captioning performed by vitac we intend to continue to do that, that this be an open process and that members have a right to air their views and that those issues, amendments it come to a vote. so i say to the gentleman we look forward to working with him and looking to the committee to bring forward the bill that they think is ready next to be brought to the floor.

>> i thank the gentleman for that information. as i said, one concern we had on our side of the aisle was the riders, many of which we thought were inappropriate and did not favor them. the second was the level of funding. they thought the monies available to them under the ryan constrictions on 302-a were too low to meet some of the commitments they had. does the gentleman believe we're going to have time to bring each one of the appropriations bills to the floor between now and let's say the august break so

that the senate might consider them and we might consider them individually as opposed to some omnibus piece of legislation? i yield to my friend. >> mr. speaker, all i can say to the gentleman is certainly the commitment and intention we have is to bring these forward for open and fair debate. i know that pregs. this is a democratic process, as he now hosts it n a very new environment in which we're operating an appropriations bill, the commitment that we have still that we want to bring these bills forward under a very challenging fiscal time in our country and do so without ear maxes. and this does represent a new

construct within which we are operating. we look forward to the gentleman's participation in that in a successful way . i yield back. >> the gentleman's absolutely correct. that's the process. but i want to emphasize that we still have great concerns about the agreement that we reached not being carried out pursuant to what we believe the agreement was in terms of funding levels in 302 allocations, general allocations to the appropriations committee. i know the gentleman knows we have that concern and the gentleman has made the observation that that was a cap, not an agreed number. i will tell my friend again, i think i said this a couple weeks ago, that undermines our willingness to make agreements

if what we make agreement on is the most that you'll do but then come in at levels substantially below. that which we think agreed to and is fact in the law. i want to make it clear that was my major concern and continues to be my major concern. i understand the majority will rule on the amendments and those that were adopted with adropped. there were a lot on the floor. you know better than i because there were a lot from your side and that's appropriate. let me ask you about the transportation conference. we're very concerned about this. we think this is a jobs bill. we think it's an important bill. this bill, as you know, was adopted overwhelmingly by some 74 senators, half of the republican conference in the senate are voting for the

transportation bill, we're in conference now, we've been in conference for some time. can the gentleman tell me what he thinks of the status of cot fren is obviously we have extended until the end of june but we must act before then. can the gentleman tell me the status of the conference. >> the gentleman rightfully suggests we are incop ra tiff. >> i thank the gentleman as as we say this -- perhaps that appropriate. i want to thank the gentleman, i want to say neal bradley did an

excellent job working with john hughes and my staff and the financial services staff, mr. frank, miss mccarthy, mr. miller. ought to do more of and we passed a bill which, as you know, she supported unanimously because we believe it does in enact in the international mark place. so i want to thank the gentleman for his work on that and thank mr. bradley and mr. hughes for their work on that and hopefully the senate will act on that with dispatch. and unless the gentleman wants to say anything further, i'll yield back. >> mr. speaker, i just jond the gentleman in thanking both our staffs. they did tremendous work as well as mr. miller on the financial services committee and the staff there.

your office can be instrumental in helping move the senate along. everyone from the chief of staff on down, your office, we want to thank you as well for your team's commitment to working in a very -- again, a very difficult equation where there were a lot of differences that we tried to work through but at the end didn't want to unilaterally disarm american business in the name of the competitiveness of our country. so i yield back. >> i thank the gentleman for his remarks. i want to apologize to your chief of staff for not mentioning him and yield back the balance of my time. >> we're live at the institute of peace in washington for a discussion of promoting peace in post-war nations.

we will have it live once it does start. other live events we're covering today include on c-span lessons learned from the japan earthquake last year and subsequent nuclear meltdown. that will be at noon eastern from the heritage foundation. at 3 pam that's live at 3:00. again, we will be back live here on c-span. and we'll show you as much as we can until our event here at usip get under way.

