3, a look at the defense budget and other priorities for the next congress. that is followed by military and former government officials talking about the united states role in afghanistan. later, a discussion on the lives of populism in europe. former government officials from the obama administration discuss how the new congress might impact defense spending in other priorities when it convenes in january. this was hosted by the the brookings institution and it is an hour and a half. good morning, everyone and welcome to the brookings institution and i am trend one -- mike o'hanlon.

thank you for joining us to talk about the u.s. defense budget in the aftermath of a lot of big changes including the midterm elections but also some rethinking within the trump administration about how much they want to spend on the military. we have a great panel to discuss this today. we will have a bit of a logical flow on how we do it. i will begin our discussion here before we go to you for questions with elaine kamarck on my far left, at least physically speaking, who is one of the people who redefined the democratic party is not being far left. she is one of the people who helped bring the democratic centrist movement to power in the 90s and a long-standing associate of bill clinton and al gore and led the reinventing government efforts and she is that the school at harvard and we will ask her to talk about the politics of where we stand on both sides of the aisle after the elections, after the first two years of the trump presidency and with the 2020 presidential election only moments away. i am sure we are all enjoying our peace and quiet before the campaign begins, because once we are through the holidays, we know what is coming and it won't be that far away. next will be my am a guinness

and she is the conscience of washington and she is to have some company back in the day when we had the great people of the world and a few other people and some of these people have retired or gone on to better places and we still have some grades at brookings but maya has become a part of the responsible federal budget and an important voice in remembering the importance of fiscal discipline at a time when either party is really listening, but we probably can't afford not to listen to -- forever especially if interest rates rise and that will probably hurt her kids and grandkids even more. so she will help with the defense budget debate in this broader perspective -- perspective. >> jim miller is the under secretary of defense for policy in the obama administration and i see my friend dave mosier in the back and we used to do studies for him about 20 years ago in the congressional budget

department and he has had a long career in government and worked on a lot of issues and one of the reasons i am an admirer is because of his understanding of technology. a lot of times under secretaries of defense for policy know the world very well and all of the hotspots and challenges regionally and he also really tracks and studies the technology and he is on the defense science board and also some of you will have seen from his biography if you got the printed version that he was on the stanford tennis team. some may know he was on the tennis team at the same time as john mcenroe, what a lot of people don't know is that jim and john mcenroe were teammates and intramural basketball, three on three during the same period of time when mcenroe was headed for number one in the world and i have no idea why he subjected his body to the punishment, but maybe because jim miller could protect him and get the

rebounds after mcenroe missed his shots. but that is a little bit of added biographical perspective on jim pack finally, is frank rose, and he is now senior fellow at brookings and he was most recently in the state department for president obama as the assistant secretary for arms-control verification and compliance. don't forget that last part, because frank has a hard edge even though he is a nice arms- control are at one level, he is a tough strategic thinker at another. and contemplating any changes in our strategic or nuclear missile defense portfolio, he will be sure to emphasize the importance of a robust defense capability, not just trying to maintain fiscal discipline and arms-control pursuits. we have a panel of open-minded people who have wrestled with these questions in many directions for a long time and i will begin in the second with my first question to elaine which will be simply, how have things changed in the last few weeks and how should both parties be thinking about defense as they fashioned bigger and broader messages for the new congress and then for

the looming 2020 campaign. before i do that, i will go through one quick list of numbers to try to structure the conversation just a little. i will use very round numbers. people appear can correct me and be more precise if they wish. but i want to frame this because it is important to remember what we are talking about an overall perspective. the u.s. gross domestic product in 2019, i believe it will meet -- reach $20 trillion but that is a good number to keep in mind because it may get there but it will be borderline. so $20 trillion gross domestic product. a 4+ trillion dollar federal budget, and maia -- maya can correct me but overall federal spending. federal revenue substantially less. so if federal spending is a little bit more than 4, revenue is a little bit more than 3, we still have almost a $1 trillion deficit in the united states and it is headed upward. within that for trillion dollar plus a federal spending, what

you could define as the entire national security enterprise is about $1 trillion. i am counting on that, not just the national defense budget, but also veterans affairs and homeland security in state department and security assistance and everything that can be broadly defined as related to u.s. national security but what is called the national security budget, just the department of defense and the nuclear activities at the department of energy. that is now $716 billion. so pushing 70% of $1 trillion and that is the part we are here to talk about today, and should that part be growing as general dunford and secretary mattis in the defense commission have argued? should it now plateau or be cut, which seems to be where president trump and john bolton and others within the trump administration are today or should it plateau

or should it go somewhere else? that is ultimately where we want to get in the conversation, and i look forward in the second half of the discussion to your questions as well. without further ado, elaine, if you could help us frame this politically in the aftermath of what we have just seen. >> thank you and it is nice to be on this panel with everyone else. i suspect as the panel goes on, i will have less and less to say once we get into some of the details. but let me start by saying, obviously you know the headlines and democrats took over the house. one of the interesting things about the election was that i have never sat through an election where the lead grew so steadily and it took a solid week for us to realize was in fact a major wave although an election night, some of us who rushed to write and report election night say we are way too cautious. this was a victory for the democrats. they have a lot new seats in the house. let you talk a little bit about some of the things that will change in the house. the big one, is congressman

adam smith from washington state will now become head of house armed services committee. he does have a reputation as a budget hawk and he has told us back in the spring to prepare for a lien the future. so i think we need to see what he will do in terms of overall spending. one of the issues batting around there will be the space force and how big or how small it should be. and i think the budget issues will be very much front and center with a new leadership in house armed services. he will be buttressed by some new stars in the house. that's talk about some of the stars. one of the interesting things about them is that several of them are women veterans. a lot is being made about the

diversity and the first native american woman etc. we also have mikie sherrill who is a navy helicopter pilot as was my son. we also have chrissy houlahan and elaine luria who was a war officer, and they will be really interesting for a few reasons. first of all i think the press is very interested in women veterans. this is really the first generation where we have a lot of women veterans and there were some others, amy mcgrath who lost in kentucky but got quite a lot of attention and of course sally mcgrath in arizona may end up in the senate still even though she seems to have lost -- i am sorry. it is not sally mcgrath. it is martha mcsally. i was confusing them. martha mcsally may still end up

in the senate even though she looks to have lost her race to kyrsten sinema. there are a lot of women officers in the united states congress. the question is what effect will they have. there is not much evidence on this because in fact as you know, number of veterans in congress has been steadily decreasing from a high of 71% back in 1971 to around 19% now, and this does not seem to have changed very much with the selection. but we do know a few things that they might do. right off the bat, i think they will question president trump's putting troops on the mexican border. already today, it is announced that some of those troops are going home for thanksgiving. it has been called a stunt.

