President ial transitions. And sunday, at noon on in depth we are live with tom hartman who has authored several books including the crash of 2016, rebooting the american dream, and threshold. Join the three hour conversation. On American History tv on cspan3, steve ony explores the murder of mary sagin and the arrest and lynching of leo frank. And the federal Energy Administration documentary looks at fossil fuel in the United States. Next, a forum on National Security. We will hear from free Program Members of congress freshman. Bill kristol is the moderator and posted by the Foreign Policy initiative hosted good morning, i am the executive director at the Foreign Policy initiative on behalf of all of us at the team here it is a pleasure to welcome you to our sixth annual forum, the strength to lead. The Foreign Policy initiative was established in 2009 as a Nonprofit Organization dedicated to educating policymakers about the importance of American Leadership and engagement in the world. Standing with allies and standing up against the rogue regyr regi regimes that threaten them. We will be joined by policymakers and opinion leaders who will speak on these themes. I thank them for joining us and thank you for joining us on this rainy day. We will start the day with a conversation among rising leaders in National Security featuring martha mcsally, elise stefanik, and mark taka. Each member is a freshman member of the house of representatives and each serve on the Arms Committee and will voter today vote on the National Defense act. Congresswoman mcsally representathize Second District of arizona. She served in the United States air force retiring in 2010. She was the First Female Fighter Pilot to fly in combat and later command an air force fighter squadrant. Elise stefanik represents the 21st district of new york and she is the youngest woman ever elected to congress. She served in the administration of George W Bush and oversaw paul ryans campaign of 2012. And congressman mark taka represented the First District of hawaii and served two depcads in the congress for. Our moderator is bill kristol who founded the Weekly Standard. He served in the reagan and Bush Administrations including chief of staff to president dan quill. Thank you, bill, for moderating the conversation and i ask you all to join me in welcoming me to welcome our guest. Thank you. You have done a great job as executive director following jaime fly who i noticed on this program they are self depricating. Chris and his staff do all of the work. Working for senators now and going back and forth from the hill and thank you for talking the time to be here. I think we are doing a favor to representative mcsally and representative stefanik to take a break from phone calls. You will have 96 messages with you turn on your cellphone where as representative taka knows everything is quite. You all represent districts that were represented by a democrat last year. You passed the continuing resolution that funds defense at a lower level than what you voted for months ago in the house. And you will pass the defense bill on the house floor today or vote on it. How worried should we be about the level of defense spending . Will we stay at the budget control levels all year . I think we should be deeply concerned. I will speak for myself but you can see from the committee and the way we addressed in a bip bill we felt like we were now cutting into muscle in our military readyness a readines. The military is going to do everything they can to keep it going and make sure we are ready but we are gutting core capabilities and training and rearranging. We are at a crisis point. One like i have not seen since we had the hollow military starting to happen in the 90s. We should be deeply concerned. We came together in a bipartisan way to provide relief to our military spending at a time when the world is more dangerous than i have seen in my life and i have been focused on safety for 30 years. The president threatened to veto the defense bill. For 54 years, even when congress was at its most dysfunctional, we have been able to pass a defense bill. So my hope is the president is not playing politics with defense and will sign the bill. Continuing resolution is not the way to go. I have been on the other side of that level and you cannot plan, do new starts, you are having to continue things from last year that you maybe dont need to do anymore. It is not the way to have the capabilities and be able to prepare for the future and deal with the threats we have. The fact we are choosing between government shutdowns and continuing resolution is ridiculous. That number cannot be at the sequestration level. I think that would be adaption for the military readiness. The only way it moves off the sequester level is an appropriation deal by the 11th of december. How hopeful were you for that . I am hopeful. Members of the house are addressing sequestration and talking about the dangers of sequester. I am hoping with the shakeup of the house, one of the priorities is coming to a budget agreement and i know members on the committee and those concerned about National Security and defense want to make it a priority for the end of the year. This has a tremendous impact on my district. I represent new yorks 21s at these district. The most deployed unit in the u. S. Army and one of my first jobs as representative for this district was fighting back against the army cuts. And fort drum got cut the least out of any army facility in the country. But as we ask our troops and military families to continue to pursue these high operational deployments we should not gut military readiness or continue down the path