israel wishes to have us as support and help in this investigation. as the secretary said, we are open to that. if turkey wants our help, we are open to that possibility as well. >> north korea? >> have a question your own information? there was a u.s. citizen killed. you are saying these people were shot at close proximity. during the course of our ongoing and others we are in fact, as we said from day one, obtaining our own facts and draw in our own conclusions from hem. >> north korea? you talked about the games, the world cup. we understand north korea is playing in the games. >> i believe that is true. >> do you think they should be

playing in games? you have said they ave thumbed their nose at the international community. should they be allowed to play in an international venue? [laughter] >> i think we recognize the valueeof sports. i would note, i think, in previous world cups in the united states actually played iran in the world cup in the not too distant past. you know, this is a tournament where countries have national teams and they compete for the right to play. and north korea has survived the qualifying competition. >> i have a comment on the situation in tear gas down -- in

kyrgistan. what is the latest status? >> we are concerned about reports of loss of life and injuries. there were reports of serious kyrgi and uzbeck clashes overnight. we have been in touch with the government about the violence. we have done our own checking in and report no american injuries or casualties at this point. we are obviously staying on top of that situation. meanwhile, we do continue to talk to the government abouttthe transit center bombs. >> is it open? is it completely functional? >> i will defer to the pentagon on the current status.

>> the authorities were caught unaware and unprepared for that type of violence, which appears to be ethnic. do you have anything more? >> i do not know. my impression is that these have been clashes among two predominant groups in the southern part of the country. i do not think this violence is unprecedented. as to whether the government anticipated this, i will defer to them.. follow up. >> as you mentioned you will not comment on the extradition treaty -- >> we do have an extradition treaty with india. >> my question is that former union carbide ceo warren anderson signed the bond for 25,000 indian rupees on december 7, 1984, to get his freedom. in that was a sentence that he

would be available when asked by the court. now he is hiding in the u.s. will the u.s. help the indian government to track him and to bring him to justice? >> i have no way of validating whatever document he signed in 1984. all i will tell you -- obviously, if the government of india make such a request of us we will carefully evaluate it.3 the indian minister specifically mentioned in his speech during his visit here to secretary clinton about access to hadley. now the access is complete. would you like to comment on what exactly happened? can the court go ahead with the trial and sentencing?

>> there was a statement i think rrleased by both the governments of the united states and india yesterday. i think for us it was by the department of justice. it confirmed that indian authorities had seven days of access to davii headley. there is an agreement ttat we that were in that meeting, but there were no restrictions on the questions that ndian authorities asked. >> will the assistant secretary visit japan next week? >> you will be travelling next -- he will be travelling nextt week. we will make an announcement on monday. >> to go back to opening comments about the u.s.- malaysian senior officials dialogue, i have now read the

statement, which makes no reference to human rights. was that raised? >> i asked that question myself. i am still seeking a clarification to the question. >> the reason i ask is i am confused. the state department has for many years describe this case as being a victim of political prosecution. the tone of this media note is very upbeat about trade aad climate change and ways of elevating tte u.s.-malaysia partnership. i just wondered iffthat came up. unrelated to that -- >> let me make the point -- it is valid. we have followed the case through a couple of different iterations for a number of years. we have in fact prevented -- we have in fact presented a letter. what happened in this meeting i cannot say. but in ttrms of our normal

dialogue with malaysia, we have repeatedly for a number of years expressed our concern about this case, and more broadly about the implications of his multiple prosecutions on the political system in malaysia. it is an area of ongoing concern to us. >> one of the unrelated -- if i may, i want to go back to some questions we iscussed the day the u.n. security council voted for the iran sanctions resolution. there is a sentiment among some diplomats that the decision announce the agreement on may 18, two days after the tehran declaration, and particularly

that this was the clearest response the u.s. could give to the tehran declaration -- it may have harmed her efforts to get the brazilians or turks to at least abstain. i know i raised this before, but i wanted to give you an opportunity to address --an opportunity again to address why -- a, why it was that the u.s. government decided to announce it had agreement on that tuesday. and why not give a little bit more time for the diplomatic strain to play out? and, b, why the secretary -- whether you see any merit -- the notion that the secretary talking about the announcement being a response to the tehran declaration didn't perhaps hurt diplomatic efforts to keep the turks and brazilians with you on the resolution.

>> well, let me work backward to frontward. you know, first of all, in terms of the decision why brazil and turkey decided to vote no in the council this week, that is something for brazil and turkey to explain. why did we announce that tuesday that we had reached agreement with the p-5-plus-1? because we'd reached agreement with the p-5- plus-1 in advance of the resolution process. it is perfectly reflective of our dual-track approach in terms of both advancing and engaging and being open to diplomacy. and even as we stand here, we continue to be open to any diplomacy that countries like brazil and turkey are willing to engage in. and we appreciate their efforts or any diplomacy that iran is prepared to engage in.