i think that will be front and center, and you can probably see many of these new veterans taking the lead on that. something that is not quite as obvious, and something that congresswoman elect mikie sherrill talks about is gun control. she has a very powerful speech where she takes her audience through all of the different weapons that she was trained on, that she can clean and shoot with, and then she talks about being a prosecutor and how as a prosecutor in new jersey, she spent a lot of time trying to get those same weapons off the streets. so i think you are going to see some very powerful voices coming from veterans when it comes to gun control, arguing that weapons of war are not what we should be having on the street. finally, i think you will see there is a little bit of evidence from a political scientist named danielle lupton at colgate . she studied voting

patterns of veterans in congress. and one of the things she said that made them distinctive, regardless of their political party is that they were more interested and more active on congressional oversight when we were deployed somewhere in the world. i think that is very very interesting particularly with this new crowd coming in who are afghanistan and iraq of that's and given how long we have been deployed, especially in afghanistan. i think you'll see much more serious oversight then perhaps we have seen in the last several years. over the nitty-gritty, why we are deployed in what we are doing there, etc. finally, i think we know from some of these campaigns and some of the behaviors of others, that they will not be

shy about standing up to donald trump when he does some of the more outrageous things he does like insulting military leaders so his assaults on admiral. mccreevy -- craven who led the operation against osama bin laden, they really hit people the law -- wrong way. i think with more veterans in congress, you will see them standing up to the president and disciplining him whether it is john mccain, as he was fond of doing or admiral. mccreevy and or whoever it is, i think you will see these veterans up front and center. and it is always difficult to say that some group or another is going to have this does this

affect. of course a lot of people are talking about this with all the women in congress but -- and party affiliation and party loyalty does tend to trump most things. but i do inc. that the experience that this new group is bringing to congress will be invaluable and i think their sense of loyalty to mission and public service is going to really help uplift the tone of congress, which has not been, as we may have seen, very uplifting in the last two years. >> thank you. that is a great framing. i want to ask one quick follow- up and you may want to comment on this, trent free as well. you mentioned that adam smith is a relative fiscal budget hawk. and the question is do you really think the democratic

party either in the congressional leadership or upcoming presidential campaigns is likely to want to cut the defense budget a lot because it strikes me if democrats were to make that argument, they would risk giving a big issue to donald trump which is he could say i am the guy who fixed the military and he is popular and it seems like democrats are more likely to fight on the specific tactical sorts of issues that you mentioned like mexico border deployment and the tone of discourse. but do you think most just -- them across are likely to try to curb the defense budget growth or shrink it a bit but not really engage in a big debate about big cuts? >> i can't see democrats engaging in big debates without big cuts. as we look at the composition of the democratic caucus right now, with a little bit of change to come, it looks like there is about 90 -- it is the progressive caucus. they may be inclined to use defense -- do some cutting. it looks like you have about 95 in the new democratic coalition

and about another 20 among the blue dog democrats. and they are your most conservative democrats and they come from southern seats in southern states and there were pickups there. i think the balance of power within the caucus will probably keep the democrats from doing any large- scale cuts and focus them on things like the wisdom of the deployment of the border which they have called a stunt. also, with all the new women in congress, i think you may have some emphasis on family issues, which relate to readiness, which is this military family issue, and i think you may see more of a shift in that direction.

but no, i don't think there will be any big moves to come. >> thank you. over to you, maya. on that question, but generally, how should we think about this fiscal mess we have gotten ourselves into. >> thank you. and it is nice to be on the stage with you and i like how you set up the whole beginning with those numbers. it is helpful and it is nice to be at the brookings institution, one of my favorite think tanks in town. i will start by saying, if there is one thing i love , it is spreadsheets. i really love them. yesterday, 12-year-old daughter, who didn't have school, went to the office with her father because he was going to teach her how to learn to use a spreadsheet. i think that is the greatest thing i have ever heard. i said this'll be a great day and how did it go. i have a coffee mug that says i love spreadsheets and my policy director has one that says i love spreadsheets more. that is the starting point. i don't look at defense policy or

security policy as a spreadsheet exercise. this is something you clearly wanted terms of getting the right policy and setting your national priorities and looking forward and figuring out what the most effective ways to meet the security objectives are. so i don't come into this as saying because i am a budget expert or a fiscal expert, i should have an opinion about how security policy should work. what i do know is that we have incredible challenges facing the country. that means we have to take editing more seriously. and this is a huge part of that budget, defense. let me start with the fiscal situation. as mike laid out, we are on the precipice of having $1 trillion deficit a year and what is stunning about that is that is not just a number but relative to the gross domestic product and it is very large in the time of economic prosperity and unusual to have deficits large and growing when your economy is doing as well as ours is. that comes on top compared to when our national debt, relative to the economy is the highest it has ever been in it -- this country since right after world war ii mac and we just had fought a world war.

and it came down quickly after that as the economy grew and spending shrunk. now, our debt is projected to continue growing faster than the economy, every year forever. there is really no way to over emphasize that the fiscal situations we face are not only challenging but uncharacteristic, and i would say inappropriate for a time of strong economic growth because what you want to do ideally is have a budget manageable over a business cycle and the deficits are shrinking or surpluses so you are prepared during times of weakness. and in all likelihood we are going to have a recession in the next few years just because of the length of the business cycle and we can probably not go for longer. the second thing i would point out as many leaders in the national security fields have pointed out that one of, if not the single biggest threat facing our country, security threat is our debt situation. there are many reasons one

cares about the debt. high levels of debt, slow economic growth and at a time we need to be worrying about economic growth in particular because of the aging of the population and high levels of debt mean that interest payments and your budget are pushing other things out and right now interest payments are the single fastest growing part of our budget, and that affects all other parts. and high-level debt leaves you unprepared for the next profession. that is where we are right now. when a recession comes we won't have the same kind of tools to fight it that we normally would. that often means we are vulnerable at times if the u.s. were to hit a recession depending on what else is going on in the global environment, we don't have the tools to fight our own recession and national security priorities and keep in mind, these are roughly half of what we owe from overseas and regularly not for people where our security interests are aligned. that seems to me like another

vulnerability doesn't get attention but if you look at the notion that we are approaching a trade war with china, it seems to me that that leaves us vulnerable given that we borrow a significant amount of our funding from china and that gives them a lover that affects us both economic the and throughout our security agenda as well. so i would say, not that i have any idea what the right level of defense spending is, i would leave that up to our expert. i think there are some things that are luxuries on a budget i think there are some things that are about value company think national security really holds its own space and we need to get that level right. but we do need to budget. we don't budget in this country anymore. what we do is we say we want to spend something or we want to cut -- taxes and we are going to borrow to do so and over the past two years, what we did is we had a massive tax cut over one point five trillion dollars, even accounting for growth and it makes the situation much worse and we

