Its not done yet. We had to go through sector by sector case by case convince each other our standards are good as yours. But we are making progress. Our Technical Team is doing even between the different else i hope we can receive Company Announced some result there later this fall. Commissioner malmstrom, thank you so much. You addressed a very broad range of issues with good humor, great comments. And have a feeling we will be seeing quite a bit of you in washington, and i think i think ambassador froman will be getting some frequent flyer miles to brussels. We hope the next time youre in washington you will return and help us understand the processes, i, for one, would like to sit through your class. Maybe they should be something to do the next time but we are grateful you spend your time with us. We wish you the best with your meetings, with ambassador froman, others. With your applause, please join me in thanking commissioner malmstrom. Thank you so much. [applause] [inaudible conversations] attorney general Loretta Lynch will testify at a Senate Hearing on the 2016 Justice Department budget. Live coverage begins at 10 30 a. M. Eastern time on cspan. Also to british voters go to the polls to elect a new parliament. On my lung well bring you live election coverage with studio analysis results and predictions predictions. Live coverage begins just before the polls close at 4 55 p. M. Eastern time on cspan. Heres a look of some of our future to programs for this weekend on cspan networks. The Obama Administration has requested 585 billion for the Defense Department 2016 budget. Defense secretary Ashton Carter and joint chiefs chair Martin Dempsey discuss the pentagon budget at a Senate Hearing yesterday. The hearing covered a wide range of military issues including series of civil war the against isis, Irans Nuclear program and Ongoing Military Operations in afghanistan. Senator that cochran chairs this appropriation subcommittee hearing. [inaudible conversations] the committee will please come to order. Today, our subcommittee on defense appropriations reviews the budget request of the department of defense your we are very pleased to welcome secretary of Defense Ash Carter and chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, general Martin Dempsey, United States army. This is our final schedule hearing of the year on the 2016 Defense Budget request. The subcommittee recognizes the uncertainty of the current fiscal environment and the impact it has on the department of defense and its planning. We also appreciate the complexity of building the first year 2016 budget request, and we look forward to comments from secretary carter and general dempsey on how we can support our men and women in uniform and our National Security interests. We are pleased to recognize dr. Carter on his first appearance before the subcommittee in his capacity as secretary of defense. Mr. Secretary, we look forward to working with you. Also want to recognize that this will be general dempseys final appearance before the defense subcommittee as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. General dempsey, uscert with the distinction since 2011, and this committee as grateful for your contributions. Well miss your valuable insight when your term comes to an end in october. The Committee Also welcomes mr. Mike mccord, the undersecretary of defense and chief Financial Officer for the department. Im confident that mr. Mccord will provide the committee with useful information as the subcommittee formulates the 2016 Defense Budget. Thank you for appearing before us this morning. Your full statements will of course be included in the record. I will now turn to my friend and vice chairman of the committee senator durbin for his opening remarks. Turn one. Thank you all for being here. Secretary carter glad to see you. Glad we had a chance to chat for america. Mr. Mccord, thank you as well for being part of this pic special thanks to general dempsey, for your many years of service in the United States army into the United States insurance of our national defense. You have risen to the top rank within the white house and administration as the chairman of the military side of our defense, and i appreciate all the talent that you brought to it and all the dedication. Wish you the best whatever life take you with your wife, children and grandchildren. Even now be able to enjoy a lot more. Secretary carter and chairman dempsey come its important for us to your device on a number of pending issues. The first is a threat of her own creation called sequestration. Our efforts within the house and senate to increase defense spending are using what is in fact, a budget gimmick, namely to ship tens of billions of dollars of funds for the base budget over to the overseas Contingency Operations account. I believe this effort is not the right way to address the problem. While i support avoid sequestration, Congress Must address funding shortfalls for the entire government and do it responsibly. Moving programs from the base bill to the war funding accounts adds to our problems instead of fixing it. The department of defense cannot operate efficiently the u. S. Government lurches from one fiscal crisis to another year after year. I want to hear from you on that subject, please. Is manufactured a budget crisis comes at a time of quickly changing Global Security department. Our military is operating all over the globe, operations in afghanistan, africa, stability the pacific in response to russian aggression in eastern europe. Since last you should weve added military operations in iraq and syria to the busy military operational tempo. The are a number of issues i hope to get to the questioning maintaining our competitive innovative edge in technology