toward sequestration which was never intended to go into affect. This is one of the committees functioning the most bipartisan. Do you think you will get a bipartisan deal along that pattern . I would hope so. I think we all agree sequestration hurts. But i have a different perspective than martha. I dont support sequestration across the board, defense and nondefense. We are moving forward on defense and dealing with the increase in local funding to offset the cuts and not really looking at the n nondefense appropriations and in totality the entire budget. I supported the ndaa. I think the first vote coming from the house, i was one of 41 democrats that voted in support of the bill. Todays vote is going to be very interesting but i am going to vote for it. I think it is too important an issue for our country and also for my home state of hawaii. Having said that, i think the president and the democratic leadership on the house and senate, has a very compelling argument in regards to the fact we are moving this forward without a budget deal, and the question remains what is going to happen on nondefense. The nondefense includes the Veterans Affairs department as well. I would hope we have a budget deal longterm. I am a little disappointed truthfully we passed a short term cr but that last night was better than a shutdown so i vetted for that. I am looking forward to the ongoing discussions between the scombrez both leaderships in both houses president and as it relates to a budget deal. I dont know if a twoyear budget deal is in the making. At the end of the next federal fiscal year, september, 30th, or a little past the next election would be more of a possibility or probability at this point. I think we all agree budgeting, especially for defense, on a c i re or short term budget deal is not the case. I made the case for a higher Defense Budget and the Weekly Standard and Foreign Policy initiative said give me particulars. Everyone knows the pentagon is bloated. But you have experiences in divini different ways and Different Services with parts of the military and i am curious, give me an example of what is not happening that should be happening . With the continuing resolution you cannot do any new starts or investments. At the Head Quarters or acquisition program, if you need to do something new you are not allowed to do it. I have been on the end of being stuck in the status quo of limitations you have under a cr and then you cannot plan so you end up doing a nine month or less depending on how long you do the cr that you are trying to have the fiscal Year Spending and planning and it ends up being more costly in the end. So that is what going on the auto pilot in the cr is not good. Being at the suquequestration ll has brought questions and the administration came to Congress Budget and they said it was because of sequestration. We are cutting it and putting it in the boneyard. It is not because i am nostalgic because i flew it. But if we want the muwren renes to get home this plane has the capability no other plane brings. So this is reckless and one example of what the sequestration is doing. Our son who was in the air force was fan of the a10. What is up with getting rid of that . Absolutely. We will let the air force speak for themselves. But whall of the services are under pressure with the sequestration making sure they have the right pay and health care levels. Looks like the numbers are going preworld war ii as far as the people serving in the military. Space and nuclear and all of that stuff they have to do. But still given all of that when they look at the rest of the force and investing in the future why would you take away a capability, we are talking about different capacities where you have different sets of airplanes in a mission set, but you would take away a capability that no other airplane brings before you have a follow on replacement up and running. That is reckless. I have been hammering them since before taking office and since taking office that this is a reckless decision and we were able to get it fully funded in the house and Senate Version of the defense bill and both on the nda and appropriation side. It affects military readiness and training and that translates to increase in loss of live and limbs. We are in the tenth Mountain Division with increased deployment and that is a direct impact of being budget driven. I want to speak on behalf of my colleague martha i sat next to her as her wing woman during the House Armed Service committee where she was able to get on record this was a budget driven decision to get rid of the a10. That is a bad way it conduct your National Security strategy. I was pleased you were able to get them to say that. You served in the national guard, what your sense of this . Any challenges with the budget will result in readiness and personal issues and really questions about whether we are still combat effective. I agree with martha to talked about the acquisition challenges of the shortterm budget fix. Clearly not only does it cost a lot more but we will not be able to compete with the chinas offense this world. Take a look at the acquisitions from the chinese and it is mindboggling. For us to be sitting here today with short term budget fixes and sequestration moving overhead, it puts us at a serious disadvantage. I think we all know that and we have to work through that. I go back it the challenges of sequestration and i believe the intent of congress was not to have sequestration. I know it was a deal but i think everybody in their right mind thought they would create a new deal get rid of it. The fact is we still have it. In order to get rid of sequestration on the