borrowed for that. and right after that we had this huge spending increase and we will talk more about this we had spending caps that were arguably way too low and cramping both domestic discretionary and security spending but instead of lifting those and offsetting the cost with other savings on the revenue or spending said we looked at -- lifted them. and this is your question about the republican and democratic part, we had basically the only kind of bipartisan agreement we seem to get in town these days which is one side saying we want more security spending and democrats say we want more discretionary spending and both of them saying let's do that and i will pay for mining you pay for yours and then there was a lot of backslapping about what a great job it was to have a bipartisan deal with little or no discussion about the fact that if you extend no spending caps, which we may and we should talk about, that will rival the tax cuts in terms of the additions to the debt so the spending increase was

massive so the point i would is and this is the basic point of budgeting so you don't hear it anymore, is if in the defense budget we decide something is worth doing and we decided is worth paying for. what we have to stop is the notion that we can have it all because we don't have to pay for it and we will borrow and that makes everything seem worthwhile because if it is free, there is not nearly the same kind of trade-off to evaluate whether the security spending is right and that applies to all parts of the budget. so what i -- what i will argue for is the returned actual budgeting which this country has stopped and we often run without budgets and plans which were the biggest entity in the world and unforgivable but the notion that budgets are about

taking national priorities in determining the best way to achieve them and ultimately figuring out how to finance them and it has to come back and it is the purse -- first principle of budgeting. >> i will ask you something before going to jim which is you have been polite and kind and gracious to let the defense crowd decide what is the right budget and you didn't quite say that way. i want to turn this a little bit around because reading this report last week this independent commission that secretary edelman and admiral. rough headset, they said we should keep growing to 3% to 5% real terms in the year through the defense budget and things like entitlements and tax reforms should be what get us to fiscal discipline. and with all do respect, to secretary edelman isn't that a little bit too much of an argument in a world where it is easy for democrats to say let's do more tax reform that increases revenue and very easy for republicans to say let's reform entitlements but these two things are very hard to do and in fact even if we did them both we would not be closing $1 trillion annual federal deficit and isn't there a counter argument -- not a counter

argument but a need for defense to look where it may be able to tighten its belt? >> i think it is true that the only way to get a big deal that gets our budget back under control and that is not getting it to balance necessarily but getting it to the debts was not going faster than the economy, is certainly the starting point has to be everything has to be on the table and when defense is as big a part of the budget as ours is, it has to be in the table. i will go further and say it is clear there are many things in the defense budget that are out dated and unnecessary and due to entrenched interests and places where savings can be had but there are new forward- looking needs that we have to take more seriously that in many ways our budget is for the past threats and future threats in a common thing in budgeting but particularly troubling in the defense sector but no question i have worked with experts over the years and there are many areas of the defense budget where we can have a form including the entitlement programs within the defense digit.

revenues entitlements have to be a piece of this unquestionably but so does the single biggest discretionary slice of our budget pie. >> there is a lot on the table already, jim. but the overall question is to the extent we need to prioritize perhaps more than we had to in the last year, how do you propose that we start to think about doing so? >> thank you. president trump has been fond of giving grades. to himself and others as well. let me start by giving you a letter a on your opening and framing the issue in terms of overall dollars. i would give anti--- a letter a to secretary mattis. it gives focus to great competition. it really articulates clearly something that has been underway for some period of time, so for reference, under the obama administration, the

budget for other contingency operations is $100 billion per year as you know basically from fiscal year 10 through fiscal year 17 when the president left. the number of troops in afghanistan found from 180,000 in fiscal year 2010 down to 14,000 in iraq and afghanistan when president obama left and that number is backup including in syria to 18,000. so the shift away from those operations really occur during the obama administration and initial moves to focus on great competition occurred as well during the obama administration with the so-called pivot to asia and people would've liked to have seen more in terms of the movement of forces and capabilities and after russia invaded the ukraine and increment the european reassurance initiative as well. those changes were underway. what is different is that secretary mattis articulated

these parties clearly of a national defense strategy for fiscal year 19 and now there are other resources to apply them. so as you look at this shift in strategy, a key question is will the administration and department of defense put its money where the strategy is. there really are a few things to consider. a first-rate office to think about current operations versus future operations. there are future operations that incorporates readiness and modernization. obama made the big reductions and other contingency operations, and now this administration in the last budget, in fiscal year 19 increased spending on procurement and research and development respectively by

about 23% and 28% cost of those booths are happening in the shift is occurring and readiness is moving up, and i would encourage this administration to continue that and modernization has been increased in the defense budget and those are both from my perspective positive and in a sense overdue. the second big trade after thinking about the current versus future operations is thinking about capacity versus capability or quantity versus quality. here we have seen a mixed story from the services and therefore said means more fighter squadrons and those of multiple types in the army continues for the structure in the navy is focused on additional capital shifts my recommendation and judgment would be to focus much more on quality rather than quantity. invest -- continue to invest in that research and development innovation and focus in areas in particular we have relative advantages and undersea is a great example. for the navy more undersea and less focus on surface. full trade space that the pentagon and the country need to deal with it has to do with

specific capability areas. here the administration policy strategy, it will in general terms protect nuclear modernization to recapitalize the triad, not to provide new capabilities for war fighting but to recapitalize the triad which is aged. it will then particularly and i think they will have something to say about those it will want to invest in improved capacities for cyber, particularly cyber resilience. not just in the department of defense but elsewhere but within the department of key capabilities including nuclear forces and long-range strikes and offense of cyber or cyber capabilities and it will want to invest in space. there is a bill coming for the new space force in my judgment would be that setting up a new space command and breaking that out of strategic command is a good idea. it is perhaps overdue. setting up a new space force is a bad idea whose time appears to have come. but if you look at those trades, today versus future,

quality over quantity and picking select areas, you still need to prioritize in the defense budget whether it is seven 16 billion for fy 19 or 700 or 733 and my final point would be the numbers we're talking about for defense are now in the range of 3% to 4% of gdp and when you conclude other contingency operations closer to 4%. the nation can afford 4% gdp through defense and it needs to spend it wisely and spend it focused on particular the power -- the competition said it will and it needs to make the hard choices. but they are difficult to make and more structure and more quality and focus on quantity. >> a few thoughts with you before frank. one question is going to be -- let me do it into chunks. first, are you generally comfortable with this possibility of a $700 billion national defense budget in