and medical research indeed what i believe as an exploitation of Service Members and their families by predatory forprofit colleges, making certain that the department of defense can keep track of the contractors that are working for them, and lastly keeping in mind, general dempseys persistent admonition that job what is getting our people right, late last week the department reported an estimated 20,000 servicemembers were sexually assaulted last year. The number of individuals reporting these incidents a sadly disappeared more than half of the same boat still expect retaliation. With to make more progress and it requires a strong commitment. This is a daunting array of challenges and just a few of them and they face. I look forward to your testimony. Thank you senator. Secretary carter, you may proceed. Thank you. Thank you thank you, vice chairman durbin, and the subcommittee, thank you for inviting me here today. And mr. Chairman, i want to especially recognize a sense of civility and courtesy with which you conduct all you do including the leadership of this committee. Doesnt go unnoticed. Leasable bite me. Its much appreciated. Vice chairman, i will make sure that we get to the issues you raised both in our private conversation and just now in the course of this coming thank you for your leadership. I thank you all for thinking my friend and shipmate Marty Dempsey for his wonderful service. Im going to miss them. I know all of you on this committee share the same devotion that i do it the finest fighting force the world has ever known, into the great defense of our great country. And i hope that my tenure as secretary of defense will be marked by partnership with you on their behalf. Im gratified that this committee, as well as the other three defense committees recognize the urgent need to hold the decline in defense spending imposed by the budget control act. President obama and i deeply share in that recognition. And indeed i want to commend you and your colleagues for both recognizing and saying that sequestration threatens our military readiness, besides our war fighting courses, the presence and capabilities of our air and naval fleets our future technological security and ultimately the lives of our men and women in uniform. The joint chiefs have said the same and that specify the kinds of cuts that their services would have to make if sequester returns. Over the past three fiscal years the Defense Department has taken over three quarters of a trillion dollars in cuts to its future years of defense spending. The magnitude of these cats which dressed the most capable players are programmers at the stretches have been made even greater because of the frequently sudden and unpredictable timing and nature of the cats as well as continued uncertainty over sequestration. And as a result dod has been forced to make a series of incremental inefficient decisions, often made well into a fiscal year after prolonged continuing resolutions are finally resolved. Moreover even as budgets have dropped precipitously, our forces have been responding to unexpectedly high demand from a tumultuous world. As a result i believe our Defense Program is now unbalanced. We have been forced to prioritize force structure and readiness over modernization. Taking on risks and capabilities and infrastructure that are far too great. This is a serious problem. Height demands on smaller force structure mean the equipment and capabilities of too many components of the military are growing too old too fast. From our Nuclear Deterrent to our tactical forces. Meanwhile, in each of the past several years, painful but necessary reforms proposed by dod, including many significant reforms, like eliminating overhead and the needed infrastructure, retiring older force structure and making reasonable adjustments and compensation have been denied by congress at the same time that sequestration looms. We are starting to see this double whammy. Once again, and markups of legislation this year. If confronted with a sequestration level budgets and continued obstacles to reform, i do not believe that we can simply keep making incremental cuts. As ive said before we would have to change the shape and not just the size of our military significantly affecting parts of our defense strategy. In recent weeks some in congress have tried to provide dod with its full budget request for fiscal year 2016 by transferring funds from the base budget into our account for overseas Contingency Operations, or local government to fund incremental temporary costs of overseas conflicts in afghanistan, iraq and elsewhere. While this approach clearly recognizes that the budget total weve requested is needed, the cabinet it takes is just as clearly a road to nowhere. I say this because president obama has already made it clear that he wont accept the budget that locks in sequestration going forward. As this approach does. And he wont accept a budget that severs of the link between our National Security under economic security. Legislation that implements this budget framework will therefore be subject to veto. So if we dont come together and find a different path by fall, when the budget is needed come people put our department and our troops and an all too familiar and very difficult position. We will yet again have to make very hasty and drastic decisions to adjust to the failure to have an adequate dod budget. Decisions that none of us want to make. The joint chiefs and i are concerned that our congressional committees and injured fans of this idea and dont explore alternatives, then we will be left holding the bag. Thats not what i want to be in six months. But since the oco funding approach is not the kind of widely shared budget agreement that is needed we can see now that