understandable in communities. thank you. >> gentle lady yields back. the chair recognizes gentle lady from missouri for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i want to applaud this amendment by the gentleman from virginia and follow-upen the comments made by my colleague from connecticut. mr. courtney. because in our subcommittee on readiness we did have a hearing just on this with the members of the pentagon who are in charge of brac, and between mr. courtney, myself, we asked specific questions. se ed, one what is your goal in proposing this brac? the two rounds of brac? what cost savings are you anticipating, are you looking for? are you coming to us as reason for justifying this brac? what are the cost savings? the answer, we don't know. then we talked about the expenses, the $39 billion cost

of the 2005 brac and how it's not even going to break even until 2018, and we asked if you are granted this brac, what are the costs? what are the expenses that you anticipate we would incur with this? the answer -- we don't know. so then we asked, well, i suppose you are doing this because you believe there's an excess in infrastructure among our base structure? what is the percentage of excess infrastructure that you believe we have now? the answer -- we don't know. so the question to us as a subcommittee is why, then, would you come to us as members of the armed services committee and ask us to prove a brac when you cannot tell us the savings. you cannot tell us the anticipated expenses, and you cannot give justification through the excess infrastructure? and i believe that d.o.d. needs to make the case before we would ever, i think, make a

responsible decision to support this. so i believe now is not the time to be having brac. we have our limited defense dollars. we freed to be invested those in the war fighter and not in these excess costs. i applaud him and certainly support this amendment. thank you mr. chairman. i yield back the remainder of my time. >> chair recognizes the gentleman from minnesota, mr. klein. five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i agree with what i've heard here today from almost everybody. that this fy13 is not a good time to be proposing or executing a brac. and so at first blush i would look at this amendment and say, well, that's a really good idea and i could support it, but i don't understand the two words, planned for, in the amendment. i mean, i spent a lot of time over the years planning for all sorts of contingencies in the pentagon, in bases scattered

around the world. i've got this vision of a couple of iron majors, and maybe a colonel at the water fountain talking about what would we do under these circumstances? what would happen if we shut down this base? are they planning for brac? are they in violation of the law? because they're getting salary. i just don't understand how we tell the military wherever they a are, and the civilians working with them that you can't plan. i'm sorry to bring this up, but i just -- if we didn't have those two words, or as has been suggested by some of my colleagues, who said you cannot propose or execute a brac in fy13 i'm all there. i think that's a good idea. good points made by the author of this amendment on short-term savings, more importantly, short-term costs. i appreciated the comments of

the gentleman from maryland. why are we spending in times like these, frankly anytime, sometimes billions of dollars on cleanup that arguably may not be necessary as all? but because of those two words i reluctantly can't support the amendment. if those were fixed i'd be all there. i yield back. >> gentleman yields back. any further discussion on the amendment? >> hearing none, if the question is on adoption of the amendment offered by mr. whitman, in favor say aye. those opposed no. the ayes have it. >> mr. chairman, i would ask for a recorded vote. >> the, there is sufficient support for a roll call vote pap roll call vote is ordered. we will call this roll call vote

at the end of the subcommittee mark. the chair now recognizes mr. forbes for the purpose of introducing a block amendment. >> mr. chairman i ask unanimous consent to call up a non-block amendments worked and approved by the mine moority side. >> without objection reading of amendments will be dispensed with.

gentleman is authorized five minutes for explaining his amendments. >> i call up on bloc package number one comprised of the following. amendment by mr. andrews for surveying and mapping for the purposes of nil tear construction contracts with architectural and engineering services. amendment by mr. conaway a report collaboration with institutions of higher education for cultural train. amendment by mr. andrews allows d.o.d. to promote energy security. an amendment by mr. owens to require additional budget justification information displays organizational clothing and individual equipment.

amendment by mr. garmendte to encourage defense university affiliated research centers and other university based research synergies on energy research and initiatives. amendment by mr. courtney requiring a d.o.d. brief on fuel cells. by mr. akin, a d.o.d. plan on environment xboe environment exposures. mr. forbes, product improvement pilot program. amendment by before forbes to clarify the scope of depot maintenance. amendment by mr. forbes to make technical scope changes to previously authorized projects and other technical project change. amendment by mr. ryan to allow the secretary of the army to convey approximately seven acres of unused and unwanted land to the village of wardstown. amendment by mr. akin to require a report on policies, procedures and guidelines concerning helicopter evacuation of injured service members. anmondment by mr. frank, sources

of electricity to defense critical assets are protected from electromagnetic pulse. amendment by mr. runyan, to carriers participating in civil air reserve fleet. an amendment by mr. andrews and runyan to unify base security standards and require photo i.d. for most base visitors and an amendment by mr. bartlett to recognize direct solar as an energy efficient technology available to d.o.d. to reduce energy consumption and enhance energy security on military installations. >> is there any other discussion? if not, the question kims on the amendment block. those in favor say aye. opposed say no. in the chair the ayes have it. the amendment is agreed to.