2020, number that we are starting to hear from the national security advisor. it would be about $33 billion less for that year than was expected and again we are at 716 billion and the cisco your 2019 which has already begun as of october won an expectation as many in this room will know but others may not was that we were going to be at $733 billion and that is the combination of the base defense budget and overseas contingency operations and nuclear activities and now we are hearing a lot of talk around 700 billion. you may not love that number, but is that one you can live with? >> i can live with the number but i don't love it. and the test here will be if you look at the difference between the 733 budget and 7323 -- 733 billion will the difference come out of structure, not readiness, not future capabilities. so if the answer is to do a cut

across all accounts, that is not strategy, a lower number for defense, you ought to be emphasizing the capabilities that support and the quality of forces that support the strategy which is focused more on competition. >> the last question follows naturally to get it on the table, there are some numbers out there with growth of about 70 relative to this today the air force would like to as of last fall, this fall secretary wilson announced a desire for 386 operational squadrons between the active and reserve, which would be up from 312 today, and the army wants to grow more modestly to little bit more than 500,000 active soldiers relative to about 480 or so today and you are saying

those are the kinds of numbers that should be challenged and rethought if we have to make tough choices? >> exact. >> frank, you have been patient and i know you have a lot to say. pick up where we have left off in terms of the strategic portfolio. >> michael, you so much and it is great to be here. to be on stage with the other panelists including elaine and i was actually lanes in turn 25 years ago, so for all of you interns out there, there is hope. i want to focus on the strategic capabilities portfolio because in the upcoming congress, i think there will be quite a bit of friction between the democrats in the house in the administration on this set of issues. let me focus on three areas, nuclear modernization, space security, and missile-defense. starting with nuclear modernization, believe it or not, during the obama administration, there was a certain amount of bipartisan consensus on the need to modernize our strategic we're

delivery vehicles and infrastructure. despite the fact that many on the republican party had accused the obama administration is not paying enough attention to nuclear issues, obama was able to do with the bush administration was not able to do, create a bipartisan consensus in favor of modernization. that was also attached to arms control. i would argue that the new start training in 2010 was very very critical in building that bipartisan support for the modernization. had we not had the new start treaty, i think it would've been difficult to bring aboard many congressional democrats and jim played a big role in the negotiations on the new

start treaty and i commend him for his work. however, that consensus is beginning to fray for a few reasons. one is the potential price tag of the modernization program. i see dave in the back there and he and his colleagues at cbo came out with a report earlier this year saying the modernization will cost 1.2 trillion dollars over the next 30 years. that is a lot of money. when you compare that with all of the other challenges, i think there are legitimate questions on whether we can afford it. secondly in the 2008 teen nuclear posture review, trump administration included a number of new yo -- low yield capabilities and that has gotten a lot of pushback from some congressional democrats and thirdly i think this is a

really important point. there is a view among many democrats that the trump administration for arms control and to move out of the jcp away -- >> the iran nuclear deal. >> yes. the recent announcement that the united states intended to get out of the intermediate nuclear forces treaty and the potential for not expending the new stock treaty my personal opinion, haven't spoken to people and having worked on that services committee is if new start is not extended, i think that the trump administration will have a difficult time maintaining that consensus for strategic

modernization. if the administration is smart, i think the deal is to be had. the deal is as follows. the administration would move forward with extension of the new start training, and in exchange, democrats would support the strategic modernization program. now, shifting to security, there is no doubt that russia and china are developing a full range of anti-satellite capabilities designed to deny the united states access to space derived information and indeed in the obama administration, we began a major initiative to enhance the resiliency of our space systems dealing with this. honestly the space force is not as crazy as it sounds. like a gym, i don't think it is

next -- necessarily the right solution to the problem we face. however, i think it is a legitimate issue to discuss and it should not be a partisan issue. unfortunately, president trump has made it a partisan issue. where did he announced the decision to establish a space force? at a campaign rally. right after that his reelection committee sent a fundraiser thing out on the space force. it should be a nonpartisan issue and he turned it into a partisan issue. i think that will really present challenges when the space force is debated next year. missile-defense. one of the biggest questions in the national security and it is

when is the missile-defense review going to be released. >> the world wonders. >> we don't know if and when it will be released, but i think there are two issues we need to watch to see if the administration handles them because i ink it will have political implications. first, how do we use missile defense to address russian and chinese strategic missile capabilities. in the previous several administrations, both the democrat and republican, there has been a consistent message that u.s. missile defenses are not designed or aimed at dealing with russia or china and their strategic deterrent. however, we have seen a number of analysts, and some of the administration start to question whether that is the right approach or whether the

united states should assume a damage limitation strategy. that is a question that we will need to look at very closely. the second issue is space based missile-defense interception. over the last year we have seen a number of senior administration officials, including the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering saying that the united states needs to develop a space-based layer of its missile-defense capabilities and i don't know how much support there is for space based missile-defense among the democratic caucus. when i was on the house armed services committee from 2007 to 2009, there was not a lot in my gut tells you that there will not be a lot of support for

space base missile defenses among the current our incoming caucus. and those are couple of issues to watch but if you asked me where the friction points will be for the upcoming congress, i think it will be in this area of strategic capabilities. nuclear modernization and arms control and missile-defense and space security. >> that is great. two follow- ups for you and i will go straight to the audience because i have managed to get my follow-up questions and already and if panelists want to comment on each other's remarks, i hope you'll put those in the answers. let me post to you, first of all space based missile-defense has been around for an idea since ronald reagan's 1983 speech if not sooner and the technology is better than it was then but is it really

realistic to talk about that now and that is my first question in my second one is within that one $.2 trillion nuclear modernization agenda, are all things really created equal? are there some areas we can prioritize for example the idea of creating more capacity at the department of energy nuclear to create 80 plutonium three-year when it last i saw the weapon labs were confident that existing plutonium would hold up for decades to come? >> our space based missile- defense has been a controversial issue for of very long time. i would argue there are a lot of technical as well as fiscal challenges to moving forward with space-based interceptors. however, one area where i think there could be consensus is that is improving space-based sensors, giving us the ability to better track incoming missiles and indeed the bush administration and the obama administration had programs designed to improve our space- based tracking capability and

with regards to the modernization program and the stacking, what i would say is this, i support the triad but as i said publicly on numerous occasions. it is going to be really expensive. will probably need to make a trade-off and from my perspective the number one priority would be the submarine followed by the bomber and a long-range standup and nuclear cruise missile and last on my list would be the ground-based strategic deterrent or the intercontinental ballistic missiles. if i were going to have to take some risk of that is where i would take risk. >> any comments on the nuclear agenda or space agenda, jim? >> i would agree but at two