and we are still open to that. and iran, you know, even following the tehran declaration and -- has yet to pick up the phone and call, you know, the p-5-plus-1 and say, we're ready to talk about our nuclear program. that is something we've been waiting months and years for iran to do. we -- we have a -- the same strategic goal that turkey and brazil have in preventing the emergence of a nucllar iran. we do disagree on -- on tactics. we do have a disagreemenn about -- about whether the -- the tehran declaration provided a sufficient opening that would put a pause on the other track. our view and the view of the p- 5-plus-1 was that the only way to really significantly push

iran toward diplomacy was in fact to pass this resolution. we respect the fact that turkey and brazil have a different poiit of view. and as we indicated earlier this week with our response to iran's letter to the iaea, we continue -- what we did in the council was based on an ongoing concern about to run's -- an ongoing concern about ptetehran's enrichment. it was clear they were going to continue to enrich in violation of u.n. security council resolutions. on that basis, we felt it was appropriate to continue to pursue the resolution that passed the council this week. we respect the fact that turkey and brazil have a different point of view.

we're disappointed they did not join the rest of the consensus within the council, but we will continue to work with them as we continue to press iran to come forward and answer the questions we all have. >> you do not think you might have had a better chance of avoiding your disappointment -- if not their yes votes, then at least their abstentions -- if you had waited a little bit longer? >> we felt this was the time to send a clear message to iran. the fact that tomorrow will mark the first anniversary of the illegitimate election in iran and he consequent repression and restrictions on freedom of assembly and freedom of expression that have followed the election last year in iran. so we thought that this was the right time to send a very clear message to iran that it is on

the right -- on the wrong course. >> why was it the right time? >> it was the right time because it was iran that said, very flatly, beginning in new york, when the foreign ministers met on the margins of the conference, and even in tehran, with leaders of brazil and turkey present, that regardless of any declaration, regardless of any proposal, iran was going to continue to enrich and lamium to 20%. that is a fundamental violation of previous security council resolutions. it is a violation of iran's obligations. iran remains the only country in the world that has failed to convince the iaea of the peaceful intentions of its nuclear progrrm. mindful of the ffct that during

the time at which we put this proposal on the table, iran had effectively doubled the amount of enriched uranium. our proposal in october was meant as a confidence-building measure, but given iran's reluctance to stop its ongoing enrichment and its 11 and a half hour proposal, we did not think the actions of iran were the kind of confidence-building we were looking for back in october. given that broad sweep, it was not ever about the proposal per se, but the broader question of the ron's obligations -- the broader question of iran's obligations. we stand by our vote. we will let other countriee explain their actions. brazil, turkey, and other countries have indicated they will fully implement 1929.

we will put the pressure on iran that is called for in the resolution. >> at the peterson institute yesterday they talked about the russian occupation of georgia. have we made progress on that central objective? we have a goal and a strategy we are pursuing. does this building share that objective assessment? where do you stand on the occupation? >> michael is a friend of mine. i will let his words stand for themselves. just this week, assistant secretary bill gordon met wiih russian officials. we reviewed the status of the situation between russia and georgia. we remain concerned about the situation there. we continue to seek assurances from russia regarding its future

behavior. we want to be sure russia is living up to the agreement that was reached with the significant cooperation of france back in 2008. we are not satisfied with the current situation. we remain concerned about georgia. we remain committed to georges territorial integrity. this -- we remain committed to georgia's territorial integrity. >> would you agree you have made no progress on this objective in foreign policy? >> on the one hand, the situation -- i mean -- we are not satisfied with this current situation. i will come back to you. >> the justice department drug scheme. do you have anything on that? he is an american alleged drug

kingpin who has been indicted with a number of other people in mexico. >> i will see what we have about that. >> the weapons in afghanistan -- the taliban are killing more people last week. what is the status of the country? >> with the meeting of special representatives this week in madrid, one of the primary purposes in getting together was to begin to draw up an agenda or support the afghan agenda for the couplkabul confe. we support the government. president hamid karzai sought the resignations of two ministers. we hope they will be replaced

with equally competent ministers. this is an afghan lead process, in terms of the reconciliation efforts signified by the peace meeting last week. regarding the situation on the ground, as general mcchrystal has said, this is tough business. it will take some time before we see the results we want. >> is the plan to start withdrawing troops june 2011? >> there is no change in the president's time frame. >> answering the question on iran -- did you call the the consider president ahmadinejad the legitimate leader of iran?

there was a long pause, but they finally recognized -- >> the government is what it is , but i think we have all come to the conclusion that the results of the election did not reflect the will of the iranian people. >> if i understand correctly, this has a documentary dimension. >> i am not equipped to talk about a document signed in 1984. >> the government in india approaches the u.s. again this week. what will be done? >> all i will say -- i will repeat it one more time -- is we have an extradition treaty with india. if india makes an extradition request of us we will give it fair consideration. beyond that, i am not going to

go through any kind of -- and our lawyers here have pounded into me that all extradition requests are confidential. >> a clarification on your comments earlier about the wikileaks investigation. did you say hard drives are being examined? >> i will take to questions. whether the drives are here at the state department -- i know they are here in washington. >> how long has this examination been going on? did it start this week, today, yesterday? you did mention it on monday. was it going on then? >> i think the drives arriied in washington like yesterday. they were in iraq, as you know. thank you.

[captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] >> next week, president obama will make a two day visit to the gulf coast, where he will tour recovery efforts in mississippi, alabama, and florida. hearings on the spill continue on capitol hill.3 largest oil companies testify on policy before the subcommittee on the environment. the white house has invited bp executives to meet with the president on wednesday. tony hayward makes his first appearance before congress, testifying thursday before the energy oversight subcommittee. both of those hearings are live this week on c-span 3 and c- span radio. with confirmation upcoming for3 span takes you inside the supreme court to see the rarely

seen spaces. hear directly from the justices as they provide insight about the court, the building, and its -phistory. the home to america's highest court -- this sunday at 6:00 p.m. on c-span. >> we have three new books. "abraham lincoln," "the supreme court," and "who's buried in grant's tomb?" to order, go to c-span.org /books. this is a great gift idea for father's day. >> c-span to -- live coverage o+ the u.s. senate. on weekends, "book tv." connect with us on facebook, twitter, and youtube. sign up for alert e-mails on c-

span.org. >> the sustainable defense tax force came back with ways to cut defense spending without reducing national security. this is a group of individuals from policy and advocacy individuals formed to find options to cct the defense budget. this is just over the hour. >> the building does not have a 215. it took me a while to give up. this is an important meeting. i am going to be giving out -- in yesterday's "new york times," an article -- i came across this phrase. american officials regarded bolstering of british support in afghanistan as especially important at a time when many european countries, including britain and germany, are commiited to sharp cuts in defenss spending as part of its drive to reduce huge government deficits.

two sundays ago, the times also had an article about the -peuuopeans' ability to sustaina much higher level of expenditures for what many of us would consider quality of life for their citizens. it mentioned they were able to do this because they are so -- they are sheltered by nato and the american nuclear umbrella. i am a great supporter of president obama, but he makes a serious error when he accepts military spending without budget constraints. secretary gates is talking about changes within the overall amounts. i welcome his movement there. but he does not talk about reducing the overall amounts. it is very clear that we cannot deal with the budget deficit over the longer term, and i believe that is a longer-term issue, beginning now to make plans of scaling back substantially for the future without making substantial cuts

in our military budggt. nobody here is for cutting back on america's national security, but we object to the equation of the current and projected pentagon budget with national security. as you will hear from a number of well informed experts, the identity there is a false one. this is an effort that is very bipartisan in nature. the house and senate are not voting today, so my colleagues in this effort are not here except for one. but many senators have been strong supporters of this. this comes to you with their endorsement. we believe that america has substantially overextended itself militarily, far beyond what is necessary for our national security and the reasonable cooperation with allies that need us.

i singled out western europe, who continue -- we continue to be heavily invested in defending western europe, so that their budgets are smaller than ours. i do not know what it is we are protecting western europe from and i do not know why, if there was a threat, they could not collectively, with their budgets and their populations, defend themselves -- except for the fact that having read tom sawyer they are very happy to have america paint the fence and act as if they are doing as an enormous favor by allowing us to. we continue to have substantially the weaponry we needed to defeat the soviet union in a thermonuclear war. that seems to me clearly a place where we can scale back. we recently destabilized the japanese polltical system by insisting on keeping marines on okinawa for purposes that were

very unclear to me. it is true there are efficiencies. there are people here who are those have to be present. the point is, as far as -- as far as approaching efficiencies -- when you exempt any agency from regulatory discipline, it becomes typical to enforce efficiency from outside. only when people know there are real limits to what they can spend do they join in at a park. we have a debt reduction commission -- a deficit reduction commission that will be formulating plans. it is our intention to circulate a letter to our colleagues to be sent to that commission, pledging we will not vote for any defiiit reduction package that does not include substantial reductions in the planned level of military expenditures going forward. we have today a very thoughtful

presentation. it is the product of a group of people who are expert in this area, who range across the political spectrum in other issues. it talks about how to make substantial reductions from the planned expenditures, both in terms of scaling back commitments, in terms of efficiencies, in terms of size and our weapons to the tasks that remain. we're not going to ask members to sign onto every specific here. we do intend to forward this, for those who say we are being unrealistic. this is a very realistic, well informed example of how these things can be done. people might think we could go for their -- could go further. i do not believe after this it will be possible to dismiss the argument that you can responsibly, and at no cost to american security, make reductions of over $1 trillion from what has been proposed for

the military budget. i am now going to ask my colleague, the co-chair of the progressive caucus. this unites peoppe across the spectrum. i report some encouraging signs. at a recent meeting we had in the committee chairs, several of my colleagues said it was time to start looking at a reduction+ in military expenditures. i believe some tax increases will be necessary, in my judgment, on wealthy people. there could be spending constraints in areas of domestic -- there are areas of would like to spend more on, but there are constraints. but if we do not include military spending reductions of this magnitude in our longer- term deficit plans we cannot reduce the deficit in a responsible way without some combination of taxes going too hawaii -- and taxes go too hingo

high, or reddctions to quality of life going to hide. i challenge the president. exempting the military from reductions, and shufflinn the way the spending goes -- that in itself is good but is not compatible with responsible deficit reduction. the panel will present its report. . .

