is is >> what is the aspiration we have for the vexes problems, and the thought process and the first thing we'll do is i'll use my conventional forces, and if that fails, use strategic forces. i tell you, it's going to turn around. don't think about it in a nuclear sense, but think strategic first, coming from great distance or no distance, to solve a problem. last, think about the conventional forces and moving and huge costs of standing armies and moving them to the

problem. it's just the reality we have to deal with, and how we're going to do that, how are we going to afford it, those are the the questions, i think, that we're going to, as an alliance, come to grips with and understand how to do that; ours, we're not matching resources and capabilities with the security that we desire to have. >> thank you. >> other than that i'm in a good place. >> that leaves a good place. the leading expert brings a dose of reality, make it a concern, particularly such with europe. when you hear those speakers, particularly john cartwright's point about, you know, we have to be ability to exercise and leverage increasing speed and deploy our forces. do you see this happening in nato? is nato leveraging deemployability of the forces to provide adequate deterrent

against threats from both near and far? >> straight up the alley, soft pitch, so here's the way to answer that, if i can, and i want to shake it up. deterrents is when someone who is your potential adversary decides not to bother because they know it's not going to work, so we are detouring two things successfully, the u.s. nuclear deterrent is deterring anyone from even contesting u.s. nuclear knowledge. it's off the table. that's good. we should be happy about that, that there's no nuclear challenger out there. that extends to nato and u.s. guaranteed nato, but it's only credible if we have the linkage to nato allies bearing newark

lar burden of the policy. he's right operationally, but the burden of the politics of nuclear strategy has to be there or else it's not credible that europe is part of the strategy and that raises the question, does the u.s. nuclear deterrent extend? the other thing we're deterring is a conventional attack on european members. there, i think, what are the components? the components are capability, will, both individual and collective, your track record, and your method. these are all lined up perfectly on an attack against nato territory by conventional means. everybody knows nato can and will respond to that. now, flip side is we're not deterring anything else, not the taliban from attacking us in afghanistan or overthrowing the government or assad from killing

his people or nuclear weapons or deterring north korea from pursuing the nuclear weapon or deterring terrorists from attacking us wherever they can. those things, deterrents are not working, and what do we see on the horizon now? this is where you have to bring in the planning question. we are all cutting our defense budgets. we are withdrawing u.s. forces from europe. we are not talking about, in serious ways what to do with crisis outside european territory where it's libya, egypt, or what to do about iran. we talk about missile defense, but not against whom and what the issue is there, so we are in the process of eroding a lot of the capacity, and what we are prompting to the rest of the world, we are projecting an erosion of will.

this has serious implications for our ability to keep this deterrent up. the u.s. strategic nuclear deterrents i'm not worried about as long as we have the small linkage with europe, but i am worried about nato's credibility as for the sake of conventional deterrents. will we continue to convince people that if there is any thought of attack on nato member territory, that that there be immediately met and dealt with? i think we risk, as we cut our own capabilities and talk about not being able willing to do things that project power, that that question can start to creep up in people's minds, and since my friend and former ambassador to the u.s. just walked into the door, i'll mention an example of this. we had a discussion at nato after russia invaded georgia, and a comment from a larger ally

was, thank goodness we didn't invite jazz -- georgia to join nato because then we wouldn't have shown article 5 is real because, of course, we wouldn't have defended them. that's the dipped of backwards logic that's dangerous if nato thinks that way. if i point a way forward, we have to do the things, and we have to do things necessary to keep the conventional deterrent credible. >> have military forces that are actually available? >> land for when they might be used, exercise that use, and i slightly disagree with some of the comments earlier today about the expedition their roles. you can't agree in advance. kind of like in bosnia, we never talked about going into bosnia, but if you do the homework on

article 5 field capabilities, they are there when you need them. that's the way we have to think about it. >> okay, thank you. general o'reilly, talk to us a little bit how missile defense fits into both deternlts of the nuclear threats and conventional threats from an alliance perspective. >> well, i think it's very hard to make a distinction between the two because the missile defense systems are set up to counter missiles unknowing what's in the payload whether it's a weapon of mass destruction, we don't know. the threat is, obviously, intent to do harm or the missile was not launched in the first place so i believe there's an ambiguity that is going to stay when a missile launches whether or not to put them in a nuclear strategic sense or a conventional attack. probably the greatest indicator would be the range of the missiles that you're looking in. unfortunately, as we've been talking about today about the

relevancy of the nato missions for the future, in the area of missile defense, the proliferation and the threat of ballistic missiles is not stacked, and a lot of reviews were done four years ago, architecture was developed with nato and the united states. i believe if you look since then, the greater concerns or growing concerns is the emergence of a user friendly, if i may say, ballistic missiles available to notary public state actors. number two is the emergence of the antiship ballistic missiles in the possession of countries around the world where you can actually effect commerce from a great distance, and third would be along the mines of your questions, continuing to develop a long range missiles by iran with potential capabilities hitting the united states. when you look at that mission or

those threats as was just said, we have to have a capability, some way to respond to protect the interests, and those are long term commitments in developments. i honestly believe that the answer to your question is you have to be prepared to engage missiles without knowing ahead of time of what the threat actually is. >> let moe through you a question that's another softball as you wrote about it. what are ways the europeans can contribute more to u.s. homeland defense when it comes to missile, protecting homeland, u.s. homeland against ballistic missile threats? >> in the case of u.s. homeland defense, about 60-70% of the trajectory of the missile we are concerned about coming from the middle east towards the united states is over european territory or non-u.s. nato territory, so in the 70% of that

flight, there's a tremendous amount of day that we would greatly be able to leverage with our own homeland defense system that we currently do not have access to, yet there are sensors in europe today that can make tremendous contributions to u.s. missile defense. >> [inaudible] >> several countries have space odyssey tracking sensors, very precise. when you attempt an intercept of missiles coming in, a lot of those sensors are in a location that would be able to give you very access assessments of whether you were successful or not much earlier than just relying on u.s. sensors where they are located, and then there's a growing emergence of mobile sensors that are in nato, especially on board the ships, l band, s band, a whole ray of

frequencies out there that number one make it more difficult to counter when you face a network like that, and, two, adds a lot of robustness so there's not a single vulnerable node, and so i believe there's tremendous amount of contribution that can be made, and in the period of austerity that we're looking at right now, these are not expensive jowrpt taking to link sensors to a u.s.-nato system and would greatly enhance the whole network. >> yes, a question from kerry's visit to poe land because it following missile defense. when he was in poe land, he said the u.s. commitment to bill would be epaa site in 2018 is ironclad. does that mean the obama speech in prague 2009, an agreement

with iran over nuclear weapons program, if that were to be achieved robustly, a rethinking of epaa, are they now locked in, and they are no longer valid? >> so we've made a substantial commitment to homeland missile defense and the deterrent so when the department went through the choices, management review, those were among the three capabilities highlighted, and protected, and preserved, and part and parcel of that, and as we go through various budget deliberations, it's hard to protect the things you want to protect, and epa is one of those things we really want to protect, and so we've done, so far, a pretty good job

protecting phases two, phase one, phase two, and phase three. obviously, we canceled phase four, but that's really where there is a connection between your question and iran. okay. we saw a rapidly emerging north korean threat and moves resources and assets to go after that more emergence, more near term threat, the long term threat from north korea to put additional 14pbis in alaska and then also begin to look at how to improve the ekz. the long range threat was not emerging on the timetable we thought it would emerge, and so we are taking some of the phase four con cements and move that to alaska. that said, we know pause they test them all the time, and they

