In difficult times, with many forces and interests demandsing their attention. In these days, give wisdom to all the members that they might execute their responsibilities to the benefit of all americans. And may their constituents understand as well that many in this country have interests at odds with their own. And that the task entrusted to their representatives is extremely complex. Bless us, o god, and be with us all this day and every day to calm. May all that is done be for your greater honor and glory, amen. The speaker pro tempore amen. The chairs examined the journal of the last days proceedings and announces to the house his approval thereof. Pursuant to clause 1 of rule 1, the journal stands approved. For what purpose does the gentleman from South Carolina seek recognition . Mr. Wilson mr. Speaker, i demand a vote on agreeing to the speakers approval of the journal. The speaker pro tempore the question is on agreeing to the speakers approval of the journal. Those in favor say aye. Those opposed, no. The ayes have it. And the journal stand as i proved stands approved. Mr. Wilson quarmquarm i object to the vote on the grounds that a quorum is not present and i make a point of order that a quorum is not present. The speaker pro tempore pursuant to clause 78 of rule 20, further 8 of rule 0, further proceedings on this question are postponed. The pledge of allegiance will be led by the gentleman from South Carolina, mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson everyone, including our guests in the gallery, please join in. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of america and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. The speaker pro tempore the chair will entertain requests for oneminute speeches. The gentleman from South Carolina. For what purpose does the gentleman from South Carolina seek recognition . Mr. Wilson mr. Speaker, i ask unanimous consent to address the house for one minute, revise and extend my remarks. The speaker pro tempore without objection, so ordered. Mr. Wilson mr. Speaker, a weekend editorial by the Washington Times stated the Unemployment Rate fell in january, which ought to be good news. But it isnt. Over the past decade, weve fallen into a strange and puzzling wonderland of opposites. Where economic recovery comes with no growth and Unemployment Rates drop but people arent working, end of quote. The president s misleading message conveys that if fewer jobs and government dependency is the new status quo, which destroys fulfilling lives. Last week a Congressional Budget Office report confirmed that the nfib and House Republicans have been saying for years, obamacare is and will destroy 2. 5 million jobs. 2. 5 million fewer americans who will be out of work due to the president S Health Care takeover. Our economy cannot truly recover unless obamacare is repealed. The president s Big Government policies are destroying jobs. House republicans have solutions that will put americans back to work. We understand that the status quo should be job growth, to help our middle class families achieve opportunity. In , god bless our troops and we in , god bless our troops and we will never forget september 11 and the global war on terrorism. The speaker pro tempore for what purpose does the gentleman from massachusetts seek recognition . Without objection, so ordered. Mr. Mcgovern mr. Speaker, i rise today to mark the third anniversary of the peaceful uprising of bahrain. Three years after has protests filled the streets, bat rainys governments promises of reform remain unfulfilled. Restrictions on freedom of expression and arbitrary detention continue unabated. A prisoner of conscience whom i have adopted as part of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission of defending freedoms project, is one of thousands who have been detained or tortured for peacefully calling for reforms. Prisoners like him are denied access to medical treatment and many are prevented from speaking about their abuse, even to their families and lawyers. Because bahrain is our ally and home to the fifth fleet, the u. S. Has a responsibility to ensure that the bahraini government adheres to its human rights commitments and enacts meaningful reforms. These should include relosing releasing Political Prisoners and ensuring accountability for torture. Absent such steps, the u. S. Must consider Contingency Planning for relocation of the fleet. I yield back the balance of my time. The speaker pro tempore the gentleman yields back the balance of his time. Pursuant to clause 12a of rule 1, the chair declares the house in recesses until approximately 5 30 p. M. Today. This got underway a few minutes ago. It is a special Marine Corps Task force. The way the marines organize the task forces is with four elements. It is comprised of a command element in the top box on the upper left of the slide. Web the air combat element, the ground element, and the logistics element. We think this is what makes us unique. Capable ofask force operating across the mission sets assigned to that force. The marine corps has freestanding mag tafs. Starting on the far right, marine expert gary Marine Forces. The incumbent they encompass the operating forces. This is the bulk of the marines that deploy or come out of these forces. This type force is used for major combat operations. Ized force like what you saw made the march to baghdad in 2003. Next to that, you have the brigade commanded by a onestar. It says up to 15,000. This can range from eight joint Task Force Headquarters up to aggregating multiple forces in support of major combat operations. Then you have the two on the left, which we would consider our Forward Deployed forces that we would project forward and anticipate would be operating in theater all the time, not just