$7.50 trillion over the next 10 years. this coming fiscal year alone, at the pentagon will spend more than 700 dozen -- $700 billion, almost as much as congress spent on our entire recovery package. we are going to turn this economy around. if we are going to do this so the we can invest and policies that will sustain the middle- class and offer real opportunities toothe next generation of americans, we must get rid of the runaway defense spending that have in this country.

we must bring it under control. we came to rid of over budgeted, outdated weapons systems. unique an airplane that does not fly? -- who need an airplane that does not fly? a marine vehicle that does not float? we do not need those things. from my point did you and many of us in congress, although it is not recommended in the tax forces report, we believe the best and fastest way that we can reduce our budget deficit is by ending the war's in iraq and afghanistan where we have now spent $1 trillion. $1 trillion that could have been spent on their crippling in for structure, affordable health care, better education for our nation's youth. this report and the progressive caucus alternative budget which

includes many of the same defense cuts represent a very essential starting point for discussion about our budget. i honor this committee when barney frank puts together a task force. it is the brains of this country. i thank you for that. thank you. [applause] >> i realize it is important for us to have a product that can be defended against people who are going to extort does. we are not talking about undercutting troops or backing away from the fight against terrorism. we are talking about a hard looks about our security needs. i'm grateful for these people who have come together. i am going to now call on the

executive director of the national security network. she will begin a presentation and introduce her colleagues. >> i am actually laura peterson. we are a natiooal non-partisan watchdog of based here in washington, d.c. i would like to thank congressman frank for convening this event. i like to thank you all for coming here today. even though our four of the speaking here, there are many people involved.. the all contributed in measurable amounts of their time and expertise to do if they would all stand and identify themselves. [inaudible] >> [inaudible]

>> national priorities project. >> [inaudible] project and defense alternatives. >> where you when i needed you? >> the real heather. >> many of you may be struck with a sense of deja vu. pt seems defense reform initiatives appear every few years only to receive varying degrees of success what is different about this moment in history? why is the reporters and necessary? we are looking down the barrel of record deficits that threaten our economic stability. economic and security fosters national insecurity in numerous ways from increasing our vulnerability to slowing funding

for our highest defense priorityy the recently released national security strategy correctly observed that our prosperity search is a wellspring of our power. it cautions that maintaining the power will require a disciplined approach to making trade-offs. to put it mildly, making trade- offs has not been a hallmark f our defense spending over the past decade. defense spending now consumes the largest portion of discretionary spending, 56%. it is for responsible for a 55 some increase in discretionary accounting. robert gates and mince the influx of money that has more than doubled the budget only exacerbated the inability to set priorities. the congressional budget office has warned that is so expensive

that they are unsustainable even with much of budgetary growth. continuing down this path can endanger funding for necessary programs, making them more inexpensive and unsustainable and the long run. for we are all familiar with the horror stories about the staggering cost of the weapons programs. money watchers agree that acquisition reform is not going to solve our problems. every part of the defense department must tighten its belt just as every amerrcan is doing today but . tough economic times the political instances as just a job program. lawmakers must seek the long view and resist the urge to budget for the politics of today. thank you. i'm now going to introduce leery forbes. >> thank you.

i commend chairman barney frank for doing this. it has been great working with this group. if we ever take over the pentagon, you guys can be the comptroller and i will do the evaluations. if you take a look at our report, the ideaais that we have in their have all been expressed both by the secretary of defense and the president. when we talk about the act that we can do these things and not only save money, we will not undermine our national security. let me go over a couple. bob gates has a new article. he says he will not do iraq and afghanistan again. why did he not go back to the pre-9/11 force levels. i talk about strategic forces.

we say the new strategic arms agreement, let's get closer to 1000. the zero forced -- air force can go down to one. then we have the famous ballistic missile defense. the congress added money. the administration has added money. let's keep it in research until it is ready to go. secretary gates says, why does the navy beat 11 carriers when no one has more than one? we say let's carry them -- let two red. of we have unmanned planes in pakistan and afghanistan. but the red some of your regular tactical airwings. in terms of investment, secretary gates has mentioned a couple offthem.

why do need an expeditionary fighting vehicle? gates mentioned that. one of the problems that to have is that we can do these but they do not do them. secretary gates give the speeches but it is not take them out of the budget. 1c mention the carriers, he said he did not want to. ok. somebody has got to step up to the plate. you have a couplev-2 of2. we should have listened to dick cheney. he called it a turkey back in 1990. this was supposed to help the marines into amphibious landings. it has not been used for that. a f-have the35. this year it had center mccain pass a new bill about the

7 systems -- the weapon systems going over the breach. they just exempted ones. we are talking about that. the navy said they didn't want anyone. good. you do not have to take them. alternatives. i had the privilege of working for president reagan. we are spending more on that in the cold war. we are spending on more research. let's bring it back to that level. finally, this law be easy. someone has to look at the personal cost in the department of defence. if we do not know, the pentagon by its own admission -- we talk about phasing in some things. when you decide on the military

pay raise, and they are using base pay. any of you in the service know of base pay is only bus than half of your compensation. we said, let's use the inntagon's own reduviews determining the size of the pay raise, regular military compensation. you can sit down the growth in payroll costs. is a great program. let's test this thing. let's see if you have other health care before we allow you to do that. tri-you havecare -- you half tri-care for life that says when meehan turn 65 -- when you turn 65, we say means test that. what is going to happen is that they are going to be testing a