have a lot of them. there's a threat from iran in the area of the short and the medium and they are there and they are real, and that's where the resources are, sco the phase two ground breaking, which we just had in romania and then the upcoming commitment to poland completed in 18 that worked and committed to that and are ironclad. i think the bigger question really becomes, and it's not just for epa, but it's really for all of theater defenses, and it's how many defense systems do you buy to offset how many incoming systems, and that's the question, ultimately, we have to have because as many look at this, this is the losing end of the opposing proposition so, you

know, how often, how far do you want to go one for one or two for two or however many it is you need, but that's the question. it's not where is iran going? it's where is anybody going that has missile capabilities, and how do we think about defending them if we can't always afford that one-on-one, or two-on-one capability. that's the bigger question than iran. >> regardless, we have iran, we're still needing missile defense capability, and, therefore, the sites in eastern europe that the united states is building are always going to be there. >> define -- define that agreement with iran. define what it looks like. you know, we no longer treat russia as an enemy, but they possess nuclear weapons, and so we still have nuclear weapons, so define that box and we'll define our capabilities vis-a-vis that particular box of

capabilities. >> let me turn to missile defense because you were part of that commission that looked at missile defense. there's defenses, but it's not against russia. why is it impossible to reach out to russia on missile defense cooperation and simultaneously develop capabilities against ballistic missiles? in fact, that's happening in nato today. they are buying nato defense systems not design against iran, but russia. why shouldn't nato contribute to the effort and why would that undermind the relationship with the alliance, particularly in line with the fact russia emphasizes nuclear weapons and ballistic missile technology? >> well, it's not that you can't develop a missile which will shoot down a target with writing on it. russians have the capability for exactly the republican that was just mentioned to overrealm the

plausible defense. the most to expect if they want to do it, so missile defense, particularly what the poles are building, if i understand it, which is to defend specific targets and some protection for the country as a whole is to raise the cost of engine, is to make it clear that there is some defense that may or may not be vulnerable and you rely on other majors to deal with the broader question of conflict. i think one of the issues we tend to fly over is that most of the people in this room know it, but most other people don't. nato actually has nato as an institution distinct from its members, remarkably few military

capabilities. there used to be a pipeline given how expensive it was, i hope it still doesn't exist. i'm pleased to know it is going to happen someday. they are national systems designed almost invariably with a national mission and collective mission, and as you know, the principle that everything is a national responsibility means that they usually get paid for by the nations and that, therefore, the national mission, not an absolute priority, not to the exclusion of others, but it's very important. now, i'm a say, and this is the advantage of being entirely out of the government, i'm not a hundred percent clear that if there were -- and this is right, but, you know, tell me what the agreement with the iranians is, and i'll tell you what kind of an impact it has on the defense programs. i find it hard to believe that

if the really was a fundamental change in iranian policy, the united states congress would be quite so keen on providing the funding for a system which is quite rightly a heavily oriented towards the defense of europe, and there's another question about the relationship, the role of missile defenses that's been addressed indirectly but not explicitly, and you asked regime o'ryely about the relationship between missile defense and conventional deterrence. i believe that the most serious element of the threat from countries like iran is not that they will decide that they are going to fire off a mission for the hell of it and wipe out the infidels or at least a lot of them, but it is that they will embark on some regional aggression which is very much not in our interest, very much

in the interest to prevent it, and they will hope that their nuclear capability, even if a relatively limited one, is enough to discourage us and to discourage other countries from coming to the assistance to whoever they attack. i think, in that sense, missile defense because it offers prospect of frustrating that strategy to making it much harder to rely on, i think missile defense makes a major contribution to conventional deterrence which has nothing to do with actually shooting anything down, but reducing the capacity to believe that, to quote my good friend, the chief barbarian handler in the chinese military, that you won't trade los angeles for taipei. that, i think, in many ways is the central role of limited missile defenses that are

practice call. as to why -- i don't know how many reames of good will and paper have been spent on trying to convince the russians that we would like nothing better than to do things which really no kidding, cross our hearts, hope to die, will demonstrate the unsurprisingly, maybe a few hundred intercepter missiles, will not defeat thousands of russian ones, and you usually get a variation on no or no follow-up by colorful adjectives. >> maybe they'll change. >> general cartwright, follow on the point about demonstrating capacity and political will of the alliance to deal with the directs challenges of today and tomorrow. you talked about mobility, increased mobility of allied forces. i have the sense that increased mobility could be dmop straited

for expedition their operations, but i really wonder if the alliance is properly configuredded today and positioned today to deal with fast breaking constituencies on nato' border be did the baltics, poe land, or turkey. am i underestimating nato's capacity, or is this something to address, and, if so, how do you build up the capacity and demonstrate it? >> you know, i think first in the construct that we've been discussing here of nuclear weapons and missile defense, today, if somebody attacks and nobody's around, but it's in the interest of our country or other countries, you know, and perceived as an existential threat, then the only response that we have that can get someplace on the other side of the earth quickly is a nuclear weapon. that has prune to be a short fall in the credibility of our

capability to address it so then you fall to conventional forces, okay? the beauty in some perverse sense, at least for me, missile defense is that it has significant ability to bridge where extended deterrence failed us. it has the ability to bridge both strategic long range and strategic short range capabilities of an adversary and to introduce at least doubt into the mind of whether that adversary, of whether they are going to be successful, okay? where i agree with madelyn is we build an intercepter for every missile you have. that's unreasonable. we have to have short of nuclear, conventional, nonconnectic capabilities with the capability to reach great distances and short distances very quickly, to augment what

missile defense can do and to fill in gaps of threat missile defense will never address. the second thing without missile defense, to me, that is very important in this context is that it was eluded to earlier, no one country has the geography to have all of the sensors that they need to see missiles coming. you have to rely on the coalition, and that binds politically and mission wise, objective wise, multiple countries together, and that has a conventional deterrent to it, nuclear at tribute, and an a symmetric attribute so what you see there is a defensive capability that can address strategic to asymmetric, a political binding attribute to

it, but you have to bound it with a capability that says, if you shoot these at it us, one, you are sure whether they get through, and, number two, something's coming back your way quickly, and we don't start at the nuclear level to do it. that's the forced construct that starts to play here. >> could i add a little bit on that problem? >> one of the problems that any alliance has is that some people are on the front line and some people are more in the rear. that was the decoupling issue in the cold war, but it's very much the issue in nato today. the country's in eastern europe, turkey, conceively in the nor kick countries, that are closest to the potential threat leaving missiles aside, the potential threat of conventional invasion, are relying on the support, but

other more distant countries. the problem is, and one of the reasons interest in fact, the countries are not keen on being liberated after six months of heavy fighting. they're interested in the attack not happening or at least being stopped. i think one of the issues that the alliance needs to face is one that we face in connection with korea, that there are two models of how you would address an invasion. one is the kind of, at some point you will decide that war is inevitable, and you mobilize, and you start flowing stuff, and everything goes, and it -- you talk about we used to fight in divisions. the idea was we would move ten divisions to europe in ten days.

ha-ha, it's a measure of the way it was planned that the first day was spent filling out paperwork. [laughter] that was how we were going to do it, dammit. bear in mind to think realistically about the scenario is this is extremely unlikely to be a bolt from the blue. there's a lot of history of tactical surprise. to my knowledge, there's no history in the last couple hundred years at least of strategic surprise that is of aan attack you had no reason could believe could possibly happen, and i think it will be difficult politically, but critical operationally that nato will have a plan for reacting to strategic warnings in ways that are not move everything forward, mobilize everybody, and so on.