defense side you have to know we have to play together. And deal with eliminating or increasing the caps on the sequester side for nondefense as well. That is an interesting discussion to have over the next few months. It is going to be interesting message soon because part of the president s veto message is part of that. I was hoping to do the nda later on. With it moving forward now it is a little too premature. You mentioned china but i want to get back to russia and syria which is in the news and i know you heard a lot of testimony on. As you mention, china, and maybe you are the member of dprsz closest to china. Apparently you can see russia from your back window. I can see kauai. I mean the pivot to asia is one of the reasons there was bipartisan support in the Foreign Policy community. Duff do you feel why doing the right things to balance the power in asia . It is absolutely real. Some people want to stay focused on the middle east. But we have to focus on the shift to the pacific. It mead to be a priority and i believe it is for this administration and congress. I have had opportunities to host congressional delegations. In late march, i hosted a delegation for many thad that didnt have the money to go to the pay debrief, the one that talks about the mission that pay com and the entire area, including the indian ocean has. If you get a brief like, even if is unclassified, you understand the challenges in that part of the world. More than 50 of the worlds mass is covered by pay com. Most of it water and all of the air. We also celebrated and the end of world war ii on september 2nd and the 70th anniversary of the u. S. War happened birthing at pearl harbor facing the uss arizona memorial. We had the pay com brief and with those members of congress, mostly republicans, 28 of us or so. The focus on asia was something they said we need to focus on. I believe it. Despite the cuts we saw in the army in particular. We lost and transitioned from the striker birgade. So we are okay. And our focus on cyber, and our focus on Missile Defense is all part of the pivot to asia. The last think i would say is this we had 70 years of peace in the Pacific Region and i believe the biggest reason why we have had long lasting peace is because of the Strong Military and strong relationships with our allies and other countries throughout the asia Pacific Region. We have to continue on the path because we have bad actors in our region and the strength of china there as well. So i think it is real. Is it real . It is an adequate resource. What about china . I am struck how i have been here longer than you have and there were great hopes, i have been a skeptic of china but we lost that 90s and there was hope that china was liberalized and was going to be a responsible player internationally. I have to say those hopes have diminished some in the recent years. What is your sense of the threats and challenges there . I will say i dont think we should be having a pivot per se. It sounds like either or. We are not pivoting because we dont have the resources militarily to redirect and focus in the Pacific Region even though it is important to us. China, and russia, and iran and north korea are looking globally and looking at the status of the Global Leadership and they are sensing weakness and we have created a vacuum and our decreasing of military spending and capabilities where we are challenged where are we going have to aircraft carriers . In the pacific or the middle east . We have to do all of the above. We see china taking advantage of it with building islands in the south and East China Sea and our allies are looking around asking where we are. But it cant be like second graders with a soccer ball saying we are over here china because russia is invading our allies and putting other nato countries at risk. I was at the meeting after the soviet Union Collapse and focused on the former soviet slavic areas so we had students from the baltics and acraukraind i am friends with many of them and they are like are you going to help us . We have the check the russian aggression in europe and potentially we dont know who is going to be next. And we do have, as much as we want to get out of the middle east having deployed there six times, i would love to see we dont want to be involved there but we have to because we have National Security interest. We have failed states. We have growing threats of islamic extremism with isis. Iran is the elephant in the room who is feeling more legit with the botched deal. You have sunni arabs who are wondering if we have their back. And now we have russia flying fighters planes and telling the u. S. To get out of syria. You cannot make this stuff up. It is like a bad dream. So we have got to not be we dont want to be in the middle east anymore and showing weakness in our policy and not being coherent in the policy in the middle east and talk about we are pivoting in the pacific when we really are not because we dont have the assets because we continue to degrade the military. Global leadership requires strength, it doesnt mean we need to be involved everywhere. I was at u. S. Africa in my last assignment before retiring. We have National Security interest there. We dont need to go in and fix every failed place in the world but we need to identify vital interest and having peace through strength and make sure we can back up the strength with military and Foreign Policy and we are not doing that all the way around right mow. Ia degragree with martha is it either or. It is important to have a Strong Defense presence and show American Leadership but another issue is Economic Leadership. And i think this is tied to the trade discussi