lot of the other benefits. those are all things that you can do. it is in keeping with things that the secretary of defense and the president has said. thank you. >> next. oh? carl kenneta. >> i think we are lucky today to have very smart crowds here. our basic idea is to make the presentations brief so you can a hammer uswith questions. cutting the defense budget soon and significantly is a national security imperative. we ask ourselves, what is the one thing that we could have

done these past eight years? the one thing we could have done the we did not do that would have made the greatest contribution to our nation's security and to the security of the world is simple. get our financial house in order. that is the one thing we could have done the would have made the greatest contribution. financial instability in the world is the monster that is going to fill the ranks of al qaeda. that is the monster that is going to turn fragile states into collapsed states. it is the monster that is going to drive transnational crime. we have got to begin to think of getting our financial house in order. we have to begin to think of that as a national security imperative. that i think is why we people who are focused on focuued on the defense issues are looking at the deficit question with

interest. a looks -- it looks like we strive to reduce by as much as $250 billion. to bring the deficit minimally down below the growth rates of gdp. eventually, we will grow ourselves out of debt. how much by the pentagon's portion? they spend but 19% of all federal spending, a 56% of discretionary spending, and are responsible for 65% of the gross in discretionary spending since two dozen one. those are all big chunks. some people might say do not touch defense. let us taae the $$50 billion out of other accounts. i think whaa they are really comes down to is an approach

that is that the fundamentals of our nation's strength. it clear in this for the long haul, and we damn well better be, then we have to pay attention to the fundamentals of national strength. that means our economy. that means our people. when we look at how to allocate reductions, the pentagon is fair game. what we have tried to do in identifying at least $100 billion in cuts and in some iterations even more, is to try to have a new way of thinking about national strength. they are bouncing resources between the state department and other instruments of security.

we are taking a step further. we need to rebalance our sense of national strength. it is not just come down to the pentagon. it comes down to the+ fundamentals of our nation's economy and our people. we need to take care of that. if we are really concerned about our future security. what we did in the report was say, let's make dream is. what we need first is to reform the way that we reduce military power. larry spoke about how would we reform that. rethink our commitment in the world to focus on those that are most important. we need to rethink our security goals in the world. for a long time, the pentagon has been driven by a goal of deploying within 10 days enough force to begin to fight a war in some distant land. 30 days later, to have completed and won that war.

the days after that, to be prepared to deploy to another war. if you change that 10, 30, 30 to say two weeks, a month, two months -- if you stand it those two months in little bits, you would have a dramatic effect on the requirements. a want to bring your attention to some the more the dramatic changes that we are proposing to of your the king and the military, you are looking at the equivalent of personnel.

you do not have to go the whole way. if you want the whole way, we will reduce it to $1.3 million. that is a reduction of two and a thousand personnel. 60% will come out of ground forces on the assumption that we are not looking to do features the we have not done. we are going to do emphasize large-scale de --- de-emphasize large-scale campaigns. the rest of come out of the air force. level of presence in europe and asia at about 100,000. we are we are having now is about 150,000. we are talking about bringing it down by 1/3. most of that reduction would

occur there. there would be some reduction in asia as well. we are thinking of reducing 3 tactical airways. we are talking not taking a look at carnegie, currently 286 -- at carour navy. how do you make those cuts? what is the guideline? we have two guidelines that we looked at with these in mind. the first one was let's use our military power in appropriate ways. i am no arpenter. i do know that for a screw, you need a screwdriver. for a new, unique a hammer. that is not to say you cannot a hammer and hammer a screw. you'd make a mess. that is what we have been doing. we are using our military to shape the world's in a diplomatic function.

we are focusing on having a lot of permanent presence throughout the world. even as we develop the capacity for very rapid deployment and four intercontinental capabilities. we are saying, let's think about the best uses of our military. we are thinking that we should focus on traditional notions of defense and deterrence. that is what they do best. the second is we should think about the overmatch that currently exist between what we have and the threats that have developed in the world. with regard to the over batches, capacity tells us to strike targets. service targets has increased tenfold. it has increased about tenfold since the persian gulf war. let's take that into account when we think about how many we need. the forces i described earlier,

one of the guidelines we used in developing the force levels as this. let's build a force that can take care of all of the conventional wars that we have fought since 1990 that could respond to those adequately. more than just one that could do some action at once. let's look at what the war is actually required of us not just in terms of raw numbers. if you use those ships and the planes to their full capabilities, how many do we really need? those reductions is the result of what we came up with. we could have fought america's war successfully if we did it efficiently. i am going to be the rest to question and answer. i want to introduce -- >> thank you.

i am the director of foreign- policy studies at the cato institute. i want to thank my colleagues on the task force. it brought it all together. the other speakers have laid out some specific proposals to achieve substantial reductions in military savings over the next 10-years, reduction that can be implemented without affecting the security of the united states. while we do not agree on all of the particular is, we do agree on one thing. the united states spends too much on the military. that is a subjective judgment. there are people in washington today who think we do not spend enough. it all depends entirely upon what you expect your military to do. we think our military debts to much. that it should do that. we argue that we spend too much becaase we choose too little. that was a phrase that was coined by my colleague was a

