put them into it.
Ms. KAPTUR. Well, I would like to know the difference in training
there because this goes right down into the unit, their ability to
protect one another, and when you shift somebodys responsibility
like thatI can tell you that one of the soldiers who was killed in
my district was separated from his unit. He was put in some other
responsibility. They have to train in the unit. We have to give them
the best training in the country, and I think that we are seeing the
kind of shifting down at the unit level that we have seen in the
budget.
So my time is running out, but I just want to say we have an
Ohio sergeant in the Army who has just been transported to Walter Reed. I visited him out at Landstuhl, and he has a severe spinal cord injury. What I want to ask you, Secretary England, is
and this sort of follows on what Ms. Hooley said. He has to go to
a spinal injury center in our countrythere are only four of them
for what he has, we are told, for rehab, all right? Now, none of
them are located near where he comes from in Ohio or where he
is deployed out of, Fort Collins, Colorado, so they give his wife
some kind of a ticket or something where she can go visit him
wherever he is going to be put, and we do not know where he is
going to be put yet, but he also has a mother and father who live
in Ohio. Isnt there a way that the DepartmentI mean, for this
young wifethey had only been married for a few months before
he was deployed. She is going to have to do all of this. Is there any
way that you could handle the travel so that that ticket, if the wife
is not there, could be somehow given to the family so that they
could have follow-on with this young soldier? He is so terribly injured. This is going to be a long road for this family. Could you consider some type of alteration in the way you are handling this so
these families can deal with the reality of the seriousness of these
injuries?
Mr. ENGLAND. I believe we do that. I mean we bring whole families in for our militaries. So if you will give me this one case, I will
look into it. It would be helpful to deal with the specific case because, I mean, we do bring in parents and family, but if you will
give me that particular case, I will look into it personally.
Ms. KAPTUR. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, very much. I
do have one question for the record also.
I would like the Department to give to me, since the beginning
of the war, every single contract you have signed with Aegis Corporation either directly or through an intermediary. I do not care
if it was the Coalition Provisional Authority, whether it was the reconstruction process over there in Iraq, and I want to know the
dates, the amounts, who signed the contracts. I want to know who
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is being employed and what countries they are from. I will submit
a longer question for the record. A-E-G-I-S, out of Britain.
Mr. ENGLAND. A-E-G-I-S?
Ms. KAPTUR. Yes. Every time, not just the reconstruction. I was
over in Baghdad, and they had me meet with the company when
I was over there, and they were only talking about contracts that
were with the reconstruction authority. I want to know those that
were signed under the CPA with that same company, and that was
not given to us when we were there.
The contractor is Aegis Defence Services, Ltd. (AEGIS) of 118 Piccadilly, LONDON W1J7NW. AEGIS was awarded the Reconstruction security services contract
in May 2004; contract number W911SO-04-C-0003. The award was made under full
and open competition. AEGIS was one of six (6) submitted offers. Selection was
based upon the factors and subfactors established in the solicitation, to include,
technical (performance) management and cost, and the Source Selection Authoritys
review of the evaluation results and his integrated assessment and comparisons of
the strengths, weaknesses, and risks of the proposals submitted. AEGIS proposal
had significant strengths over the other offerors and demonstrated a thorough understanding of the contract requirements. AEGIS is registered in the DoDs Central
Contractor Registration (CCR), and is neither a debarred nor suspended contractor.
The contract was awarded to AEGIS as it provided the best value to satisfy the
needs of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) for Iraq reconstruction security
services. The contract is cost reimbursable with a fixed fee.
Under the contract, AEGIS provides a variety of security functions at both the national and operational level. AEGIS provides security services to the U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers (USACE), Gulf Region Division (GRD) throughout Iraq and to
the Joint Contracting Command-Iraq/Afghanistan (JCC-I/A). Based upon the U.S.
Central Command (USCENTCOM) contractor census, as of April 5, 2007, AEGIS
employs approximately 1,000 employees in Iraq, 250 of whom are Iraqis.
Request For Proposal (RFP) W91GXZ-07-R-0004 was issued on January 19, 2007,
to re-compete the reconstruction security services contract. JCC-I/A extended the
current AEGIS contract through late November 2007 as a protest was filed at the
General Accountability Office that prevented an award prior to expiration of the
current contract; the extension ensures continued security services for the Iraq reconstruction effort. The contract, as extended through November 2007, is valued at
$447,515,614.
Chairman SPRATT. Thank you, Ms. Kaptur.
Secretary England, Undersecretary Jonas, Admiral Giambastiani, thank you very much for coming. We very much appreciate it,
and we have learned something from your answers. We would appreciate your answers for the record to the questions that have
been put to you.
I would also like to ask unanimous consent that members who
did not have the opportunity to ask questions be given 7 days to
submit questions for the record.
Mr. ENGLAND. That would be fine. I would be happy to cooperate.
Nice being with you again, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman SPRATT. Thank you very much.
[Whereupon, at 12:40 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
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House Hearing, 110TH Congress - The Department of Defense and The Fiscal Year 2008 Budget

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THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE AND

THE FISCAL YEAR 2008 BUDGET

COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET

HEARING HELD IN WASHINGTON, DC, MARCH 6, 2007

Serial No. 11012

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COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET

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Hearing held in Washington, DC, March 6, 2007 .................................................

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THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE AND

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HON. JEB HENSARLING, A REPRESENTATIVE

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HON. GORDON ENGLAND, DEPUTY SECRETARY

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Chairman SPRATT. Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary.

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