we developed for the korean case, and it's a matter of public record, we developed a much more sophisticatedded con seventh, which is the classic example of cao ya a long, long away, america far, enemy close, bad people, how you deal with it, and it's a graduated set of responses, and we have the luxury in the korean case of having essentially only two and a half players on our side of the south koreans and japanese whereas you have 28-plus many others in the european case, and people will make the argument, oh, you musten do anything because that will make it worse, and it's not crazy, but what has to be worked on is for the up likely contingency for an invasion. how do you take advantage of

strategic warning and make effective responses? i like to recommend articles i read that are interesting because there's not ma many. there's one with a brilliant article on all things the french operation in mali in tour vial, and one of the things he pointed out is the french operated with lightning speed. literally, in a couple days, they managed to turn the military situation in the country around. a reason for this is they had small but very effective, very skilled, very ready for thes deployed already not too far away. now, they needed help to get the big forces from the united states, britain, and they needed -- that took a while, but they were able to get meaningful capability on the ground very quickly which had a big impact, and they set the answer of everything, but sets principle

that you need to figure out ways to be ready to respond quickly and not to wait, as the french did in this case, for reasons of the circumstance, but not to wait until it's inevitable before you get ready. >> before i turn the floor over to ask a question. it strikes me that the most likely contingencies in which nato's deterrent capacity is challenged is not a massive invasion by an eastern party. i think those days are gone. it's more lightning unexpected strike by a radical regime or in the case of up stable russia, a limited territorial incuring's. go back to the quoting

emphasizing the word "punishment," and effective deterrent requires the aggressor to believe that there's going to be an immediate reprisal, punishing reprisal. does nato have the capacity to do such a reprisal to punish? i understand nato responding to a major incuring's because that's politically unambiguous, but a limited incursion, do they have the political will to really strike back and demonstrate it from happening? >> right. well, you put your finger on the question. do we have the capacity? yes. do we have the will? no. do we have the track record? no. have we messaged that this is what will happen if you do this? no. that's where we kind of fall down. again, just kind of laying it out. nuclear deterrents, not worried about at the moment.

conventional aterrence of an attack like you talked bow, no worries there. conventional attack on nato territories, but the other things, i'm concerned we are not in a position to deter them, and that's eroding. the trend line is the wrong way. i would love for us to be in a position to detour syria from doing what it's doing, warn them because they know what we'll do if they don't do what we warned them about, but that's not just the case today. if it's a terrorist group as well, the capacity to go and identify intelligence means and have ammunition to land on a training base or government that provided support, yeah, we could do that, but it's more likely the u.s. that would do it, and i don't think nato has the will to agree to such a thing. it takes a consensus of nato among the allies, define the operation, and i just don't see that, i think that means that as

nato, we really don't have that deterrent capability. if i could have one other point because i listened and thought about this. i don't see, and maybe it's just me and i'm thick here, i don't see missile defense detouring the capability other than making sure we are not detoured in efforts to deal with a regional challenge. for example, if iran is off doing something in the middle east, and they have a missile capacity, the fact we could launch that missile capacity means we're not detoured from dealing with that challenge for that reason. there's a dozen other reasons we might be detoured from dealing with that, how complicated, how long it is, what we got into, and i think that's what we see with iran and syria today, but i don't think that missile defense gives us an ability to deter someone else like iran from doing it. it just means we're not deterred from intervening for that reason.

>> i'm going to open it up. i just ask you question the questions -- well, first, identify yourself, your affiliation, keep questions and points brief. thank you. starting with barry. >> >> thanks to the pammists for a good discussion so far. you raised the right issues. there's a question of will. i hear a lot from the administration officials off the record as well as in some cases on that we are war weary, which is true, and parts of the country are war weary, but, you know, there is a question of military force is off the table. that sends the wrong signals as said, but i wonder how true that is. i mean, can -- i would love the panel to talk about the american public, are they convinced for

certain contingencies and not others or completely off the table forever or just the middle east. what's the dynamics that play that make the american public now different from other times in our recent history? >> want to take a shot at that? >> okay. i think you have to balance what the american public is tired of. and not what the will to do if it arose. there are two things. i think the, you know, we see it, the american public is just very tired of intervening in places where they don't see a definite threat from the u.s.. i don't see there's definite threats to the u.s. or there was a definite threat to a close allies the u.s. wouldn't be

there. very different things. certainly the way we train, everything we're doing at dod is certainly supportive of the fact that, yeah, we would respond if there were definite threats to the u.s. or close allies. >> you have yet to go. >> i have to go in a few minutes. i think one's attitude -- the demonstration of this problem is supposed to be syria. that depends an awful lot on whether you think it was, in fact, a good idea or is still a good idea to intervene in the syria civil war. if you think intervening in the syria civil war is a good idea for a variety of reasons you find compelling, then the fact that the united states is not going to do it diminishes credibility. i believe there's not a goo argument for the united states intervening in the syria civil war, the fact that the american public and congress and the administration are pretty reluctant to do it is a good

thing, and, indeed, i i would argue that what the public is convinced of is what was just said. when it is in our interest to do something because there is a serious interest in world stability and so on, then the american public is capability of being convinceed. it takes leadership, effort, not a hundred percent of the people will be convinced. you will get the scenario in kosovo around the same day the republican controlled house of representatives voted against expanding our intervention and tie on whether we should continue to do what we were doing. it's not going to be easy to get congress to agent if they have to act or get political support, but i think the demonstrated

restraint in not rushing in another middle eastern adventure helps the credibility of future administration in a situation in which there was a clear cut challenge. >> with that, since i don't think the airplane -- the days have passed when airplanes waited for me. >> you can't deter your departure. [laughter] [applause] i think i owe kurt the curtesy of rebuttal. >> that's okay. we had the red line saying we would be responding to the use of the chemical weapons, the president said so, we didn't do so, and we got off in different directions. there's an impact on u.s. credibility, but the point i made earlier was not about the

u.s., but about nato, as in what is nato's credibility in having the will to respond to any of these number of scenarios, and that's why we have the problem. i don't see nato today willing to contemplate a new expedition their mission to contemplate increases in defense spending even when we talk about exercising and what scenarios are you exercising? no one wants to talk about what the scenarios are. i think there's just a real concern of the situation that it needs to respond to it unless it is that attack on the conventional normal attack on a nato member, i i would see it very, very difficult to get an agreement with nato on that. >> do you want to? >> just quick. i'm not sure that nato responding always has to be in the context of nato responding

in the military way. because of the situation evolving, one argues that's been or will be much more successful in getting rid of the chemical weapons in syria that if we initiated several air strikes, so you have right now as a result of the efforts, our efforts in syria, i mean, you've seen quite a bit of response from both nato and nato countries wanting to know what can they do to help? what offers can be made of assistance to ensure that syria gets the weapons or gets the chemical capabilities outside, outside of syria, that they meet the deadlines under the agreed frame work. i mean, they really are responding. i mean, almost to the point that you can't use everybody, so, i mean, i think there's nato responding in many, many ways

with a will to respond, not just militarily. >> >> thanks to the panel. this question is for general cartwright. jim, you opened up the intellectual equivalent of a fine bottle of wine. i want a bigger taste. how do you deal with really compelled by the fact that sometime before the ends of 2020 and probably much sooner, defining power defense is half of what it is right now. how do you answer your own question what we ought to be doing in crisp sentences it give us that taste? >> i would offer an alternative triad which would be a triad of strategic capabilities, general purpose force capabilities, and to get at the issue of the nexus