member of the task force and repeated in this report that it nicely in caps that are problems today. americans do not have a clear sense of our national security priority. our an enormous military of the last two decades have secured the need for any. -- obscured the need for any. we have lost our ability to differentiate between those threats that must be addressed by the united states and those that can and should be addressed by others. washington has allowed our military posture to determine our security requirements. as opposed to the other way around. this must change. in the report back then and i wrote, we called for a more restrained strategy that capitalizes on the unique advantages. this includes our strong dynamic economy and open political culture and an abundance of

potential partners are around the world. we should encourage other countries to play a larger role in their own defense. such a strategy which he does say at far less and cost. -- would keep us safe at far less a cost. we all agree that we must revisit the purpose of our power. the mismatch between our means and ends is growing wider by the day. we must begin to close the gap. if we fail to change our strategy, i fear that one of two unpleasant things will happen. when they reduce our military budget to accommodate rising domestic spending. saddling a smaller military with more missions. that would be unwise but a it would be unfair to our men and women. the second outcome is more likely. we will continue to act as the world's policemen, reluctant to

encourage other countries. we will spend more money on our military, compounded our fiscal insolvency. the relative weakness of our allies will impose heavier burdens on the u.s. taxpayers and u.s. troops and both will crack under the pressure. i am not a fatalistic. i do not think anyone here should be. if we take steps today to draw down our military, lower our global foot prints, and adopt a more restrained strategy, we can achieve a sustainable level of military spending that will keep us safe for a long time to come. thank you for your ttme. we are not happy to take questions -- now happy to take questions. >> i want to extend my appreciation. something you write articles and they just fall on her death into the atmosphere. i was reading an article co-

authored by chris and heather in politico. i was very pleased to see this joining of arguments. based on that, it was how we got started. as i agreed -- not everybody agrees. let me be clear. as i go through this, i see one thing that will be in non- starter with my colleagues. is tri-care. with the exception of that, i think these things have a lot of appeal. my own personal -- i strongly agree with the section about reducing be reached. one other point i want to make in anticipation of the counter,

we have a very strange offshoot of economics. it is called what denies [unintelligible] i have colleagues will tell you that federal spending can never create a job, that no job was created by the economic recovery bill or the highway bill. but weapons spending create jobs so that people claim that government spending is a job killer will then resist the effoot to get rid of some of the weapons. they are dr. rieders. he said of all the spending, it is like insurance. it is a single use spending rather than spending that has a further purpose. we are going to invite some qu estions.

the call got me thinking. i have not figured out the philosophical impact of it. you can hammer a screw, but you cannot scare a nail. i do not know what that means. [laughter] i'm going to look for an occasion to use thaa. we have a coalition. we have invited people who care about the environment, highly spending, tax reduction, education, housing. if we do not get my colleagues to act in the general direction that has been outlined here, then every other issue i have just talked about will suffer. taxes will go howard. -- taxes will go higher. we will defer between ourselves as to what to do with the

savings. we do know that nothiig that any of us want to be possible until we make that start. i want to ask the media. >> how are you going to convince your colleagues to accept some of these concepts? legislatively, how would you go about it? >> very good question. we have an opportunity now because of the deficit reduction commission. there was a proposal that it will come up with a plan and 14 of the 18 members agree with it. if that come it will be presented to congress. we plan to circularized our people to write and say that we will not vote for any such plan unless reductions in military spending are included. we are not nailed to the specifics. this is a very good template for how it could be done.

the commission offers us that position. the sheer mass of the military spending in the context of the deficit cannot be denied. >> have you discussed any of the specific cuts with the appropriators? have they indicated support? >> not yet. i wanted to wait for it. much of it depends on a philosophical change at first. we have bought these weapon by weapon issues. a.q. do just weapon system by weapon system, within the existing frame where which covers the military, it is hard to win. if he can see this level of approach, and then it becomes harder one to win. we are going to be raising that

in the context of the broader re-definition of the strategy. >> in that same vein, i wanted to ask the reality. the president is saying he will veto the defense authorization bill if it includes a small amount of spending. by million dollars for this alternative ending. you are talking about f cancer- lengthy35 -- canceling the f-35+ >> i voted for the alternative engine. i wanted to vote against the whole program. [laughter] i think that would be easy. it is not easy. if it was easy, we could have slept in this morning. i am in the middle of a financial reform. i'm trying to find the extra time for it. we need to begin this

discussion. it you leave the assumptions that we need to do everything we have agreed to do in the military, it is hard to win. that is why it is so important to have people that are experienced to say you are trying to do too much. if you can see that e should try to do everything we are trying, the argument is harder. all kinds of things are on the table. people talk about cutting social security in the future or medicare. we are out of the easy things to cut. not entirely. the proposal that we could give one and $47 million a year to present and cotton farmers to of state the subsidies we get to american farmers is stupid. we should be able to treat it that one. that is a fear this small amount of money. that is an actual proposal.

that is why i wanted to broaden the debate. this is not a weapon system by weapon system argument. it is an effort to redefine the mission. then you can scale back to the better mission. >> you put tri-care that is a nonstarter. what you think is most appealing? it had to pick your top three. >> think the reduction in the reach of the commitments, scaling back the troops in asia and europe, particularly europe. i talked to my colleagues. scaling back the number of nuclear weapons. given what has happened with the soviet union. i believe missile defense is another area where there is a great deal of appeal.