when there is a crisis. The one we have traditionally deployed is the Marine Expeditionary unit. It is about 2500 marines. It is associated with amphibious shipping. That is what you mostly see on the news, marines operating off of the ships. We have two of those on the water at all times. One in the pacific and one generally in the european, african, and Central Command regions. Very capable force. Working gamut from Security Cooperation issues up to having the capability of orcuting Forcible Entry having a play inside a major theater operation. The last one on the left is the special purpose. They do not have a size. They do not have a number associated with them. Created in order to meet whatever the Mission Requirement is. In this particular case, hours our Crisis Response was established with about 550 marines. Infantrysed around an company sized force. The command element was taking taken largely from the 24th. Designed for specific evolutions or missions, hours being Crisis Response. I will get into the details on that in a moment. Next slide. This was our mission. We were a forward applied Crisis Response as mentioned. It was established starting last year around the april time frame. Just one of many options the thene corps has, along with augmentation of security forces, fleet antiterrorism security purpose magtfcial does half africa that cooperation on the continent. It is different. It is not the same. It does not have the same capabilities. Certainly not the combat power it brings to the fight. Right is alluding to what we see as the continuum of Crisis Response. I know it is hard to see a lot of the words. As you start moving up the slope towards the bang, a lot of things happen, particularly when youre talking about support to assies and emb government facilities overseas. A lot of indications and warnings. The crisis starts to bubble up. We would like to get a force two spmagtfcr in early deal with the situation early and diffuse it right its presence or action that might be taken such as reinforcing. We are one of the red boxes on the bottom, or one of the many options. There are four deployed. But not the only option available. To inons we train the scenery enforcement, site security, tactical recovery of aircraft or personnel, as well evacuationtant operations. We are capable of being a lead on the waywon force that we could scale up. We were unique in the theater based on our ability to self command and control, deployed him a and the mobility we brought as part of the task force. That came from the combinations as well as the task organized ground element could that allowed us to project this force a long way. Even though we were based in spain for the majority of the time we were deployed, we were able to rapidly project the force. When we got where we were going, we brought everything necessary to operate. We believe that is the ground of the Marine Air Ground task force. Becomes comes as one consolidated package that is breakle to be able to pieces apart if necessary also be able to weekly be organized in order to a call push the mission without a lot of external support. It doeslready mentioned not replace it. There were questions about whether we were there in lieu of. We do not think so. Because of the lack of mu presence in the mediterranean and african region, spmagtfcr filled that gap. We felt it was complementary. This is a little bit about the operating area and time and space for the problem framing. Force fromloy this p lejune tone cam spain. That distance on the red arrows is about the same as it is down to the gulf of guinea. Pretty significant. That is to scale. A map of the United States. The united 3. 7 times states that can fit inside the continent of africa. When they built maps, it always looks like the United States is a good size. Compared toodsize africa, but africa is huge. You start running into significant problems or issues operating there. We also moved the force from djibouti and then further on. The distance from maron, spain, to djibouti is about 34 nautical miles, about the distance from africa alaska to florida. Maron,atedly moved from spain, to support operations in the african region. That is the distance from new york to new orleans. Even routine movement which we did several times from maron, s pain, is not routine based on this distance. The combination enabled that to happen. For the last six and a half months, i will start on the lefthand side of the screen. We did a lot of theater Security Cooperation and partnering with our host nation spain as well as the government of france and the French Foreign legion units in the southern part of france. In order towe train team up with a partner nation. Armyis case, the spanish and spanish marines and the French Foreign legion which allowed access for us into areas for us to operate and execute full Mission Profiles where we are able to put the force together and tie together our Ground Combat element and insert them into a range and long enough distance away that he was able for us to replicate to scale what it would be like to project a force into some of the areas we were responsible for. 22s in took the vss supportof those doing operations for africa. When they were training in withal, we supported them equipment approximately 1600 nautical miles from maron to senegal. Pretty significant movement. Time v22sirst were introduced in the western part of africa. We were able to do key leader engagements throughout the western and northern africa. Youhe left of the slide, see support operations for africa in may, september, and october. We were also able to take marines in theater, the black , specialtional force , althoughgtf africa their missions are not merely Crisis Response, all marines have the capability to do Crisis Response. We