of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction special operations capabilities, and the special operations capabilities are the ones that would be deployed and out and about, and they would be the intermediary between border and police and general purpose forces, and as an example that walt used, they would be there in areas where we had worry about being -- having strategic surprise or tactical surprise. at that end of the capability, that's counterproliferation, nonproliferation, movement around, understanding what's going on at the high en, on the strategic side, it is the missile defenses. it is the last resort of nuclear, but last resort, incredible capabilities of far reaching effects, not all necessarily connectic or military in nature that allow us to have the time to what appears

to be one of the good -- hate to use that word -- things that happened in syria, which is the ridding of the region, particularly syria, of those chemical weapons and all the surrounding nations that have lived under that threat. i do disagree on the missile defense side of it, but i believe that very clearly and very passionately that missile defense, is, in fact, a deterrent. when you move, whether your adversary is rational thinking nation state or person or whether it's totally european territoryrational, you can deter people removing objectives. if you remove the objective of a cheap quick strike like that taking in the middle of the night, what we worried about over the pole, is now scuds or whatever, if you put that threat in question, you are, in fact, adding a deterrent capability, i believe, to the equation. i don't think we disagree on how

it would be used, but i call that a deterrent. it is that triad and rebalancing of your strategic forces, general purpose forces, and your special operations. >> thank you. >> that's app interesting point you make about the third leg of the triad using special operation forces, and i wonder if there's a way for the alliance could bind its chemical nuclear and buy logical weapons brigade with the nato response force creating an almost anti-wmd to seize and secure wmd when necessary. >> well, the likelihood, i think, the most important thing is to bring your border and interpret police into close coordination and understanding, common picture with your special operators and have special operators, no kidding, train and equipped to handle non

proliferation, wmd type scenarios. that, for each nation state is critical, but then for the region and alliance becomes a critical activity. >> okay. >> my question would be a small general question, an issue, what triggered it was the remark about iran, what we could expect from iran is not from iran nuclear capability or aggression of nato, but a regional crisis. we see a number of -- we have been confronted recently, as they start, they do not affect

security, but say syria, say libya, but they create situations that become a threat to our own security. do we have the -- my question is do we have the tools, the mind set really, to deter or at least prevent or continue the crisis before they -- [inaudible] >> kurt? >> obviously, this question, too, cannot be in this truth, have to be wiser than just training. >> well, again, i think that's a good point. not all responses have to be military responses.

it's hard to find one not done that does not involve military response. what i can think of with syria is to reassure turkey that any attack on turkey would be met with military response. i have a hard time thinking of other things done with respect to syria. when you talk about this, european allies prevented nato from developing that set of tools. i remember in afghanistan, fighting very hard just to try to get police training because the e.u. said it was going to do police training, but they didn't really do much police training, some, but not much, the dutch were o standout in this.

the only think nato is successful at is disaster relief and negotiation where general robertson was involved in negotiation to try to politically dissolve a crisis, but largely again because of the way nations thought about nato for so long is we never really developed kind of robust crisis management capacity sprit from the military -- separate from the military life. >> how far do you want nato to go beyond core military missions, beyond collective defense? at a certain point, you sap up a number of political will, getting into realms that are not nato strong points. i'm struck by general cartwright's idea of leveraging soft as an interface to facilitate other institutions participation and ensure integration with their efforts in nonmilitary realms. >> well, i think that we have a

good formula for this which was you do your planning and exercising for a credible collective defense, and then as crisis arrive, if there's a consensus among nato we have to do something about this as there was in bosnia or kosovo, you have the capacity there to do it. you can't, in advance, preagree within nato, we're going to be ready to go to afghanistan. can you imagine in 2000 if anyone brought that up at nato? that's nonsense. of course we're not going to afghanistan. you got to have the capacity that then as events arise you choose to deal with. what we said in 2002, we have to address challenges from wherever they may arise, threats where they arise op the territory of the nato countries. i don't think that nato would

say that, again, today and mean it. i do think that is something we have to think about because it is gullible, challenges exist from anywhere, but i don't think we are thinking much about that, but the core is to restore the credibility, strengthen the credibility, strengthen the credibility of our basic ability to do our basic job of collective defense, which is expedition their of getting where they are needed, and then you have capacity on a case by case basis to respond to crisis as they arrive. >> great. a question in the back. >> from the strategic defense studies. first question is instead of concerning the presence of the u.s. nuclear weapons in europe, and the future of the debate within the nato, within hld and npg and talking about the need

to keep europeans involved and educate them in the sort of youths and aspects of nuclear weapons, yet it's on record that the japanese are envious of the europeans because of the weapons. the second question is this, general cartwright, and special forces, there's a lot of attention in europe that we draw on the combat teams, but there is little attention to the fact that the u.s. is boosting its special forces presence in europe. i'll be seeing a more relevant u.s. presence in europe rather than just the smaller one. thank you. >> on the second, on the special

operations, i mean, i don't know exactly the intent, and you can address that better, but from a stand point of relevance, the special operations versus heavy brigade today for the reality we live in is going to be a lot more relevant to the defense capability of nato and europe. >> i'll dodge that one and go after the other one. >> okay. [laughter] >> i mean, i think the nato dpr clearly put forth nato with respect to nato being a nuke already alliance. , and the fact there's a nuclear weapon is something that both the npg, the knack, all the other bodies they look at, and with a good deal of seriousness. on the one hand, particularly over the last six months, is a

creation of the new arms control to the adnc as well as with the hlg when the beginnings of, okay, what is it that we need to do to look at this, and confidence building measures, transparency measures in a way that inspires some reciprocal actions on the part of russia to begin to have this discussion about what would a foundation look like for reduction? that's out there. part of the allies, part of this, it has -- it's been strong, a commitment that's really respected in the notion of burden sharing. the -- at least in the context of the hlg, burden sharing has been a very important element of this, and we see good strong consensus on that, so, and, also in the context of the whole, you

know, u.s. nuclear commitment to get to nato, there really is sharing. it is obvious on its face, but it is. nato has funding, individual nations, the u.s., i mean, then, of course, you have the individuals, you know, independent deterrent of the u.k. which is also provided to nato. it is good. it is a strong alliance. that said, the ppd that was just issued also made it clear that the u.s. really is committed to extend deterrence, and that was not only the reassurance to nato, but the reassurance in the middle east and also, frankly, most importantly, in the context of japan and korea. to that extent, deterrence is there. although there are not weapons there anymore, we've taken actions like the recent flyover with the b2 to make it clear we are committed to the extended deterrence. >> if we went down to zero in terms of tactical nuclear weapons in europe, would we have to change our forestructure

anyway? >> very interesting question. [laughter] i have to say that, you know, i mean, i live in my world of strategic deterrence, and i don't venture out much into the conventional side. that would probably be a conversation for a larger group, but it depends on how strong one would believe the deterrence is in the essence of those. in other words, would the extended deterrence be strong enough if everything were pulled back to the u.s., that that would be equivalent? if it were not seen as equivalent of the forward deployed deterrent, that probably would have to do something on the traditional side. if it was seen, then probably no. >> my sense is that it's in the eyes of the beholder so it may be true one in one country and different in another, but from a purely military standpoint, my