things. nuclear command and control needs substantial investment so that is resilient and survivable and supports those capabilities and second is you look at where to go with icbm and the potential for reducing the minuteman force the currently deployed force of her time and some additional time and defers investment and i would be looking at the possibility of deploying smaller number of silo based in mitre i see bms that are less expensive than having a mobile research and development program and makes a lot of sense because what we really want to do is make sure we have a survivable leg and rc base and a hedge against that with our land-based and air based legs. on space i want to add one thing if i may to technical and fiscal concerns which i think are far less than they were night teen -- to minor problems if one does it, one is you blow

stability out of the water and the incentives for russia or china to go after it's interceptors whether it is through kinetic or electronic warfare or cyber are overwhelming because otherwise we have space superiority that is untenable from them -- for them from a strategic perspective and if those are effective it could be russia or china or having any possibility of doing so and it is an indication to a nuclear arms race. >> can i just come back to jim on that. i think he is absolutely correct. what i have said and what i have written is be assured that russia and china will do whatever is necessary to maintain and make sure second strike capability against the united states. if we do move forward with space-based interceptors, i am confident they will have

countermeasures. >> i will add one technical thing. don't forget, and i am sure most of you know, to be effective as an interceptor, you typically have to be in low earth orbit, which means you can't stay stationary relative to the points on earth. that means you have to have more satellites in space to have one in the right place. it is the absentee ratio problem. let's start here in the second row, and both gentlemen and we will have sandy and we will work back. i am starting on the far side by the wall player -- please. >> tony with inside the fence. i wanted to ask about the audit recently with the pentagon and it had just completed it. they did not receive a clean opinion and nobody thought they would. how do we think about that politically and fiscally and then sort of in terms of managing the department? was it worthwhile or worthwhile to keep doing it and they didn't find the pots of gold and there may be some critics who wanted a weapon nice it and

how should we think about it?>> my question is to you mike and jim, the commission on national defense strategy is a polite but scathing critique of the national defense strategy and in particularly calling into account the fact there is no operational concept for deterring or defeating russia or china and a war which basically says this is not really a good idea and the absence of civilian control of the military, which you may agree or not agree. my fundamental concern is if you take that report seriously, and the expansion and growth of the services, you need to budget most -- closer to $800 million more than 700 million and i would argue and project that we are headed to a hollow force. if you look at the field and the readiness of our forces, it is in great decline and training accidents are higher

than death in combat. i agree with jim in terms of prioritization. the department of defense has been bad in doing that. how do we discipline the department and process because i think if we are looking towards something, we need a smaller ready force but getting there will be increasingly difficult, especially in terms of the blended retirement plan that is now in place, and also internal uncontrolled cost growth of about 3% or 5% from everything from precision weapons. how do we make sure we do have a force that balances capacity and capability when i am afraid that the hollow force is really defending very quickly. >> thank you. military installations and infrastructure have long been bill players which commanders can easily dip into to fund operations and training. how should future budgets and the budget process controls

offer that problem good morning, after world war ii we had the arms race and we basically forced russia into a bankruptcy. is there a risk of that happening here? i don't know if that's a good question for you. why don't we work from elaine downward and we'll each take one or two. >> yeah, i'm not sure i can answer that question. but just to go back to what the political impact is, remember, nancy pelosi talks about her

new members, some of them asthma jordy makers. majority makers tend the be people from marginal districts it's one of the reasons it took so long for us to see the majority in the house. you want to look at those people carefully democratic by democratic. you want to look at the jason crows of the world. you want to look at the conor lambs of the world. you want to look at the districts because those are the people that the new leadership of the congress, and i expect it will be nancy pelosi. they need to protect those people. i think michael had the right idea initially. the same as mine. that means the correct strategy for the new congress is to be critical, do over sight, but not make any far left broadsides against the military establishment. i think that's going to -- what it's going to do is it might

make the solid deep blue districts happy. but it's going to put into jeopardy those 30-40 seats where as we've seen, the results were so close, so narrow that we've taken more than a week to figure out actually what the majority in congress is. so i think when you think about this going forward, put yourself many the shoes of the leadership. and the leaders are are going to be very careful to structure decisions around areas where they can gain political points like wasting money. not to mention manpower on this silly build up at the border. they're going to get points there. but i do not think you're going to see the democratic leadership taking them down a road where they are massively critical of a lot of things that the pentagon is doing or

wants to do. >> and you want to take the long-term fiscal health question or both? >> one thing is how we think about what we can and what we should be spending on our budget and on our defense budget. and you mentioned earlier sort of as a share of gdp and as a share of a budget. over all defense spending now, relative to the economy and the budget is more on the low side. so that would make the argument we can afford to spend more. we're spending more on other priorities. i'm not convinced that's the right metric in that as our economy grows, it's not clear that we need to be increasing at the same ratio our spending our national on security. it depends on economies of scale. a lot of different questions inform that decision. i do think one of the useful things the administration has focused on though is because defense is a useful metric of what you can afford is looking at our allies and how much they're spending as a share of their gdp, i think that's been

a helpful thing to think about and put forward. of course i would love an audit. there's absolutely in no world where i wouldn't love the idea of auditing more. we have failed so dramatically in the department of defense. and everything that we can do to make that work better is something that i think is long over due and very important and we shall learn from what we don't learn each time and try to make it better. similarly, kind of the question of how you don't steal from other parts of the budget, one of the biggest budget gimmicks we've had in security spending has been oco. so we plus that up and compensate for what's not going on. where there are spending gaps in place. we just had three cardamon tee. stealing from one from another. and that's what oko provided us for way too long and we need to be more specific about how the dollars are spent so you don't

have across the board spending cuts you're spending certain initiatives and that's where the money is actually spent. one of the interesting things that got me thinking was the question about the cold war. it seems like it would be a bad idea for us in so many ways to engage in cold war mind set. one, our fiscal situation doesn't look to me to be strong enough. i wasn't clear who you thought would win or lose in that situation. but i'm not so confident the u.s. would fair wel. but more than that, i think with globalization and intertwined economies, the notion that you can out spend your rival to lead them to a bankruptcy situation when we're so intertwined with the economies of those other countries, that would come back to hurt us. in a globalized environment. thinking about the interplay between national security and economics which is getting tighter and tighter all the time is also true on a global stage. i think that's clearly not the right model for trying to stay strong vis-a-vis other