>> are there further amendments? for purposes of the gentleman from washington. >> mr. chairman, amendment at the desk. >> the clerk will pass out the amendments. >> mr. chairman, without objection, the reading of the amendment will be dispensed with but the gentleman will hold on while staff has a chance to distribute the amendment.

gentleman from washington recognized five minutes. >> i don't think it will take long. intention of withdrawing the amendment but want to take a few minutes to discuss it. this amendment reflects the domestic fuel for enhancing the secury act 2012, defense acts. would allow military and civilian agencies to send multiyear contracts current limit of five years to 15 years with the purchase of bri oh fio. secretary of the navy mavis called the authority to allow the d.o.d. to enter into long-term contracts for alternative fuels. the accounting for 2% of u.s. energy consumption the department is the single largest energy in the country. according to the admiral mike mullen, former chairman of the joint chiefs, using 300,000 barrels of oil every day, energy use per soldier creeps up every year. no one know the better than the department energy supplies are critical to combat troops and our national security. the defense sector to adopt

domestically produced fuels for the security of our troops without these. secretary mavis outlined several goals to lead the navy towards a nor energy secure fleet. by 2015, reduce petroleum in the commercial fleet by 50%. by 2020 the navy produces 50% of the shore base energy requirements from alternative sources and 50% of total energy consumption will come from alternative sources. to ultimate realize the goal wes must scale up biofuel protection in the united states. one way to help, allow the department to engage in longer term contracts with biofuel producers. companies developed technologies meaning no new infrastructure or modifications are needed. the navy demonstrated that advanced biofuel, dropped and ready for fighter jets. in states lie mine in washington, north carolina, california, montana and others, interests from the private sector, universities, ports and major airports are already working to bring the next jengeration of biofuels to the mart and their efforts can be

greatly enhanceed by this legislation. based in plants in algae. plants grown all over are the u.s. in a variety of climates. in addition to being able to grow these feed stocks in our own backyard research of the next generation in institutions. making sure the u.s. secures its competitive advantage in the field. understandingal chairmans concerns about the spill, mr. chairman, i would like the announcement sent to withdraw this amendments. >> the amendment of the gentleman from washington is withdrawn. are there further amendments? the gentleman from texas is recognized. >> mr. chairman i have an amendment at the desk. 36. >> the clerk will distribute the amendment. without objection, the amendment is considered as read, and if the gentleman will withhold why the amendment is distributed.

gentleman from texas is recognized five minutes. >> thank you. secretary of the navy had an interesting conversation with respect to biofuels used in the green hornet. bragging on the rigid pacific serszs this summer and the fact he spent an extra $5 million on jet fuel in order to fly green fueled hornets as opposed to just flying those planes. i asked, since you're fuel costs are four times, or $16 a gallon

versus $4 a gallon are you going to fly your planes only one quarter the amount of time to keep fuel costs under budget? he said, of course knop. fly the full amount. in an era when we're trying to pinch pennies and squeeze costs, this is not certifying, not testing. these planes are already certified for the use of this fuel. simply doesn't make any sense to be spending the extra $5 million at a point in time we're trying to cut costs everywhere else. leave an exception, of course, to be able to buy these blends to continue the testing and certification if that was necessary, but this is just a, an extra cost that the department does not need to incur, and a point in time when we're contemplating cutting 80,000 soldiers out of the army, 20,000 out of the marine corps. ships not built, plens not bought, we would spend this money unwisely in this endeavor. i think, also, that the department would have a hard

time certifying that these fuels meet the energy act of '07s section 526 standard on carbon footprints. so the department may be in violation of that particular section which we'll deal with in a second. straightforward, don't spend money you don't have to spend at a point in time when you don't have it. with that i yield back. >> gentleman yields back. the gentleman from washington ranking member smith recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. the amendment is simple. short term versus long term. and in the short term you may have a slightly better deal for more traditional fossil fuel based options, but in the long term you are continually locked into having no other options. the reason that we are considering alternative fuels is so that we're not locked into a situation that we've been in the last several years, when the price of oil goes up and the cost of the d.o.d. goes up