opinion, and i said this multiple time as well as evo is that any capability that is on the soil in europe today can be duplicated in time and in availability from a standoff distance. that's really not a problem, and it's crbl, probably more credible because it's safe, it's guarded, and it can be calmed forward when needed and substituted with something strategic and gets there fast. from that standpoint, it's true. there is a value, though, to something you can go pet, you know, and say it's here and people practice it, ect., and that's the political side of this equation which is very important. in the pacific we've done it differently as a nation for the united states to what we've done in europe. it can work either way. it really is in the eyes of the beholder and when our allies

feel they need to be convinced that we, in fact, will honor our extended deterrence commitments. >> kurt? >> just a time comment, sorry to keep talking. i think this raises a broader political problem with nato again which is we have gotten ourselves comfortable with the idea that allies can agree to a mission and assume it doesn't mean that, so we agree that, yeah, nato will take on this thing, but does it mean that i'm beginning to commit military forces to carry this out? libya's a great example where germany pulls its forces away from the coast of libya when the rest of us go to do something in libya. i think that's a dangerous direction for nato to go in because i think it creates this assumption that it's someone else's problem, and in many cases it's the u.s.' problem, and i don't think nato works that way, so one of the reasons why i have a different reaction

to the question from the guy from the nor wee januaries is that if he didn't have the nuclear weapons in europe, i think a lot of allies say it's not our issue anymore. it's those guys' issue. >> one more question. >> thank you. good to be here. i have one comment regarding the deterrence or preventative power of nato, and i think the last history of the nato in the soviet union convinced that the enlargement policy was one was strongest deterrent factor in many crisis. ..

[inaudible] security initiative. but then they tried to be a little bit more smart under the economy -- so what should be the nato of position toward this type of [inaudible] from the soviet union, thank you. >> ting falls more to kurt. >> first of all, i think you are right. it was a large great deterrent. when dpe clareed we --

declared we were serious about the aspect of it. i think it was a tremendous success and reassurance, especially with country like the states. and also i think the reverse is true. we stumbled over georgia. kind of gave a green light saying they're not serious about georgia. so i think you're absolutely right to weigh it that way. and the third that i would make, i guess i would add on to what you were saying contradicting it. both in the u.s. and acknowledge european allies kind of run out of steam. so that talking further, talking more about enlargement today is going to actually raise questions about your commitment. are we really committed to extending our defense guarantee to more country and territories when our public were cutting our military forces really pulling back from operations.

is that incredible? we have a lot of, i think, homework to do as nato itself to rebuild some of the credibility so that we can be in the position move forward on ironclad on what the nato membership mean. i would like to see us start i are building that and talk about the importance of completing a -- start talking about a desire to get countries that are interested in that. but i think we have to be realistic. we have to build that back up. let my close our session by posing to the panelist. s a framework. we have closing remarking to the audience. if you are sitting in the white house today, what would you see like that see come to the nato summit that would fundamentally realign or reinforce the

alliance endures capacity? >> i'll start from -- -- sip the fact we're going have to deal not only with nation states that are going to have crises and groups and individuals that are highly empowered and able to bring threat against nation of the capability most addressing the likely. the second thing, we have to

bring down the alliance on strategic deterrent and increase the reliance on other capability and tools diplomatic and military for strategic defense. the technology and capabilities and the architecture that would allow us to have those kinds of capabilities at the strategic level to deter conflict and increase other options so that our state options don't run out prematurely or less than effective against the wide range of threat. we have to increase the tools on the state craft to prevent these thick -- things.

making sure it's still an element of membership and nato. you commit to your defense goals. the second thing i would say is to really look at those things which could enable nato at large to take greater advantage, i think, of its various abilities. and to focus on some of the new strategic enablers. not necessarily new but things nato hasn't totally taken advantage of. things like cyber. doing those things that are important. making sure that even the nato networks are solid and protected that the networks of the nato members are solid and protected. so all of these things that need nato to be able to operate are there. the networking are protected. and the other one look at --

only in the province of one country to provide. so really looking at is that the way to balance some of the capability. with there other countries that can provide capability and other eye testimons. how do we spread some of this around? i spent a career listening to what is a real threat. every ten years it gets redefined and real threat become real treat. have the capacity to engage individuals. individual groups surrogate groups, and loon ak the deterrence from a point view in some cases unfortunately where it is in a state you're trying to deter. it's a terrorist group.

in this case i could disagree more with kurt's point that doesn't have a deterrence effect. whatever the terrorist groups try to use and have the capacity. >> thank you. three things. i look far renewed consensus on completing your -- we have to get together. it could mean an invitation or two. it could be getting the allies together. this is where we want to go. second, i would want to see a renewed commitment exercising and planning the capabilities needed for nato's article five collective sense. we have a lot of building blocks in place. we need to put a strong package over it. we know we're not going do certain thicks.

answering the question what are you prepared to do and putting that in concrete terms. and the third thing is to be using nato as a place to discuss the raging crisis that are going on around nato. following on libya and iran and so forth. ic we drifted over the twenty years or so from nato being a central place where we dealt with challenges we're worried about to. to a place we don't talk about strategically anymore. >> thank you very much. let me thank my panel for their comment and insight. i think dmom straited as a lot of people call conventional missile defenses old thinking. it may be long standing challenge and threat and tools. they are linked via cyber and terrorism and other dimension that define the strategic environment today. with that said,let give our

panel a warm round of thanks. [applause] coming up on c-span2. a look at the size, scope, and cost of the federal contractor work force. on the next washington journal, we talk with pennsylvania congressman. we'll get his take on the house senate budget conference. this week the house health care vote allow people to keep their insurance coverage and a measure to make it illegal to discriminate against gays andless bee began in the workplace. then democratic senator ben carden discusses implementing the health care law and problems with health care.gov.

washington journal is live each morning at 7:00 eastern on c-span. the joint economic committee is meeting on wednesday for an update on the u.s. economy with jason froman. you can see it live starting at 2:30 p.m. eastern on our companion networking, c-span 3. with the war in europe turning hot. when the blitz degree took place. the u.s. was totally unprepared. chief of staff of the army came to president roosevelt and said we can't do things we have done in the past. we have to act now. we have to act precisely and today. roosevelt went to congress the next week and said the u.s. must

build 50,000 airplanes to protect i.t. all of the auto companies were given projects to build engine and airplane parts. ford motor company was given the b24 bomber. it was the newest airplane we had. it was still in development stages. and they wanted to mass produce this airplane. so ford said i'm not just going build parts but complete airplane. they took what had been done as individual pieces and took the engineers drawing and designed it to two 10,000 of an inch and massive press knock out thousand of the pieces that go on the assembly line and unskill the assembly workers with a little bit of training could assembly the airplanes. between january and june of 1924 they were delivered here.