countries. >> thank you. i'm going to try to give an integrated answer to several of the questions if i can in reverse order more or less. there's zero prospect the united states will successfully out spend china on defense as a winning strategy in the way we out spent the soviet union during the cold war. china's gdp is on a path to surpass the united states. their defense budget is increased by 10% per year on an ongoing basis. as secretary matas said we're going to have to use our brains not our wallet if we're going to be successful in competing effectively. and improving stability vis-a- vis china and russia. part of that, to jump back to the first question, partly of that is to be more effective in so-called efficiencies in the department. the audit and having an effective audit is a platform for that and a starting point. my recommendation, keep working on it department of defense, both as a matter of public responsibility and maintaining public trust, it's got to

continue to be a priority. and we need contingency improvement. what that leaves is the reality of hard choices. whether it's 716 billion, 700 or 733 billion. next year or less or more in the future. there are hard choices. and i agree with your assessment that it's not in the nature of a bureaucracy and each of the services to want to make those hard choices. that's going to rest very heavily on the secretary of defense and on the white house. and we'll see what, you know, we'll see, whether, as i said, whether they put their -- whether they put their money where their strategy is. it can't all be addition. there's not enough budget to make it all addition. so your point is exactly right. if you try to do that, you're going to end up most likely with a hollow force. and we've seen that a couple times in the last several decades. it's not a good approach. spending on insulations and infrastructure fall under the same category. and for all of these issues,

particularly that involve looking at trade offs. congress should play a vital role. and in my view, the fact that you have a republican control on one side, democrat on the other side will increase the likelihood those issues get discussed. they need to start as chairman mccain did last year start at the leveled strategy and look into what the implications are. >> you know, on your question about can we spend our way out of this? my answer is no. i agree with maya. we don't have the money. but secondly, i don't think the russians or the chinese are going to play that game. if you look at russian and chinese security strategy over the last 20 years, what has it been focused on? developing asymmetric capabilities that can undermine u.s. strategic advantages. especially in the information

security domain. and what we have seen is that both the russians and the chinese are investing heavily in offensive cyber capabilities and anti satellite capable you capabilities. the objective is to deny the united states the advantages it derives from information. so i don't think the russians or the chinese will play that game. they will look for our achilles heels and try to exploit that. >> that's a great point. let me just add one additional note, and then we'll go to a second round starting with michael gordon in the second row. but a couple times people mentioned percent of gdp. let me frame a couple facts and figures people may find useful as they think through their own view on where the defensive budget should be. the u.s. national defense

spending, that's not the homeland security but department of defense, including contingencies and the nuclear activities of the department of energy. 3.5%. in the cold war, we varied typically gene 5% and 10% -- typically between -- always well above where we are now. however, today's budget, when you adjust for inflation, is substantially above the cold war average. and that's of course because our economy is much bigger and we can afford it. it's 3.5% of gdp. i say only 3.5% of gdp. pretty hefty compared to most countries in the world. similar to what russia spends out of its smaller gdp. by the best estimates we have it's twice what china spends. so yes, we're worried about chinese modernization. it appears we can't compare exactly. but it appears to be pegged between 1.75 and 2% of gdp i'm

not minimizing the chinese build up. but they're not necessarily trying to compete with us in every domain. and they don't have to to make our lives complicated especially in the western pacific. and this leads to the question of what do our allies spend? the burden sharing debate. which president trump has highlighted. nato's goal is 2% of gdp. almost no other nato nations besides us meet that goal today. the nato average is around 1.5%. south korea is at about 2.5%. australia is around 2. japan is 1. some people say japan should spend more. no one is asking them to spend more. because the neighbors fear japanese remilitarization and we fear destabilization in the broader asia-pacific region. everybody is happy with japan being around 1%. and the build up is really no build up at all. it's in the same range of 1.0%. that may be more statistics than you wanted but as we try to frame what's the right

reference point, i just thought i'd put those on the table as well. without further adieu, over to you. >> i'm michael gordon, wall street journal. this national defense strategy that's been promulgated is not the most detailed document. and the commission that studied the national defense strategy in their assessment pointed out that the classified version also contains a lot of assumptions that they thought were not well defended and really gaps in some of the logic there. perhaps because it was done rather quickly. when i just listened to this group here, kind of what i hear you saying is you like the basic national defense strategy. but maybe the debate is over how best to execute it. should you have more things? or more technology? and what i'm wondering, my question is, given the gap between resources and the

threat, which doesn't seem like it's going to be a good way to close that gap, should there be a more fundamental discussion about whether we have the strategy a right and is congress capable of conducting that kind of discussion? should there be a look at nuclear verses conventional? or as michael points out. keeping stuff over seas opposed to keeping stuff here. should there be a more, you know, deeper look at these kinds of things. or really is the debate, we accept what matas said. we're going to debate whether we should put the money into ships or we should put the money into fiber or we should buy this missile or that missile. what's your take on that? >> absolutely. we have a couple more for this round and then we'll come back to the panel. the gentleman in the fourth row on the aisle and then four rows back more. >> this deals with the combination of modernization of

forces and nuclear forces. if the navy invests in 355 ships, primarily surface, what happens to the columbia follow on ballistic missile submarine which would eat up the shipbuilding budget as it now exists. >> and i should have asked you to identify yourself? >> jon gray di, naval institute. -- grady. >> this is really for maya, maya, you mentioned clearly ultimately national defense isn't a fiscal decision it's about what is the priorities for the nation. but i wonder your thought on, you know, we're now in seven or eight countries in combat, maybe a few more. there were a few classified contingencys that apparently just cropped up and we don't know where they are -- contingencies. but the lack of fiscal constraint, we're funding these things on a credit card, allows the national security decision makers to perhaps get us involved in places that were there fiscal constraints like a draft or war taxes or

rationing, it might actually restrain us from making choices. so it's not just about, you know, our lack of restraint on the means, expand the available ends that we can pursue i guess, thank you. >> so maya, should we start with you this round? >> that's a great question. i think, you've hit the nail on the head in the problem with all budgeting and the supply to the defense situation. but if you make the cost of something free, of course it's worth it. we're building a tool now called is it worth it? where you look up what we're spending whether it's on education, the environment, defense, homeland security. you actually see in terms of where you are and how much you pay in taxes. how much that's costing you, your family, getting a sense of what these costs are. one of the problems with deficit financing, and there are many as i said, but one of them is that it just doesn't allow us to go through the necessary exercise of and worth it. and so -- exercise of is it

worth it. if everything has to meet the hurdle rate of zero, of course it's worth it. that's a huge problem we have in budgeting right now. i want to expand on my thinking of this security issue. i'm not sure if this is going to work. but one of my big problems with how we budget is we've been too compartmentalized. we think about this category and this category and this category. if you look at what's going on in our country right now. and i'm fascinated of the thought that so many threats come from asymmetrical war fair so many things that are different than what we're used to. but the national debt reflects how broken our government is. it reflects how unwilling we are to focus on long-term issues, hard choices, policy over politics, a number of things that are are symbolic of what's broke in our government right now. part of that is also that we can't look at from where our threats are. and our threats are both external, and right now they're internal in terms of massive decisions and distrust and dysfunction within our own country. is and so when we go to the