>> good afternoon. let me begin with some comments on the defense budget. i spent much of this week, including two hours this morning on capitol hill, dinner last night here at the pentagon reaching out to members of congress and to senators to talk about where things stand as congress begins to debate a markup and consider the defense budget in earnest. my message to congressional leaders remains the same. congress passed the budget

control act. it requires a reduction of defense spending of $487 billion over the next ten years. as i said, we do not have to choose between national security and fiscal security. but that does not mean that we do not have to make tough choices. we do. and defense should not be exempt from doing its share to reduce the deficit. what that means is we have to make very difficult decisions. difficult decisions that are hide to a strategy that achieves necessary and real savings and at the same time protects the strongest military in the world. as you know, the -- they spent

months developing a new national security to address our future security challenges. we then crafted a balanced plan that met the requirements of that strategy. as well as met the spending caps imposed by the budget control act. my concern is that if congress now tries to reverse many of the tough decisions that we reached by adding several billion dollars to the president's budget request, then they risk not only potential gridlock because it's not likely that the senate will go along with what

the house did and if they did they could force the kind of trade-offs that could jeopardize our national defense. the department of defense and i believe the administration are not going to support additional funds that come at the expense of other critical national security priorities. and if members try to restore their favorite programs without regard to an overall strategy, the cuts will have to come from areas that could impact overall readiness. there's no free lunch here. there is no free lunch here. every dollar that is added will have to be offset by cuts in national security. and if for some reason they do

not want to comply with the budget control act, then they would certainly be adding to the deficit, which only puts our national security further at risk. when congress restores funds to protect certain consistencies that may not be critical to our national defense capabilities, they risk abandoning the kind of careful balance that we've worked very hard to achieve. and it could harm our ability to pursue the high priority investment that we think are essential to the force that we need for the 21st century. some examples. if we're prevented from retiring aging ships and aircraft that no longer fit strategic

requirements then congress would be forcing to us have to look elsewhere for these savings, burdening the services with excess force structure that would risk hollowing out the force. if we're restricted from gradually drawing down the size of the ground forces in the years beyond 2013, congress would be forcing us to reduce readiness. we'd have to cut training and to support the equipment and all of that wouhealth care congress wa making this more critical to invest in new technologies that are critical to the force we need for the future, i don't think any of us in the

administration or on cape. therefore i would strongly urge the congress to recognizing the budget realities that we made, not with theins. >> i understand from my own experience that congress has the right to question am of dough sessions. congress also has a responsibility to make sure that we protect a strong national defense. the bottom line is we cannot cut a half a trillion dollars from the defense budget and not cause some pain. but the price for that pain should be a 21st century force that can effectively defend our

country. in what remains a very dangerous world. we can do this but we have to do this together. let me say another word about sequestration. again, i'm grateful to the house for recognizes the importance of stopping sequestration. but by taking these funds from the poor, middle class americans, homeowners and other vulnerable parts of our american constituency, the guaranteed results will be confrontation, gridlock and a greater likelihood of sequester. again, the key is to work together. each side can stake out its political position. i stand that. but the fact is that nothing will happen without compromise.

from both sides. before wrapping up, let me just take a moment to announce that the president has nominated general mark welch to succeed nordy swartz when he retires this summer. he's current the commander where he is responsible for air force activities covering almost one fifth of the grob, encompassing 51 countries and the atlantic oceans. he's a command pilot that's thrown more than 3,400 hours during the course of his career. he has a distinguished record that involves multiple combat

missions, he, is there an associate doctoror. a position where he functioned at a critical link between the military and communities. a former air force academy commandante, i believe nordy has been a transformative leader in his nearly four years as air force chief of staff. he came into the role at a very challenging time but because of his leadership, the signaturecy

will never and capabilities needed for the future and excel for a wide i greatly appreciate his consult, his guidance and himself dedication to the ass for and to the. >> good afternoon. >>. on this day in 1775 a small force of green mountain guys led by ethan allen and ben detective arnold successfully attacked nosh. at the time siem the second continental trong -- as we sit

here today the congress has its own dunting task, debate and decide on a budge with a war under way and with increasingly complex security challenges ahead. i appreciate the difficulty of the decisions they face. secretary panetta and i face them as well and so do the service chiefs and combatant commanders. we came together to prepare and submit a budget that we firmly believe is a responsible investment in america's security. now we stand together to see what we need, to preserve the balance we built into the budget. keep in mind this is a budget for a joint force. it should not be thought of as just a set of separate service budgets but as a comprehensive and care fly devised set of choices, choices that reflect the right mix among moderation,

pay and balance. the strength of a nation depends on its economy as much as it do its military. i know mark well, i know about his courage in combat, his acumen and his passion for developing future leaders. he is joining colleagues, as well as nordy schwartz.