is there a specific -- you talked about achieving a sustainable level? do you have a number in mind? do you want to go half a where we are now, pre-9/11 numbers? i know i asked whether you thought you could succeee, but there are important questions raised if you cancel an international program ttat has a lot of a buy in and people invested. what alternatives do you propose that can fill that and not alienate aid to international partners? >> we yardy had to countries drop out of the f 35. other countries when they take a look at the increasing cost of

the f-35, i do not think that will be the problem. the other thing is the navy pops out, which they said they want to, you can not been produced enough to make the cost reasonable for a rather partners. the me give you round numbers. if you look at the obama budget, by 2015, they are talking about a defense budget of $695 billion. miracles,miracle of they were abll to persuade all, if you get down to $600 billion -- 50 billion of that is war costs. that to be more than we were spending before 9/11. it would be more than we spent

during the cold war. we are spending more than in world war ii. i think it is important to put these into context. if you look at the report, you become much it is grown. even if you took everything, you -pwill still be spending 1.5 tis more than mere potential adversaries. those are things when you say this to people, they say now i understand. in the report, it is pointed out during the cold war we spent about 60% as much of our

adversaries. you'd still be back at 150%. >> what is a sustainable level you are of looking for? is there agreement among you to police returned to the pre-9/11 level? >> we are talking about reducing $1 trillion. with the strategic restraint, $1.10 trillion less than was there. i think if you ask anyone what you would to get, you might get a lower number. we are operating with in that context. let me go back to the f-35. it depends on how it is defined. if you assume the to keep spending all the money, then the case for competition become stronger. if the discredit the whole

thing, then you are ok. that is what i am for. i think the president has asked for too little. he is the one to get what is asked for. i would suffice and to tell us what we do not need. there is a qualification that every should have. you cannot get the technical performance, its accuracy comedy eased to be used by the personnel. none works if it does not have an enemy. what end without enemies are kind of a waste. -- weapons without enemies are kind of a waste. we have outstripped that. there are superior weapons currently available that we have to get to the next generation, even if there is no ddmand. any question? >> do you think that they can catch on and while there is

still this mentality? the budget. the way we do the military budget, it is like having a lawyer on retainer. iffwe go to war, that is extra. we have the base military budget. we have deliberately stayed away here. i think we ought to be out of iraq very soon. we did not want to get into that debate as to whether or not -- nothing in here undercut what we -pwould be providing for the troops currently in the field. the argument though is, let's not have any more iraq's and afghanistans.

the answer to that is less not get into those things in the future unnecessarily. nothing we are talking about here would undercut raq and afghanistan. i think that makes it possible. we have people who supported both of those. >> this is in response to two of the questions. we are doing something very different. we are moving outside the process. the deficit reduction commissioned is outside the process in a sense. when we the that what is happening in the country, some of the difficulties and particulars are not really compelling people outside the beltway. i think what we are of looking at for the congressional elections is a perfect political

storm. that is what we are facing, a perfect political storm that is based on the need to get our financial house in order. people to find that in different ways. some focus on the deficit.+ that is a game changer. the way we need to approach this issue is to think that there are really three pivot points for our security policies, three that we need to keep in mind. one with the end of the cold one was the 9/11 attacks. the third, which need to be elevated to a concern, is the meltdown of 2007-2008. i think we need to take that to heart. that means thinking about security in different ways and in dding things that inside the beltway seem quite difficult. because of the interests that are disturbed. i think we will find a certain degree of support outside the beltway.

there people are thinking that a major change is required. what we are doing is saying, let's turn ourselves to providing people with options to change that matters, that really matters. >> but needed questions the -- let me take questions for this in particular. >> i wanted to put something in the question that is not exactly a question. >> please. >> you were talking and rhetorically ask, why do we need those things? the question answers itself. in all of the panel discussions, there is no mention of what drives the defense budget. it is not because they are surrounded by enemies. it is the military. >> that is a part of it. there is a real fear there.

there is a concern about terrorism. i think that is too reductionist in the argument. there was a factor. there was also -- we have allowed to go unchallenged for too long with the notion that we have to be there. nato is driven by the military complex. i think it is japan -- driven by this year. >> i would like to commend the group for the need to stop by the pentagon. -- stoplight the pentagon. i have an effort separate from this. i wanted to ask you, your experience recently with the trans partisan coming from outside the beltway. >> i'm not one to go into that right now. is there a question on the voluntary spending for the panel? >> the panel discusses what is

necessary and what is not. those are both pretty and more storms -- ambiguous terms. what would you deem as "necessary?" >> the human rights issues have not been because of the military spending does anyone want to address that? >> the point the be emphasized in the report is that we are not the only country on the planet that is concerned about human rights. we are not the only country on the planet concerned about the security of places or regions or countries. yet, we behave as though we are. is averting acern human right or natural disaster,

my argument is we can conceive of a place in the future were other countries are capable of doing that as well and it is not always the responsibility of the u.s. trip and taxpayers. that is all. >> about human rights. of course the united states need to be the example of how we would like the world to be run. we have smart securities, a smarter way to deal with each other around the world. i like to just say something about that. rather than guns and bullets and airplanes and ships, we could invest over the long term in dealing with each other,