enormously because she have no other option. we've seen and are all familiar whip the spike in gasoline prices and oil prices that have happened periodically over the course of the last nine or ten years and frankly the solidly high level that it stayed at, the department of defense spends more money on energy than any other entity in the united states. it issen enormous portion of theirs budget. when those costs go up and they have no other alternative but to buy gasoline then they just have to eat it. we're trying to develop alternatives to get to the point where when those prices spike, they can do something else. or in the case of natural gas has gone down significantly if there are, you know, engines that can accommodate different ways to do that there are options there as well. in the short term, yes, the options cost more money. we have been building the fossil fuel and oil industry in this country for roughly 150 years. the infrastructure, in a lot of the support that that industry has gotten through the years has given it an enormous structural advantage.

this is, you know, in the short term you may save a few pennies. in the long term you're continuing the addiction to something that's going to drive up the cost. so i oppose this amendment. i think the department should have the flexibility to make those purchases where they think it's in the long-term best interests of their budget and the needs of our national security interests. with that i yield back. >> gentleman yields back. chairman recognizes the gentleman from virginia, mr. forbes for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman, and mr. chairman, this is always a difficult issue for us to balance, and one of the things that i think we need to recognize is that whenever you look at the arts that d.o.d. is spending on alternative energy, they always, it's kind of like a casablanca movie. they pull out the usual suspects and it's always taking about spikes and always talking about how we have to have other energy sources, but the reality is that many of the dollars they're spending aren't doing anything at all to deal with the spike problem. if you look, for example, the

difference between how the air force has approached this problem and how the navy, they're markedly different. the airs basically said, look, private sector, you come up with these fuels that are competentive and we're going to buy a lot from you and reward what you've done. the navy gone out and said we're going to spend millions of dollars because we want to create artificial markets for people that we like, an industries that we like. but here was the difficulty with that. when you looked at the air force and what they're doing, they're saying that the way you handle spikes is you do like the private sector did. southwest airlines went out and got long-term contracts. four years or so. so that dealt with the spikes and their cost wouldn't fluctuate up and down. when you look at alternative information sources there's no guarantee that they're not going to have the same spikes, because it's all supply and demand. the other thing that we were really shocked at hearing we had when we asked virtually every energy expert they had brought

over, army, navy, air force and the two other assistant secretaries from the department of defense, we asked them if we were going to be expending these monies for alternative energies overseas. and they said, certainly not. we're going to expend them all here. then we asked if they knew what percentage of our fuel that our ships, for example, purchased once they were deployed from overseas supplies, and they said, no. and the answer is, 90%. that means basically when our ships leave port, the whole time they're deployed, they are purchasing 90% of all their fuels overseas where they won't have any of these alternative energies. the only thing i think we need 20b looking at is trying to get a balanced approach. we want alternative energy, we want to support alternative energy but don't want to be in the market of propping it up artificially. we want to be like the air force that says, if you do it, we're going to buy it from you but it needs to be cost competitive,

and i think that's what mr. conaway is trying to get at in his amendment and i yield to the gentleman from texas. >> thank you. i would also like to point out the idea of short term versus long term has been brought up over and over. everything we do is short term versus long term. the president's budget is filled with delaying first the planes, delays purchase of ships we all know will cost a lot more in the future. this issues is simply a way to save only in department of defense budget, what, $5 million be a relatively small amount of money. nevertheless, money that doesn't have to be spent at this point in time. the department of defense should not be in the business of driving fuel markets and fuel innovations. that's perhaps the department of energy's department or somebody else's. the department of defense is defend the country and get the best bang you can for the money you're spending and this is an area where we don't need to spend the money 0 prove anything. i yield back to the gentleman from virginia. >> gentleman yields back.

the chair now recognizes gentle lady from guam for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i am in opposition to this amendment. development of alternative fuels is in the nation's interest, and more importantly, is in our national security interest. this is about protecting the lives of service members and ensuring the readynesses of our forces. there is approximately one marine casualty for every 50 fuel convoys in theater today. price flak chuctuations have imd the services. last year the services were about 5.6 billion short due to fuel fluctuations. while the price of alternative fuels has steadily been decreasing over time, additional funding to support large-scale production capacity could have long-term saving implications for the services and the department.

