operations in those areas for that specific -- give me an example. we might have a unit that says they are going to do small unit training. they will reach a certain level of capability combined arms training. and then -- if you want to train units to be more capable in and we want that capability within each individual in order to be able to train. you want unit capacity in order to train it. we'll continue to train to a certain combined arms level as we move forward. >> just a follow up. can you talk a little bit more

about how this is going to work. as we all know a lot of the special operations forces are doing a lot of this training in somalia and other places. will the army be working with special operators? is this now more of an army job? >> it's both. i mean, there are some missions -- there are many things that go on. it is probably better to talk to general hamm. there is a mission for both conventional and special operations forces. there will be some cases where conventional forces are supporting special operations forces. we have built these strong relationships in iraq and afghanistan over the last seven, eight, nine years and we will continue to utilize that. we have had talks with special operations command about two months ago to discuss this very issue. we will carry this on in all areas. you have additional requirements

that require conventional units to assist bill capacity and do exercises and other things. there will be a combination. >> how many? >> again, we'll develop this over time. what i expect is each will come in with their own requirements. once they do that we will start aligning forces. we are just going to do -- in '13 we can only do a couple because we are so engaged in afghanistan. in '14 you will see many more army units starting to be aligned. that will be specifically determined on their requirements. we had a meeting in the joint staff a couple of weeks ago that outlined these requirements that are coming in so we'll take that and line our forces appropriately to meet the environments. >> how many?

>> one brigade combat team. it is kind of a pilot or test on how we are going to do this. >> we have time for one more question. >> one per region. >> in some it might be one and in some it could be more. >> is that over and above in. >> yes. >> does that mean you are doing something to see how it will affect -- >> no. it is a percentage cut. so it is very easy to understand. in other words, we have no choice on where the cuts come. a certain percentage. this that is the requirement. it will be somewhere around that. it depends on the combinations of active and reserve forces we decide to use. that is why the number varies a little bit. >> how would you accomplish that if you had to get rid of another 100,000 troops? would you accelerate some of the processes you plan over the next

four years with boards and riffs? >> sequestration will require us to do it over the same time period so we will have to force, if this happens we will have to force many more people out than we are now. we are able to do 65 to 70% of our reductions now through natural attrition. if we get sequestration there will be many forced out. that is why sequestration in my mind is disastrous to us and effects our overall strategy. >> give us a sense about the rule of heavy armor in the new defense strategy. how is it changes? the associated hardware is a topic of contention on the hill. >> through our analysis we have done hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours of analysis of what is happening in the last ten years and what we expect to happen in the future. we brought brigade and tank commanders and we determined

there is a role for armor. there is a role for armor in the future but it will continue to evolve. there will continue to be armor in the force. will we reduce the amount of armor? probably. as we come forward with the specific force mix. but we still need a combination of all of those capabilities. >> i believe his parents are supposed to come in soon for another update. do you meet with them? >> i met with them last time when they came in. i talked with them. if they want to i will meet with them again. >> can you give us an update of where you see the search? >> i think you need to ask that to -- that's their requirement. we look at it. there is lots of work. we never give up. there is a lot of analysis being done to try to find where he is.

we never, never stop. i do get updates on it. >> as you move forward with the model, what is your plan for rotational or deployment availability versus required dwell time? >> well, 2-1 is what we shoot for. and, in fact, for the first time last month we were finally at a two to one dwell time ratio.

it has to do with reduced requirement in iraq and continued reduction in afghanistan. and we'll have to see. we'll have continued rotational requirements. we'll continue to work it out with the commanders as you move forward. >> back to the ranger question very briefly. in your clarification you mentioned ranger qualified. does that mean you are looking specifically at entrance into ranger school as opposed to int themselves? >> i'm not sure i understand your question. >> you said 90% -- >> infantry officers are ranger qualified. so what we have to look at is so -- what i'm looking for is if we decide sometime to put females in infantry we have to make sure they have the qualifications for them to be competitive in that branch. so we have to look at all of that. we have to take a holistic look and see what it will look like and what are the requirements. >> i believe the secretary asked for recommendations by november. so you mentioned summer. >> i think we will make it --

there are several iterations of this. they are starting to look at it now. so we'll get initial results this summer and continue to look at it. my guess the final results will be sometime in november. >> the hill has pretty resoundly rejected the idea. do you still pull the troops back and leave empty buildings? >> we have to do some things for brac. we made very significant changes. with the reductions we have now most come out of major installations. it won't be ethe closure of installations. we are very supportive of '15.

there are some things that we have to look at. specifically in reserve and national guard they do not benefit as much from the last one. we like to do some things and looking at how we might be able to do it. a recent survey listed retirement benefits and health benefits as top concerns. where do you stand as far as changes that need to be made?