question of what does security for this country mean in a budget, it's not just going to be defense. it's how do you build an economy where a middle class is more content. and people are less polarized politically. when you think about budgeting, it's not just spread sheets. as much as i wish it were. and i'd be comfortable if it were. it's truly thinking about what a nation's national priorities are. part of that is, are we willing to pay for them? and part of that is looking toward what threats we face. i would point out there are a lot of threats from within which in many ways have been prompted from outside sources as well. >> do you want to comment on that? >> i want to comment on the gentleman from the wall street journal. one of the most interesting things i think we're going to see is how does the republican leadership in the congress take and internalize the lessons from this election. what do they do? do they decide to engage in the

sort of big debates that you referenced? or do they decide to continue on a path that's characterized them for the last couple years of basically opposition, opposition, opposition. and i don't think we really know the answers to that yet. but i think that as the election results get poured over and they look at how decimated they were in the suburbs, and the weakest that was apparent throughout the country in rural areas and republican strongholds, they may decide to adopt a different kind of strategy than we have seen. we don't -- we don't know yet. >> thank you. you want to go and then jim to bat clean up. >> let me respond to michael's question. and then i'll hit the shipbuilding issue. michael, i think you're fundamentally correct. we have a mismatch between strategy and resources.

and i think the united states government as a whole needs to have a fundamental rethink of some of these long standing strategies that have been in place. i don't know if congress is capable of conducting that debate. personally, i believe you will need presidential leadership. like president eisenhower used with the selarium project in the 19 50s. i the believe congress approved a commission calling for a salarium type commission for cyber. that's what i think we're going to need. i also believe we can't do this on our own. i disagree with this administration on a lot of

issues. but i think they are fundamentally correct in their assumption that we have returned to an era of great power competition. we are in competition with russia and china for the future of the international order. and therefore, that in my view makes our allies even more important we have a lot of asymmetric vulnerabilities like outer space in cyber. but one of our a symmetric advantages is our system of alliances around the world. and unfortunately, this administration has not taken advantage of that. and actually, leading us into a different direction with our allies. and that needs to be fixed. with regards to your question ab the ship billing budget, i fully agree.

there's not enough resources currently in the budget to do the columbia class plus all of these additional ships. so priorities need to be taken. for me, being a strategic guy, the columbia submarine should be one of our top national priorities. because as jim mentioned a little bit earlier, that's the backbone of the u.s. strategic deterrent. >> for the generalist watching, what's the columbia give us that we need so much right now? >> the columbia submarine is the replacement for our current class of strategic ballistic missile submarines which provides us our secure second strike nuclear capability. it's really the backbone of our strategic nuclear force right now. and will likely be the backbone

of that force for the next 70 to 80 years. >> the other submarines are getting old. jim? >> thanks, michael. i'll follow up on the columbia point first. in my view, the navy doesn't get to come to the table and say sorry, we ran out of money, we're not going to give the nation a secure second strike capability. the navy needs to step up to that bill. if it doesn't, the secretary of defense needs to ensure that the resources are provided. on the question of strategy, michael, i think it's an innocent question that congress should start at that level of strategy. whether they are all well versed in that at this moment is beside the point. you can ask outside witnesses. they can have permissions. that's where they should start. when they do, one of the key questions will be noting this commission's view that there was not ab operational concept for success. and let me be clear about

something. anyone who thinks the operational concept for success with respect to russia is putting troops in moscow or for china it's putting troops in beijing, is a lunatic. what is the operational concept? in my view it should be not that we want to devastate either country in the war, it's that we want to avoid a war with both countries. so we need to deter them. we need to think about strategic stability in addition to the military capabilities we provide. that's important as we think about the nuclear balance in cyber. it means with our allies in each of those regions, we want to be able to frustrate their aims if they under take aggression and or impose unacceptable costs on them. that does not have to be an infinite bill. it does not have to require massive structure. it requires clear prioritization and it's going to require a massive investment in the resilience of both our space and space forces and it

infrastructure given the cyber vulnerabilities. i'm just going to add one mundane point in response as well. since i think jim and i are in agreement and many others perhaps that we need to think hard about trying to grow it if budgets are stabilizing or plateauing. we have to ask, how do we get by with the current force structure when the force is so tired when it's working so hard and we're going to have to ask the services the chiefs and commanders to prioritize giving their people and equipment an easier time when they figure out how to do it. because there's a culture of i have to always work hard and be tired. and there are times when you have to look to take a little strain off. the rotations we're making with army soldiers into poland and korea, in the latter case long standing policy. with poland newer policy. we need to do both with permanently stationed brigades.

so we don't have to keep rotating. which preoccupies multiple brigades just to have mull million in place. i think that kind of idea needs to be on the table. secondly the navy doesn't have a carrier in the persian gulf and it hasn't had one in or near the persian gulf since earlier this calendar year. if you said that to not just navel personnel but strategists in general they would have been horrified. the middle east was a mess before we took the carrier out. and it's a mess after. there's been no iranian aggression against saudi arabia. i would submit we can be more unpredictable and more flexible in how we do naval deployments and we could get by with a smaller fleet than the navy now wants. that's off my soap box for the final round. time for two or three more questions. i haven't called on a woman in the crowd. i haven't seen a hand from a woman. my daughters are going to give me a very hard time. we'll go to the third row.

and then there are a couple more. >> hi, ashley with jane. we talked a bit about the navy's fleet. how about for the army, they're under going a massive reorganization, modernization, and after racking and stacking their programs, what type of appetite do you think you'll see from house or senate leaders as they examine these cuts ? and will army leadership sort of be held to account? like how are these new programs going to actually deter or be used operationally in combat with china or russia if it comes to that? >> and one here in the second row. and i guess the last one will be way in the back. >> my name is daniel. i'm a graduate student at johns hopkins. since nuclear weapons have been brought up. since we fought a number of wars. how relevant are nuclear weapons? and this time, can there be a downgrade on the stockpile that we do have?

and is that an area where costs can be cut? >> finally, way to the back. >> with the arms control association, i'd like to take a crack at the question that was just asked but i'll resist the urge to do so. so i have one quick comment and one question. you mentioned that the nation can afford 3% to 4% of gdp on defense. i would just submit that when you're talking about a gdp of 20 trillion to 21 trillion. there's a significant difference between 3 to 4%. that's not trivial. so the implication that shedding forstructure not relevant to those high unifyings is something that should be done. you got into what some of the trade offs might be. smaller army. fewer army infantry brigades come to mind.