it will not succeed. Moreover the one year oco approach does nothing to reduce the deficit. It risked undermining support for a mechanism, oco which is meant as i said to fund think about cost of overseas conflicts in afghanistan, iraq and elsewhere. Most importantly because it doesnt provide a stable multiyear budget horizon this one year approach is managerial unsound, and also unfairly dispiriting to our force but our military personnel and their families deserve to know their future more than just one year at a time. And not just of them are our Defense Industry partners also needs stability and longerterm plan. Not interview crises or shortterm fix a ticket there to be deficient and cuttingedge as we need them to be. Last and fundamentally, as a nation we need to base our Defense Budget in on our longterm military strategy, and thats not a one year project. This funding approach also reflects a narrow way of looking at our National Security one that ignores the vital contributions made by state the state department, Justice Department treasury department, Homeland Security department, and disregards the enduring longterm connection between our nations security and many other factors, factors like scientific r d to keep our technological edge education of a future allvolunteerallvolunteer military force and the general economic strength of our country. Finally im also concerned that how we deal with the budget is being watched by the rest of the world, by our friends and potential foes alike. It could give a misleadingly diminished picture of americas great strength and resolve. For all these reasons we need a better solution than the one now being considered. Two years ago we saw members of Congress Come together and reached a twoyear agreement 30 murrayryan bipartisan budget act. Act. Although we preferred and longerterm solution to sequestration, that deal was able to provide dod a measure of stability needed to plan for more than just one year. Today i hope we can come together for longerterm multiyear agreement to provide to the budget stability we need by locking in defense and nonDefense Budget levels consistent with the president s request. I pledge my personal support to this effort as well as the support of the entire staff of the department of defense. And i would like to work with each of you as well as other leaders and members of congress to this end. If we are successful im confident we can build a force of the future thats powerful enough to underwrite our strategy and to show resolve to friends and potential foes alike. A force thats equipped with a bold new technology and ideas able to lead in cutting edge capability, cyber in space a force thats a lean and efficient throughout the enterprise, that continues to attract and inspire new generations of americans to contribute to this great mission. Thats a vision for the force of the future ive been pursuing since i took office 11 weeks ago. And i hope to continue doing so in partnership with all of you. Mr. Chairman this is a time for coming together and problem solving, which we weve come to know well from members of this committee. Much like in december 2013 our only choice is to come together to find Real Solutions that reflects our strength and security as a nation. I look to this committee and the many leaders who sit on it to help us get on the right path out of this wilderness. Thank you. Thank you esther secretary. I noticed that in his summation that we have before us this morning, you have created or proposed to create a new you know, a point of partnership socalled. Apparently to be led by a civilian with a military deputy and staff with an elite team of active duty reserve and civilian personnel. It sounds like an ambitious undertaking, and may be complicated. There is the suggestion that the theme will look for breakthroughs in emerging technologies. I wonder if you could let us know how much do you think this is going to cost and how long will it take to be up and running . I surely can provide you with the cost. I will do so. As far as the mechanism is concerned, its an important effort. Its an experiment to effort. This is her socalled Defense Innovation unit experimental that i announced the creation of about a week and a half ago. It has a couple of things that brings together, mr. Chairman. One is our need to continue to be on the cutting edge especially the cyber edge represented by the Silicon Valley tech industry. Second, our need of which are mentioned in my statement, to continue to attract the very best defense. So we want to have an open door. So we are an exciting and attractive place for the countrys smartest young people to come and work even if they can only work for a period of time and contribute, to come in and help us out. And third, it combines an ingredient mention which is the use of the reserve component which is a huge treasure for our department. A lot of the reservists are very technologically savvy. And so that youre out there anyone in the region will contribute. So brings a number of ingredients together for the future and were going to try it out. It does say its an experiment. Its not a costly experiment but it is critical i think for us to have an open avenue between us in Silicon Valley. And by the way other individual partners as well. We need to be an Innovative Department so we stay fresh and attractive. Thank you. General dempsey, ask you if youd like to make your opening statement, he may proceed at this point. Thank you, chairman and vice chairman durbin. Distinguished members of this committee. Thanks very much at the outset for the very kind words about my service. It is been a rare privilege to hold this position and to be able to represent millions of men and women and their families who serve