saving a little piece of this plant of the so important for the story. it's beyond words. i can't describe the feeling we've all had with a big smile once we full off. we did something here in detroit that was not done anywhere else in the world. it literally saved the world some access powers. we did it here. began yankee air museum is currently trying to save part of the willow run plant and has plans to turn it to the new home. find out more next weekend as booktv and american history tv look at the history and literary life of an an arbor. house and senate budget con free have the second meeting. john congregation nam correspondent for market news

international joining us from capitol hill. sin the last meeting, what is on the agenda next? what cothey have to get done first? >> it's going to be interesting. the meeting wednesday will include or feature the director of the congressional budget office who will give an update on budget estimate, economic growth and so forth. candidly, i think his appearance is a little bit -- [inaudible] it's not really clear they need him to go through the budget again. everyone knows the issues and -- the economic outlook is. but a chance to sort of lay out the broad parameters. most interesting is just listening carefully to some of the lawmakers and see if there's any movement from either party. i mean, for years literally years the party have been divided with democrats reluctant to make changes on entitlement unless there's additional

revenues. republicans reluctant to put additional revenue. a few saying they could so. under major entitlement reform. and get any kind of serious budget agreement both parties have to give. so far we haven't seen any indication that there is a wide a broad based desire to give very much on the democrats or republicans. >> another key senate hearing this week is the banking hearing committee from the president's nominee to be the next federal reserve chair. what are some of the main issues she's going to get questioned about? >> i think two or three big ones. first the overriding one. the one that have financial markets in the world on edge. it's listening to her explain how the fed will begin june winding the policy. how going pull back from the very aggressive monetary yeedzing over the last couple of years. initially in response to the financial crisis of 2008 then

the subsequent recession. and the world wants to know. the world that people in the financial market how the fed is going to return to a more normal interest rate policy. monetary policy. m the economy is sluggish. now appear picking up strain. there's a lot of questions to janet yell less than on how the fed will shift gears. and secondly it's going to be a lot of questions on fiscal policy. even though that's not the fed's major per view. the chairman of the federal reserve board is one of the major economic spokespersons in the country.

the effort to drag her to the fiscal debate. what do they want to hear about specifically is. >> there are couple of initiatives going on. as you mentioned the house oversight committee is holding another hearing on the problems of the new health care website. he's going to be subpoenaing and the administration official gentleman by the name of todd park to get them to detail the problem. the administration has been a little bit reluctant democrats think it's largely a show hearing. they think that mr. issa should allow him to stay at work and get the website fixed rather

than becoming before the hearing. what is not a show in the effort in the house to pass a law that would allow people to keep their health insurance. an effort by the house republican. that's gathering steam not just in the house but elsewhere. it's gathering steam. it was interesting the house minority was asked at the briefing about it. and the basic response was he hopes the administration is coming up with ideas and plans that would allow the democrats to support something other than the bill that mr. fred is drafting. because democrats are feeling very uncomfortable about some of the problems with -- nay feel like they need an alternative.

and the house democratic leadership wants to put together an alternative that democrats could my grate to a little more comfortably. how does it complicate the scene when they are using clinton's words from earlier today call farring delay or allow people to keep their health care plan? >> yeah. it continues to put more and more pressure on the white house and makes it incumbent from their perspective and the perspective of democratic leadership that the administration introduce some sort of alternative plan, procedure, administrative ruling. something in the next couple of days to allow democrats to move forward that rather than having to -- without any kind of alternative to pledge adherence to. >> lot to look for this week. john shaw congressional correspondent for market news international. thank you for being with us. >> thank you, bill.

a look at the federal contractor work force with paul of new york university. from washington journal this is 45 minutes. >> we're going talk about the size, scope, and cost of federat contractors and the work force. i'm joined by new york university professor paul. thank you for being with us today.than >> host: abk solutely delighted. host: explain what a federal contractor is and how they are different from other federal employees. guest: sometimes they look awfully similar. we purchase a lot of labor from contractors and a lot of material from contractors. they are one step removed from the federal government. they are private firms. some are working as a service

contractor on schedule c 1099 income. is a very large number of people who work in directly for the federal government. there is a good debate about whether they are de facto federal employees. is a big, big workforce. host: i am looking at a chart from cnn that says the government awarded more than $500 billion in outsourcing in the most recent year. toes that number ring rrighrt with you? guest: i looked at yesterday. 2003,substantially from when we were throwing a lot of money for everything from tank treads to ammunition to concrete and food for the military in

iraq. defense is a big player in this. it takes up a lot of procurement money. i looked at yesterday. it is a very large amount of money. we have a huge budget and a huge mission. we need those contractors. host: there are so many contractors coming to the defense department. how does the government count these people? governmentfederal does not count these people. contractors would argue that they should not count the number of people who work for them. they are in the business of delivering a good or service. most of them are under performance contracts where they're basically promising a certain activity that produces a certain outcome.

we are paying for results in theory. they do not tell us much about the in visual labor costs. they are not compelled to. it is not clear it is a relevant number. we know a lot of people work for contractors, but what difference does it make? whether we are getting the competition we are promised. whether contractors are giving us the best price and are lean, efficient and very effective at delivering on the good sense of on time on contract. host: we are talking to paul light. we want to make sure we get to your calls. for democrats, 202-585-3880. for republicans, 202-585-3881. .or independent, 202-585-3882

paul, over background checks and security. i want to read from a "washington post" article. host: walk us through that narrative and what it says about the contracting community. guest: let's rewind the clock on the security clarence contracting community. the largest contracting that

does security clarence used to be part of the u.s. office of personnel management. a very large reduction facility. reduction being the granting of clearances.-- i do not know when it was, 20 years ago the office of personnel management decided this should not be in-house. let's push it out and cut it loose and it became a private firm. some of the things we look at in terms of security clearances were once in-house. the good question is why do we push it out? wanted to reduce the total number of federal employees and to get the benefits of an efficient, low-cost operation. sometimes you get what you pay for. this operation was checking the

boxes, checking the lists, making sure they were getting the right people. the contract workforce is very large and you do make mistakes along the way. whether snowden would have been hired, it is a good question. things we do inside sometimes fail. we do use contractors for everything, really, from ladling soup in the reagan building cafeteria all the way up to management consulting, security clearances, very important activities. we do not know in this case how snowden slip through but we do know he did slip through. there wasn't full and complete review of his background. we know that people are slipping through all the time. this contractor used to be in government and we pushed it out.

how capable is a government? part of this is a lack of oversight. we do not have enough people to monitor the contracts. host: we start with darlene in sacramento on our line for democrats. caller: good morning. as the republicans were in office, they pushed a lot of federal dollars to contractors. those contractors do not have to hire everyone. the federal government has the public trust. will cut the jobs from the government who had federal dollars. as we move under the republican watch, all these links to contractors and they hired their friends and more and more money when outside of the government. we do not have the oversight. republicans are saying we do not

need a large government. the government has grown even more with no oversight. it is my fear we need to pull things back for oversight. look, we have been pushing out jobs for a long time. republicans and democrats have done that. we do not want to increase the federal workforce much above 2 million people full-time equivalent. that is a de facto limit. it is not entirely clear where that number came from. the obama administration is a little bit above right now. we will see that number go below 2 million. if you say to the public and democrats and republicans say the government is not getting bigger in terms of the total

personnel. two million, maybe less. part of the reason president clinton declared the era of big big government was over. as long as presidents feel compelled to keep the government small, and taxpayers get real upset when they hear the number. we have unemployment still relatively high. how can would be adding more government workers, etc.? democrats and republicans both favor more contracting. if you have to have a job that is funded by the government, better that it be a private job. democrats like it in part

because it is a way to hide the true side of the federal mission. we have got a big mission to deliver. we need the people to do it. if you operate under the 2 million feeling, you're going to need a lot of contractors. that is just the way it is. contract hiring is not well inspected. they are not required to tell you what the diversity is of the hiring pools, how they are making decisions, how they go about procuring labor for delivering on their contracts. they would argue that they are in the business of providing a good or service. that is it. they will deliver, stay on budget, stay on time. and sometimes there over budget.