d.o.d. is not driving the fuel market. it is investing in its future and the future of our nation. the department and the services have made the case that investment in alternative energy programs ultimately saves money and increases efficiency. we have seen this in ins spla installation and alternative energy and will see it in alternative fuel protection. the department ignores sometimes of the government must take the lead in critical investment to move our country forward. it was the government, specifically d.o.d. that invested in the creation of the internet, known as arpanet. if it wasn't for this government investment we may not have the internet as we see it today. so, again, i am in opposition to this amend mchbt and i yield back. >> gentle lady yields back. recognizing mr. bartlett for

five minutes. >> when we look at alternative fuels and what we do with them, there ar couple of realities we need to be aware of. in 1956 an oil geologist by the name of kovert predicted the united states would reach maximum oil production in 1970. that was audacious and ridiculous, because we were then king of oil. but we did reach our maximum oil production in 1970. today we produce about half the oil that we produced in 1970, in spite of drilling more oil wells and all the rest of the world put together. about a year after -- by the way, he predicted that the world would be reaching its maximum oil production about now, and maybe we have, because for the last five years, the world has been stuck at 84 million barrels of oil a day. maybe that's just a pause and it

will continue to go up. maybe it's the peak and we will do, and the world will have done what was done in the united states, go down after this. just about a year after his speech, hyman rickover gave a great speech. google for it, please, a speech that will come up and he noted that in the 8,000 year recorded history of man the age oil would be but a blip and he cautioned that we had no idea how long it lasted but how long it lasted was important in only one regard he said. the longer it lasted, the more time we would have to plan an orderly transition to other sources of energy. that's what alternative fuels are about. i would not like to limit the military's ability to develop sources for alternative fuels, if, in fact, the 84 million barrels of oil a day is now at peak and not simply a pause in the ever-increasing production of oil that the world has seen

in the past. so i would hope that if we pass this amendment or don't pass this amendment that we will note the reality that oil is finite. if we have not reached a peak now we will reach the peak and every dollar increase in the price of oil, i think, costs the military $30 million. so this to the military is is a very serious consideration. i just like these facts to be in your mind when you look at alternative fuels. for the moment they may cost more, but if, in fact, we've reached our maximum oil production and china and india continue and others continue with their aggressive industrial program, the price of oil is going to do nothing but go up and alternatives that may be for the moment, more expensive, may be shortly competitive or even less expensive, and i yield back. >> gentleman yields back.

chair recognizes gentle lady from california for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i just think we have to remind ourselves that we, congress, about five months ago, required the department of defense to come up with an alternative fuels policy. the d.o.d. is now engaging in a comprehensive effort to develop and implement this policy, and our efforts now to legislate a policy that would do just the opposite just doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. our efforts now should be to legislate a policy and investment strategy for the d.o.d. to continue to move forward. this is really premature. this short-circuits what we're trying to do today. d.o.d.'s congress' mandated process to establish this policy, really, as i said, it needs to move forward, and we can just take a look at some of the issues here. this amendment would prohibit 70 million dollars in fy13 and the

fy12 funding from being used to produce or procure alternative fuels. we've kind of set the stage here. we've done it in phases and now we're saying you know what? oh, we changed our mind. we don't want you to proceed in that manner. i think that's a mistake. i think we need to be consistent and we need to move forward. this is a national security issue. my colleague has pointed out the fact that marines die because of being gauged in fuel conflicts in theater. that's a problem. we need to be willing to move forward and we have many, many countries around this world that are investing in these strategies. it doesn't make sense for us to be essentially blowing the whistle on that movement and moving forward with this amendment. so i would oppose the amendment and hope we would really take a look at what are we doing? we're sending a lot of different messages here and that doesn't make a lot of sense. and i yield the rest of my time

to the ranking member. >> thank you. i just want to quickly point out, i take mr. forbes' point. the part of the way you can deal with fuel spikes is to hedge against the future, buy futures at a low price, the problem is there's no such thing as a low price right now of oil. the price of oil is either really, really high or even obnoxiously higher than that. that's where it's been for the last four, five years and i think mr. bartlett makes that case as well as anyone. that's the concern about consulting off alternatives. we really do need to develop them. i yield back. >> gentleman yields back. recognizing the gentleman from ohio mr. turner for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i'm going to reluctantly be speak wig some concerns rp to the amendment. in reading this, i'm concerned that, of the language and wlan its application might be. i want to associate myself with the statements of prior member whose