i've been privileged to know him as the chief and now as chairman. i counted on his wise and council. >> can you find all of this briefing in our video like bray at c-span.org. look for the debate of the defense authorization bill. we'll take you live to the u.s. institute of peace, having a discussion on promoting peace in postwar nations. among the speaker, rick barkley. >> i said, mike, thanks for hosting us. he said, well, it's your home. and i said really? when can i move? i mean, i have a wife and kid. i want a view of the monday you'll personal. so i thought there be will

recognizing that plshment and contribution the u.s. institute of peace made to the sheparding and realizing this thank you very much, ambassador solomon, too. [ applause ] i understand the mortgage is in your name. is that right? [ laughter ] >> so i'm rob ricigliano. my full-time job is chair for the alliance of peace building. i occasionally show up at the university of wisconsin in milwaukee and do my other job. i was asked to give a short introduction this morning and i assume that's a reference -- or not a reference to the fact that i'm 5'7" tall and i'm not going to speak for very long.

so i really do want to just frame a couple of issues for you for today. ambassador solomon, who was the president of the alliance peace building will give proper acknowledgements and thank yous in a bit. i wanted to frame our task and what we're doing today. one, i want to take stock for what's at stake here for us today. we're talking about managing complexity, looking at 21st century conflicts, taking stock of them and how do you manage complexity. and the stakes were clarified for me yesterday. one of our speakers have referenced an article that was in the "washington post" and the point of the article was that what's different post 9/ 1 is different than other conflict period has been that war now is

the norm. war is now the norm and peace is seen as the aberration. and i really started thinking why is that? it want that way after world war ii and other conflict periods and i think it has a lot to do with the fact that people see the 21st century conflicts as being qualitatively different. we don't have a clear enemy. we don't have territory we can conquer and stomp this problem out and that what's at stake has been one of the ways of grappling with that complexity is to say make war. we -- that's the only approach. it's too difficult for us to grapple with. so we have a lot of stake. we in the peace building community have a lot at stake with showing that is not the appropriate or even the useful response for managing today's

completiple complexity, the complexity of today's conflict. the topic is grappling with complexity in today's conflicts and i've written a book on the subject that came out last month. as i found in writing that book in thinking about today, wouldn't up know it managing complexity is itself complex. so there are really two kinds of complexity we're grappling with. it's the complexity in afghanistan, in cambodia, nepal or the various con tickets we're working in. there's good news and bad news. the good news is we've seen lots of development for new tools and strategies for grappling with the complexity. i think there's no complexity in the state department. master barton will tell us that in a minute. working with the u.s. government on managing complexity and there's a lot of innovative thinking that's happening and i've seen it in europe and other

places. that's really good. what we also have to realize is that we have a lot of really well engrained bad habits for dealing with complexity. what they do is they want to find the routine slice of a very complex environment. they want to block everything else out. i build health clinics and barn it, no start, i don't use economic development. if i do my job right, other people will do that other stuff and as kind of a faith based initiative, they'll all add up as something better. the truth is it doesn't actually add up. so much we fall into the trap of dealing with complexity by only working on a routine piece we can control and handle. the other is to treat complexity as if it's completely chaotic, so there's nothing we can do. it's why we have that war is the

norm mindset. it's throwing up the hand, walking away and not thinking rigorously or very long about how to manage it. as opposed to the complexity out there, it's the complexity in here, within the peace building field, within organizations, like the u.s. government generally, other governments and so on. we are in here, we got to be honest about the fact that we're addicted to a lot of practices that will make it very hard to grapple with complexity out there. so, for example, we talked about monitoring and evaluation, we talk about accountability and we also want to learn. the problem specific we tend to stress accountability in ways that stamp out learning. so there are folks who talked about the need to learn from failure and be error embracing.

if anyone reports to the aid and said i embrace my errors and i messed up a lot of stuff. that would not go over very well to our donors. flexibility and adaptability are critical in complex environments. we tend to want to impose chang on situations versus working with the system. very, very difficult. so there's a range of practices that we have internally that make it very difficult to grapple with the complexity outside. as we listen to today's panels, the various speakers, we've got a wonderful live rich set of speakers and panels, we have a simulation this afternoon. what are we learning on how to grapple with the complexity out there, and how do we grapple with it as individuals. i want to leave you with that challenge, the