they will argue you cannot look inside our organizations because of proprietary issues. we want to keep secrets on how we operate. host: next from bill in florida on our line for independents. caller: thanks for c-span and to mr. light for bringing us this information. my wife has a good friend who has contracted out to the army individually as a computer i.t. specialist. her contract is quite rewarding. she flies to and from her home every week. she does not live in the d c area. she receives a rental car and stays in a hotel and receives $40 per diem per day. it seems quite a high price to

pay for contract work. i had two questions as well. the pay rate comparison between the benefits and the pairing of a contract worker versus a full- time federal employee. where do you apply for work as a contractor with the federal government? guest: stay with me for a second. wife is probably on a personal services contract, a direct hire from a federal agency, or maybe not. there had been some limited studies. the best is from the project on government oversight. you can go to the website at pogo.org and you can look at some comparisons of how much

contractors pay versus how much the government pays for labor. on and employee by employee salary,n terms of raw s andbasic pay, fed contractors are paid roughly the same. the employee and the contract world gets better benefits, to some extent. they do not get that are benefits in terms of pension, vacation time and so on. this is like a apples to apples comparison. when you load the contractor with all the other things, bonuses,xecutive pay, the contractor is almost always much more expensive and i mean

much more expensive. you are not just hiring a single employee but an employee of a large firm, in most cases. more than half of all federal contracts go to a relatively small number of very large operations. the top salary at lockheed martin or boeing, that eight $400,000. the top seller in the federal government is $400,000, and only one person gets that, and that is the present of the united states. the chief justice the supreme court makes $225,000 a year, which is below the current hiring rate of white shoe law firms for associates. once youof pay to pay, load a contract with all of the profit and the operating costs, you are paying a lot more for

it. we have done some limited studies looking at that issue. not enough but some. host: talking with paul light. ed in arizona on our line for immigrants. caller: good morning, mr. light. it is a pleasure to speak with you this morning. you stated that these contractors, it is their business that they do not want to disclose their numbers and information because they are private firms. that made me stop and think. like some of the largest contractors, boeing, united technologies. paid extremely high in the case of united technologies, making over $20

million last year, which is outrageous. that they take some of these jobs and some of the parts, especially for the joint strike jet program and their outsourcing overseas so they can make more profits. with national security and thatse, i am concerned supposedly they are allies but in the clay so snowden -- in the case of snowden where the united states is accused of spying -- host: do you have a question about federal contractors? caller: should a lot of the information providing the number of jobs where parts are made, those specifics.

the government should be well aware of that. thank you. guest: we have got a huge stack of books that define what contractors can and cannot do. quiteregulate contractors specifically. boeing or united technologies, we cannot -- they cannot bill government for more than a small percentage of the total salary. on overhead, that is a different story. there are provisions that require a certain number of contracts to be set aside for small businesses and for minority owned firms. there are provisions that require purchasing of goods as are his is from u.s. firms. where the u.s. firms might contract some of those sub

services and so forth is something that has to be inspected closely. error in the federal budget. let's take that number, the number of acquisitions, procurements postulates has not -- procurement specialists has not gone up since 1990 when the cold war ended. we don't have enough bodies to oversee contracts within the government. we don't have enough specialists to look at the interior of certain kinds of contracts. we now contract out for more than 80% of all information -- for all information technology, we cannot compete with private firms for expertise.

receipt thea contracts, that is very weak, from my perspective -- in terms of overseeing the contracts, that is very weak from my perspective. much transparency, you have to have expertise to look inside the organizations that are billing, we just do not have a strong acquisitions corps at this point, meaning enough people in sun government. back to the initial question, we are asked basically who is overseeing the contractors, how many are there, who is watching, and so on. what is the diversity of the workforce? what do we know? the answer is, we do not have governmentce inside under this 2 million full-time closelent cap to take a look on an ongoing basis. it is up to the contractor in

many cases to oversee itself. not good, that is the fox guarding the chicken house. if you get the overall metaphor. health caretalk briefly. over the last couple weeks, contractors have been in the news over the healthcare.gov launch. reading from reuters, at a u.s. contractors blame the administration for a last- minute design change that has been identified as a flaw responsible for leaving millions of visitors in the system bottlenecks. walk us through the role of contractors there. do you agree with the assumption there is a blame game going on between the administration and the contractors? guest: yes. there is a blame game. you have also occasion, -- sclerosison, arterial inside the government. i can't tell you who made any

decisions inside the government on this case. i just don't know. i look at the charts, i try to find out who might have been a point of contact, i cannot tell you. inside government, we have layer upon layer of leaders, more leaders per layer. a nested contract outside with 55 subcontractors. we are trying to control the contract from inside government, telling the contractor, the lead contractor what to do. that is a devil's dilemma, we don't have enough people in oversee.t to and then the contractor is passing this on to who will have, subcontractors. those subcontractors to subcontractors will have subcontractors. who can tell jacob it is a blame game -- who can tell? it is a blame game, if possible to hold anyone accountable. i have a lot of confidence in

directorcience, former of omb, he is very good. he is really working hard to clean this up. i have a lot of confidence in him. i expect that the website will be up and running whether he meets the november 30 deadline, i don't know. it is a very difficult thing to do. he is a miracle worker of sorts. he has done this in the private sector. be that as it may, what difference does it make? make whoerence does it made the decision. the answer is probably that a lot of people were in this, no one person was at the helm. that happens a lot in government. that happens a lot in the contracting community. this is a if you do, dan if you don't situation. -- damned if if you don'td situation. the federal government could not integrate this contract, the

contractor could not immigrate the contract. we have had problems with integrating these multitiered multi-subcontractor vehicles. look, you could have given it to the contractor, we have had problems over there, you keep it in-house, we have problems there. what is the point? the website is not working, we have to fix it. let's get it done, let's see where obamacare works. there is a good debate going on about whether this particular law is too complicated to implement. it may be a great law, it may be a great endeavor. it is certainly president obama's signature achievement. some would argue that you are turning to the irs for significant and rotation responsibility -- significant implementation responsibility. the irs does not have enough people to enforce the penalty. they are harvesting people and

they will contract out. they have got to contract out, they don't have the bodies in house. you are getting implementation of a major program to one of america's most hated bureaucracies. nobody likes the tax man. going on in this very confiscated program, i think they will straighten out the website, i have confidence ts, we have some distance to go before we see whether this program actually works. there are a lot of bumps in the road. call,let's take another silver spring maryland, mark, republican line. caller: hi, thank you for taking my call. i wanted to say that i am a federal contractor. a couple different points related to the discussion -- first, there are definitely some federal contractors who do, for all intents and purposes, function as federal workers.