>> it is a very complex question. the rate of increase in pay and benefits we cannot sustain. i'm not saying we reduce benefits. i'm saying we afford the strent we have. it is a tradeoff. we have to just slow the rate. and we're trying to find out what is the best way to do that. you have to do a holistic review of all benefits available. we certainly want to honor the service of those and make sure that they are appropriately compensated for their sacrifice and the families that have sacrificed. that is clearly in the back of our minds. it is a very complex calculation that has to be done. that is something we will have to continue to look at as we move forward. >> with women being able to -- researching whether women can someday be in the infantry, how is this research going to be conducted? are they going to be allowed to train this summer as infantry? >> that's part of the recommendations is how we move towards it. we are going to move towards it. it is how we do that and what we have to do to make some assessments.

and that's what we are going to have to do as we move forward. >> so you haven't decided how to look. >> we will look at it and come back and give us the layout for how we want to do this and that should happen here over the next several months. thank you very much. >> have a great day. >> thank you. the federal communications commission. commissioners will answer questions about fcc operations. we'll have live coverage starting at 2:30 eastern. and in congress today the house votes on continuing the violence against women act. the white house has threatened to veto the republican plan if

passed. the administration says the bill eliminates too many -- you can see the house live on c-span. the senate is considering five alternative budget resolutions for next year all offered by republicans. up to six hours of debate on budgets today. you can see it all live from the floor of the senate on c-span 2. also coming up this afternoon

booktv.org will be live with arthur brooks, author of the book "the road to freedom." this memorial weekend on c-span we'll take you to colleges and universities around the country to hear commencement addresses from members of congress, state and local leaders and business executives. we want to hear from you about your commencement experience. did you graduate from college this year or attend a ceremony or maybe something about a past commencement sticks with you. we want to hear from you. call us and tell us your store aempt 202-643-3011. we may use your comments on the air. now the former co-chair of the president's deficit committee and philadelphia mayor discussing the nation's fiscal challenges hosted by the peter peterson foundation. it's just under an hour. >> first time i have been to the right of you, i think, senator simpson. >> i didn't hear that. >> first time i have been to the right of you. i haven't been here for the entire morning but i heard the

last couple of speakers. and i have been interviewing a lot of people on the budget issues this week and good morning america. you must feel a little bit like the pope these days. everyone feels the need to kiss the ring of sibowles-simpson. >> kiss something. >> even if they don't adhere to everything you have laid out. what i would like to do is have you talk a little bit about what you are hearing when you go out into the country and try to lay the groundwork for support. what you are hearing back from people of what they expect and want and need and understand about the the problem. >> first, thanks to peterson and michael for this. this is a great forum and i'm always proud to show up. i knew pete years ago talking about social security reform and wrote a book.

wonderful, dear man.

run this through your head again. 750 billion for us. 550 billion for the biggest 14 countries in the earth including russia and china. drinks are on me. this is where we are. how many contractors do you have on the defense department?

>> what people really understand is if when everybody is talking about this and say i'm ready to do something the hypocrisy and idacy of those who say i don't want to hurt --

that the time that we have to deal with this is shorter than most people would observe. the principle beneficiary by the way, a principle beneficiary of low interest rates has been the u.s. government. an amazing statistic. 15 trillion in debt, 12 trillion held by the public. 225 billion of interest costing year right now. that's the same number when we had 5 trillion outstanding. you put the rates in today that they were when debt was 5 trillion, at a half a trillion to the deficit we sit on today, so simple stuff. i get confused when people talk about debt as a percentage of gdp. tell me that we've got in essence a fixed cost of a trillion dollars a year coming out of the 7 1/2 years and we're going to march our way to it, that scares the devil out of me. >> how is it affecting the decision-making of you and your peers? at the top of corporate america? >> the reason we got started in

this, we got a company to run, is that we started asking ourselves three, four years ago how are we going to plan for the next ten. i think that's what good business people do. we sat down and we said what's the outlook? and the best we could get to was that if we didn't do anything it would be awful. and if we actually acted it would be difficult for a few years but get better. and i think and i do speak to other ceos until there is some clarity and by the way, i don't think there is one solution. i think there's 50 solutions to this. the only one that doesn't work is the one we're doing now which is nothing. until there was some clarity, most business people are hunkered down. we're trying to figure out how to run our businesses so in a sluggish growth environment, i don't know the difference between plus one and minus one but in that low growth environment how does your business do, as well as it can. >> cutting costs as close you can to the bone. >> right. do more with less.