the lcs immediately comes to mind. and not as many air force squadrons. but how do you convince congress to make these cuts as you know, the previous administration went to a congress with proposals such as shedding the a 10, which congress roundly rejected. so somebody with political constituencys that say technology development doesn't have. how do you deal with that, thank you. >> we're going to go down the panel with responses to any question or two each person wants to address. frank, we'll start with you, please. >> since the end of the cold war, u.s. administrations of both parties have sought to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our defense strategy. unfortunately, russia, china, and others have not follow us.

so i'm one of these people who believe, if we can do it in a way that is consistent with our security policy, we should reduce the role of nuclear weapons. unfortunately, as i mentioned just previously, others have not. so i think we're stuck with nuclear weapons. they're not going away any time soon. therefore, it's critical that the united states maintains a safe, secure and effective nuclear deterrent that can deter threats against the united states and our allies. that's key. as much as we talk about wanting to reduce, and eventually eliminate nuclear weapons, that needs to be very closely connected to the security environment. and if anything, the security environment has gotten worse

over the last 25 years. and let me just leave you with this one last point. and that's that when you talk about nuclear modernization, don't forget the important role that arms control has played in advancing nuclear modernization. had it not been for the new treaty, i'm not necessarily convinced we would have been able to put the bipartisan consensus that currently exists in favor of the nuclear modernization of our delivery systems of the doe infrastructure and our nuclear command and control. and that would be a lesson that the trump administration would be wise to pay attention to. >> thank you, frank. jim to you.

>> i'll pile on. the fact that no nuclear weapon haves been used in anger since 1945. hiroshima is the success of our nuclear policy. not a failure of the nuclear policy. that said, i firmly agree that the nation should continue to seek to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our military strategy and policy. and the obama administration made a decision not to go toward that. in 2010. it should still be an objective to reduce the role. and in my view, there's still substantial room for reductions in numbers while sustaining a robust triad to deter nuclear attack. on the question of conventional forces of all varieties. more is better. stipulated. better is more better. okay. quality is more important than

quantity. when you get into not just strategic competition but the potential for battle and the selection of the capabilities that are able to survive a strike whether nuclear or nonnuclear, to have command and control that's resilient and that can provide a punishing response to deny the aims of the adversary and or oppose unacceptable costs. that should be the principle focus of the u.s. military. and i would put nonnuclear capabilities as a very high priority. because we do not want to be in a position where we feel that we need to go nuclear to prevent aggression. we want to be able to deter aggression through nonnuclear means. that investment is doable as i said before. it involves a lot of resources going to both space and cyber resilience. and it will involve a new operating concept, if you will. for how we think about conflict. that is dowable. and congress i believe should play a fundamental role. they will need help.

i'm hopeful many in the group today will help to serve that role. >> super, thank you, maya. >> the point i've tried to make is that our fiscal situation is at a historically, very worrisome level. and it's on projection -- it's projected if we do nothing, we don't do anything, to make it worse to get significantly worse each and every year. one of the points we anchored this discussion on that i didn't get to is that the spending levels we're talking about in defense for next year, whether it's 700 billion or 733 billion. those numbers are ignoring the fact that we have spending caps that are going to be in place next year. so we increase spending for two years on defense and domestic discretionary. our spending levels next year are going back to $576 billion for defense. all the talk that we've been hearing about in the budget is the president has asked for a 5% cut. that 5% cut follows a 14% increase that just happened that wasn't paid for. so the point i would make is if

we want to get out of the habit of making this worse each and every year, we're going to have to find a way to offset the difference between where that cap is and that $700 billion or 733. that difference is as large as the tax cut we just passed which was one of the most fiscally reckless things we've seen in recent memory. if we're going to double down on that by increasing spending caps and not offsetting the cost. we need to recognize just how we're unwilling to face up to the act of budgeting. so again, i don't know if the right number is 576. my guess is it's not. for a long time people thought it was too low. i don't know where the right number is. but i know where he we have to pair it with the willingness to offset those costs. which is just the minimum. not digging the hole we're in any deeper. >> the 576 number. in the budget control act. we gave ourselves a reprieve

for the current fiscal year and the last one. that means the budget we're talking about for the president will submit in february for 2020 will be reduced within the confines of the budget control act unless there's new get out of jail free card legislation passed. and that 576 would be without the contingency cost. when you add in 70 billion for contingencies. >> we've done this three time. we've increased the caps. the first two times we tried to offset them. a lot of budgetary gimmicks. some real. some not. this last time we didn't try to at all. the question is when we lift the caps, to what extent will we decide it comes from other places in the budget. >> in conclusion, i think it bears discussing that as we listen to all the discussion here, we need smarter -- we

need to be smarter about what we're spending, etcetera. so i would posit to you the following history, congress has been dumbing itself down. congress is not getting smarter. because what they've done in the last couple decades is twofold. first of all, there's been a shift in their spending from committee staff to staff at home. so they've moved their staff out to their districts. you can see this. there's data on this. the second thing they've done is in an effort, which is kind of amusing, because the total cost of congressional support is like a quarter of a drop in the bucket of the money we're spending here. but between crs and cbo and all the support agencies that help congress analyze the questions we've been talking about, they have been reducing staff. now, senator mike lee from utah has been very, very good on

this topic. but his colleagues need to listen to them. congress needs help. okay. all of the things that the smart people in the audience and the experts up here have been talking about, this is -- first of all, this is going to be brand new stuff to the new members of congress. of which there are many. and secondly, congress has been cheating itself at making itself unable to make the kinds of hard choices that we're talking about here. so the best thing that might happen here is not 716 or 733 billion. the smartest thing that might happen here is like 100 million. for getting congress the kind of intellectual help and expertise that it has not had for many years now. and i think you see that in some of the ways that congress is basically taking these issues and pushing them off to the side.

>> happy thanksgiving to all of you and your families and the families of the military around the world. i'm sure you'll want to join me in thanking them and thanking the panel as well. [ applause ]

cspan's washington journal. live with news and policy issues that impact you. coming up thursday morning, we'll discuss the findings of the new national climate assessment and get reaction from our guests. scott, reporter from e and e news, oregon democratic congress woman susan, new york democratic congressman tom, and florida republican congressman, carlos. be sure to watch cspan's washington journal live at 7:00 eastern thursday morning. join the discussion. thursday out going house speaker paul ryan sits down with the washington post to talk about his time in congress and plans for the future live at 9:00 a.m. eastern on cspan 3. we take you to capitol hill for an interview with fema administrator brock long he testifies before the house over sight committee about his agency's response to natural disast