in a to work every day federal facility, we work as part of a division within an office within a federal agency. i have spent my entire career in that kind of position. i can go months without setting foot in a company facility. identify for more strongly with the agencies that i have worked than with the companies i work for. is that a good thing or a bad thing, i don't know. you can attend meetings in the federal government where half of the people present are actually contractors. working in a government capacity. guest: right. caller: it is fascinating. a couple more points, i will try to be brief. entire idea of contracting out is predicated on the idea that government is not

efficient and private industry is more efficient. to get any savings from that, you have to assume the government is good at managing contracts. or efficient at managing contracts. as you have mentioned, they are not, necessarily. host: thank you so much for your call, we will let paul respond. guest: mark, thank you for your comment. as many of the contractors who work for government are deeply dedicated public servants. sometimes, they don't like to be called public servants. they are de facto federal employees. in your case n -- in mark's case, i called what he was doing ," he was sitting in a desk next to a full time equivalent federal employee. his check was being cut by the

contractor, the federal employee's check was being cut by the department and was being drawn from the treasury. r workside-by-side together and report to the same boss, they are both in government and the public service. for my perspective, the vast majority of side-by-siders are just as committed to the federal government's mission as federal employees. there are times when federal employees are less committed to the mission than the contractors. that is the case. when you go out from the side- by-sider) office and you go out to the contractor, the benefit of having a contractor deliver services is through the notion that there is competition. and that competition will drive down costs. and if you are careful about the quality of the product you are buying, you will get a lower

price, a leaner and meaner organization that will save money for you. it will deliver faster, it will be more effective. many of the contracts that we create involve single bidders. we put out the request for some cases ish in partially or fully written by a contractor because we don't have enough people in the procurement offices to write contracts -- some of them do not know how to write a contract for a particular good or service, they hire a contractor to come in. we send it out and we get one better. where is the competition there? the bidder hires subcontractors, that always happens. it is called a bundle contract. that heent situation is have a lot of bundle contracts, a lot of bundled contracts that were sole-sourced, then we have

idiq's, that is not a well-known acronym. in an definite quantity contract. we are going to give you a lot of money, we don't do how much it's going to be, but we will assign tasks to you as they go along. to do them,e going eventually we will know how much this costs. the rise of the indefinite quantity contractors is that we cannot write all these little contracts, we have got to go big. 's arebig, bundled idiq out there, there is not a lot of competition, we don't know what they cost. there are still a lot of contracts made to small businesses, minority-owned businesses. 75% of all money in the federal government now goes to 25% of the total number of contractors who are bidding at any given

time. do the math, we have sole-sour cing. if you believe that competition produces efficiency, you have to say how much competition actually exists? how many people have the inside track on a contract because they have done it before? they have worked for the same agency before. we know them. there are contractors -- i am not going to question the commitment of contractors to the government mission. let's just assume that they all care deeply about delivering good service. there is not enough competitive pressure on them, not enough oversight on them. we need a stronger in house contract work force. but there is a revolving door there as well. you have a talented acquisition officer, they are really good at their jobs, they decide to

retire, they are picked up by their contractor. they know how to get work done, they know how to get through a federalyzantine contracting process. one other point on information technology, where we are dependent on contractors. the federal government sticks with contracts -- that contracts longer thancts -- any private firm. we will stay with a bad contract longer thanths, 1/3 a private firm. the contract is so hard to make in the first place. that's why we had the rise of the indefinite quantity contract. nowcreate it, you sign it, you have a contractor and place, you can call them and say we need this, we need that. you don't have to do a new contract. that is the reality. post that we have a lot of

people waiting to talk to you. jean, nevada, independent line. caller: i agree with so much of what you have said. whene from an era apprentice programs -- it is not a short term but a long-term fix -- there were apprentice programs to bring people up to speed to do things. why can't a government do that for a lot of our people, whether they are 20-years-old or 50- years-old. they could train them in oversight. what scares me, literally, in 2007 -- up until 2007, i worked for a contracting firm. they were not government affiliated. they did get city, state, local jobs that required them, supposedly, to use talented help.

what they did, i was witness to this, they put in lower skilled, lower qualified help and falsified the reports to the city or state agency. and nobody ever check that. -- checked it. an example, a job was supposed to pay $25 an hour, they would hire a guy only qualify to make eight dollars an hour. they would falsify the report. host: let's give paul a second to respond. guest: i want to make really i think the vast majority of contractors are trying hard to honor their contracts. thatasic problem here is politicians, democrats and republicans alike, do not want to hire more people.

they just do not. you have got a president, you have had presidents, democrat and republican, who just do not want to hire more workers. they don't want more irs agents, of representatives decided not to give the internal revenue service more people. you know, you are not a popular politician if you are hiring more revenue agents, even though we need them. we have long inventories of bad information technology informationad technology systems. you say government has not shown its ability to do this kind of work, in part because the private sector creams the best workers. as long as we basically say, the public says do not hire more employees, keep government small -- but by the way, we want government to do everything.

then you will get this disconnection or you have got to have contractors. you have got to have them. there are benefits of having contractors, including the competition benefit. but you have got to have strong oversight, you have got to deal s,th the lack of bidder gete more bidding so you the impact of competition. if i am going to give the job to one contractor -- there is only one contractor out there, for example, who can do a job. then there is no competition to force the contractor to behave differently in bidding. we have got problems on both sides. as long as the american public says don't make government bigger end then the american public to find government -- defines government size by the number of people who work for government, we are going to depend on contractors. we are not going to hire more workers to oversee the

contracts. that is just the way it is. americans have got to say we want all these things the government does at the federal, state, and local level, you have to accept contractors and build in oversight process that is responsible and injects accountability into the process. acta obamacare -- back to overseeingwho was the contractors, the federal government. the federal government did not have enough people, the blame game, it is irrelevant. host: let's talk with charlie, florida, on our democrat line. caller: good morning, c-span. thank you very much. a wonderful topic. i have been wanting us to have this discussion on contractors. it is a very relevant issue. especially as it relates to this rail -- real web, this revolving web.

we have a country that is saying it wants optimal services and opportunity for its people, but yet there is an ideology that is promoted that says that the government cannot do that. then we have people who are currently, now, without employment and without opportunity. and upward mobility, especially young people. the notion that we cannot create opportunity for our oversight and for our procurement and acquisition review, we have many young people graduating from college. anm an academician, i have understanding that we have many young people who are very capable of coming into these jobs. but yet we have a system that of conflictthis web cronyism that comes

with this system. this is about a system that the american people have accepted. we have a web of deceit. if it is competition, i would have an intellectual conversation. unfortunately, just saying oversightthat we need and we do not have the structural personnel in place, why not? we have millions of young people in college, you are a professor. they are needing to be given opportunities. therefore, we need to hire them. we need to go forward as a country and make a decision. we are at a crossroads. my question would be, could you please tell me about this web of deceit that has been brought forward through ideology, through cronyism, through this methodology that the american people have bought into.

how do we create opportunities, upward mobility, and future economic growth for a country where its people are about to perish? 75% -- host: i want to make sure paul gets to respond. guest: i suggest that you go to usa jobs -- usajobs.gov. and take a look at the jobs, take a look at how difficult it is to apply for a federal job right now. it is the same in many state and local governments. hiring,ems for training, retaining federal employees to do the kinds of jobs that we are talking about are fundamentally broken. the delays and hiring young people -- i work for the nyu school of public service. our students are absolutely issuesed to working on

that matter to the future of this country and the world. they find by getting a federal job is extremely difficult, no feedback, it takes a long time, it is very difficult to find the jobs even though we are supposed to have a single portal into the federal government. a lot of agencies don't post there or don't post their best jobs there. at the federal government, president obama promised years ago that he was going to do an overhaul. guy, heas in auto parts did overhauls. he had a machine shop, he rebuilt engines. when you do an overhaul, you don't just change the oil filter, you have got to pull the engine out and take it apart. we have been 70 years since the last overhaul of government. i talked about ossification, brittle bones, arturo's grossest

i don'trial sclerosis, how to talk about this to get attention from policymakers who do not seem to care about making it work better. up in the situations where the hope is that a contractor is going to do a better job. and they are fast. you are sitting in a federal agency and you want somebody on board tomorrow, where do you go? you do not go to your human capital people and post a job and wait 120 days for it to be filled when he gets posted. you will go to a contractor. at, fast.idiq, if you want to get rid of an employee, how can you get rid of one fast? call the contractor, say i don't want this person around. and they are out by the end of the day.