how do you not put more people to work and manage until the economic outlook -- again, i recognize the fiscal cliff in january 1 but that isn't how you run a business. you look over the intermediate term. you look at that now, until you see some action and a plan to make it better it just looks problematic. >> simpson-bowles is one plan. but let me ask one more question to you. i heard the president express his frustration about simpson-bowles, especially about the way, frankly, the financial and the corporate community has reacted. they press hands, he believes, to endorse simpson-bowles yet when it comes to the tax increases called for particularly those on the business side, business runs away. i can speak for myself. we're in. as a matter of public policy, economic outlook we sign up for that in its totality 18 heart beat. when you start breaking it into pieces you can't put it back together again.

this is a matter of priorities and choices. we can do -- we're the richest country on the planet. we can do hundred things. the only thing we can't do is everything and that's where we are at the moment so you got a bipartisan group wres tlool the issues, fight the good fight, come wake-up something that works, how can you not as someone interested in the long term, how can you not sign up for it. >> if you ask me,ly listen to a lot of people what's the one word that almost everyone can sign on to would be balance. the idea that everyone is going to have a share and a stake in this. can you sell that at the local level? >> sell this. and people bought it. because it was real. it was honest. in september of 2008, before we really knew what was going on, i announced to the public that we had a minimum of $450 million, five-year plan deficit, much like jay we actually planned for

the future. we have a five-year plan. the next month in october i told them that it had grown to about 650 to 850. two days after president obama was elected, two days later that thursday, i stood up and said we have a 1-billion five-year deficit. i used the word, this is a shared sacrifice approach. everyone has to put something on the table. we stopped our business tax reduction program, we had for 13 years. started under mayor rendell. suspended it. cut a variety of services, looked at every possible thing we were doing. cut back, we did not lay off thousands of people because i didn't want to damage our ability to provide core services but there are a bunch of things that we were doing that we said we can't do these anymore. and we did temporarily raise taxes as well.

we closed ultimately $2.4 billion gap. we closed the first billion in november-december and in january announced we had another $1.5 billion five-year plan deficit. we had to cover $2.5 billion in a 5 1/2 year planned period of time. 50% cuts, there was 50% new revenue. and no one was happy. but everyone knew that every person in the city had given up something. first announcement was i cut my pay 10% and my chief of staff. and never restored it. and every senior executive in the city government took pay cuts and furloughs, we had to threat public know we were not going to ask any one to do anything we weren't prepared to. >> could you tell how much that symbolism mattered? because -- and do you think it's a model? >> i don't make a lot of money but it is what it is. i'll tell you exactly what happened.

we brilliantly decided to then have eight houn tall meetings, the swimming pool's not going to open and some of the library hours cut back, all kinds of stuff. it was my idea, not one of my best moments. we go to these meetings, 500-plus people, screaming at us all night about how stupid we were. a guy gets up and says you got all of these people here, you need to cut your salary. i said i did that. now sit your butt down. people understood that -- >> my kind of people. >> was not solving the fiscal crisis but understood that the mayor stood up and cut his pay as a part of a plan that was going to close a hole and that we were serious about this. because no one stands up and does that. >> i did that once when i was getting shelled on every side.

i cut back my pay and gave back $93,000 and may be symbolism but it save immediate a lot of pain. and boy, they understand that. they don't, you know, taxing the rich and all this stuff, they don't get. that wouldn't raise you enough to last six months. they understand that there, that you did it yourself. >> where do you get your health care? is this free? you fly on the government? where the hell do you get that, reading the regioner's digest. you tell them that, and they are with you. >> i didn't know that. >> this is something you can do at the local level, harder for the congress, at least in washington, have these venting sessions where everyone. >> i walk out of the house, i walk out of the office. my constituents are there. we have a very close personal relationship. i pick up their trash, i fill pot holes, we run rec centers. you call 911 you expect

someone's going to show up. we don't have to do a lot of polling. i have a daily poll. thousands of people i run into on a daily basis. they tell me what's going on, how they feel. philadelphians are not shy. so i mean, we're here in washington, i think that many members of congress are very much out of touch with what's really going on back home, live in a very closed circle environment here. this is all about point scoring and who is up, who is down, who is going to curt the next ad. who got the sound bite, who is on the 6:00 news, who is on cnn, on msnbc, mayors don't have time for that. i can't debate whether or not i'm plowing snow. you either did it or you didn't. this is a daily test that we go through. our budget is balanced. theirs is not. i can't spend more than i have. i have a capital budget. they don't. the federal government does not ve