brought those two forces together along with hours, aggregated them in the european theater, as well as operating with the Anti Terrorism support team. We brought those forces together and did a mock embassy reinforcement followed by a reinforcement with the spmagtfcr on tactical recovery of aircraft and personnel and also ran mock evacuation exercises, so we were able to rehearse with all the Marine Forces in theater the type of mission sets we thought we might have to employ. A pretty important point just to say the way we are organized as marines allows us to be very flexible and scalable. Bringing these different forces together along with other joint forces is very easy based on the way we organize and command and control the force. This was a good opportunity. The first time this had been done in the european and african theater. On the bottom right is the movement we made down to djibouti to support operations in south sudan, which ultimately led to support and evacuation of american citizens from the embassy. I hope everyone has at least heard a little bit about the new normal with a new normal environment moving out into the future. If you have not heard about it, a couple of quick weights on it quick points on it. The new normal is the way to describe macrostability, not being in major wars. At the same time, a lot of potential crises, rapidly moving crises that can occur for all kinds of different reasons, whether they be religion, politics, social issues, demographics, things like the arab spring that started in one place and rapidly moved to another. At, the state department and department of defense working through this problem set. As i showed you earlier on the continuing slide, the state department has made a pledge to look early to see where we could get dod support if necessary to provide security early in the process rather than later. Agreed it would pay more attention earlier and planned of u. S. Lan for support government the cities and personnel overseas prior to crisis. What we saw with the Lessons Learned in south sudan what we believe is the first execution of one of these new normal type missions where we used a new ,ormal force, spmagtfcr deployed in support of a u. S. Embassy. The army as well projected a new normal Response Force into the embassy. You have both the marines and army come together under this construct underneath a joint commander and executed this mission. I have put up a couple of different thoughts on things we might need to think about as we move forward executing these types of missions. The types of resources we should put against them, how long we would leave those resources in place, who would make those decisions inside of our government when we do those types of operations. Set,y difficult problem particularly when you look at the size of the forces we have available in dod and the size africa and the time, space, and force issues associated with projecting force across the continent to the many orh risk type embassies facilities that may be at risk. That is just one theater we operated and. That throughand the globe in a number of places we would consider hotspots. With that, i would turn it over. Up here and we will start a conversation with ourselves and the audience. Thanks very much. I thought that was great. [applause] i am going to exercise my get aege as moderator to small handful of questions in myself before turning the attention over to questions from the audience. One of them i dare say is prompted by the last slide. That list of questions. As a commander of the special purpose magtf and now the mu, i assume those are not rhetorical questions. Are there answers to those questions . Is that work to be done . I think that work needs to be done every time we execute these types of missions. It is work that is being done as well. The point of me putting those up there, when i get a mission for a force like this, i do not have a question about what the mission is and i did not have a question about the mission in south sudan. As i look across the scope of potential areas that are having problems, i think we need to be asking those types of questions each time we employ a force like this. We employed a force like this in one place, we are not providing coverage in a lot of others. I wanted to be the guy who helps put context to a lot of what you said for perhaps a less than fully expert audience, which i doubt is in the room, but maybe watching elsewhere. For example, tell us about the v22. 3 4 of the room knows about it. It sounds like the way it was configured and the mission assigned might not be possible without that system. Go right to the root. What is it . V22 takes the qualities of a helicopter which can land vertically and combines them and a transport aircraft puts the two things together, so you get quite a bit of range and speed of a turboprop aircraft but when it gets to where it needs to set down directly, it can set down like a helicopter. What you have done any place like africa is you have greatly the area and envelope you can operate in. I would agree when we are a landbased force like spmagtfcr is, having the capability of the kc130jbined with the refueling aircraft, that gives you the reach that would get you into the continent. Amphibious shipping off of the coast provides a more direct path to that. Without that being sure based in the southern european region, an aircraft like the v22 gives us that capability. When you fly from miami to anchorage, that is three or four refuelings for an mv22 . It is more than that. It is about three to get from which wasitronella, the first piece of the leg, new york to new orleans. I was talking earlier today about this. It number of refuelings, does not have to be done by the same aircraft leading it forward. Another aircraft ca