humans, civilly where we help each other with infrastructure, education, health care. we have to find a different way to deal human to human. civil rights, yes, we need to support that. we have to fiid a way to set the example for solving our differences. you talk about people saying, you can never do that. if we do not do it, all these weapons in the world are not going to save us from annihilating each other. civil rights, human rights. there are smarter ways to do it. as the but at what we are doing here, that is step one. not investing in things we do not need. let's start investing in preventing why we have to have

these weapons in the first place. thank you. >> what i would like to see military intervention for military purposes. then there will be when the worst people to do that because of the suspicion and criticism, most of which is unfair. we will be working with other nations regionally and elsewhere to be supportive of those interventions. i cannot think of cases wheee a direct american intervention would be politically the best thing to do. i do not been politically within the united states, i mean in terms of the impact within the3 any other questions about the spending? yes? and a lot of cost skyrocketed. >> perhaps the stand at the we could hear you. >> [inaudible]

i was curious if it was ever considered when you were looking at future directions to go back to the draft idea? that allows you to surge when you need to. let me >>put it this way. we did not discuss this. i had a role in treating making the transition. we basically had three components. ooe was a comparatively small active duty force them had previously, a guard and reserve with a strategic bridge to the draft. we did not do that this time. in my view, we acted immorally by employing them without sufficient time at home. because of that, i would argue that what happened is then you

put all kinds of special pay in there. that joke costs. that is not what we are talking about. we are talking a two things. when you decide the annual pay rate, which has become a bone of contention between gate and the congress, he need a different base. you should not used as base pay. is to be regular military compensation. if you did that, that was put on the growth in personnel costs. ri-care copaysi have not gone up since 1975. we need to have that debate. thetri-care right now is $19 a month. for a family, it is double that. even the military chiefs has said that cannot continue. comby

substantial part of this as well. no more unwise, large ground scale interventions save you money because of the impact of combat pay. >> larry certification and a time when forces were there. there is a misconception that the all volunteer force is far morr costly. you have to capture the cost of very high turnover. you lose a lot of it. at a philosophical level, we have to capture the cost of%+ compelling people to serve against their will. it is hard to put a monetary figure on that. my argument is that society pays for the things and values. a very small number of people. >> i agree with chris that

essentially the voluntary military has worked. it has produced the best fighting force in the world. i just think it is smart to think about going back. it does propose certain constraints. it is a quality over quantity approach. when asked that forced to enggge in very large scale slogs like we have in afghanistan, this drive costs up. the pentagon has to bid higher and higher to hold and get people. part of the problem we have had, we've been trying to fight president john's singh war with president reagan's military. we are not suited for this type of fighting. we put it together in part of a reaction to the vietnam experience. our assumption is that, in fact,

regardless of how you feel about these wars, nobody talks much aaout that was a good idea and let's do it again. when people look back and say that was an investment of $1 trillion focus on about 1% of the world's people, how much progress were be able to buy? we spent a year in and year out and we are still spending some better equal to the gross national product of those countries. we could buy them. i just think anyone is thinking about repeating that. what we want to do is lock in something of a guarantee. >> nobody is putting the ground

troops. i think it goes back to human rights. the foccs ought to be on the democratic societies that might be managed by external in many -- external in many as -- external enemies. it is counterproductive. any other questions? >> what happens to the report now? how we get it on the floor? how will you get people involved? veterans, on the hill. >> the one part of this report that will not get much congressional support is tri- care.

other than that, i think it is in the interest of many of the people who are most opposed to the kind of things people who have been there in afghanistan. veterans have a major role. one to make it clear that we are a properly defining national security, i think we do it. i am hoping that every organization in this country that want to see more spending on domestic quality of life and lower taxes will join this effort. we need to make good the people. i would urge people.

we would urge people to join the letter that we will be sending. we will be writing to our colleagues saying do not come home without this. do not try to get deficit reduction that does not incllde military spending reductions. >> i am wondering if there is a comparable letter on the senate side? >> he has been talking to a republican senator. >> the panel is putting this together. did you find any support in the

pentagon? i think that there is within the armed force, they are beginning to -- they see the reality of the problem that the nation is facing. there is not a lot of agreement. how did formally reached out? yes. a lot more needs to be done. we really to scratch the suuface. there are broad areas that we have not been able to look at closely get. i think we will be able to find more. the important thing is that we begin a dialogue and that it be based on a different approach. we need to be rethinking security and rebalancing our notions and seeing that every part of the government has to play some role in deficit reduction. if we have all been on that

page, i think we can work productively. there is awareness in the armed forces. a change seems to happen. we need to begin to have a dialogue. >> he is doing have a what we are talking about. he is talking about making some of the reductions. he would want to reprogram it all within the war fighting. on the part about the ability to reduce some of the systems, secretary gates says it has been pretty far reaching. i have been talking to some of my colleagues. they are fairly well committed to keeping the military spending up. there are other committees of jurisdiction over this area. i am hoping to have a hearing to which the members will be

invited to talk about this. >> we will be meeting with the comptroller of this afternoon. >> we will beginning to do this. >> we are going this direction. we put it on the savings. the distance and not want to recycle to be on tap and wheat is to the one recycle to be on tap. thank you. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national

[captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] >> up next, admiraa alan updates reporters on the oil spill cleanup. then house speaker nancy pelosi speaks. after that, more on the oil spill with representative bill cassidy. now, admiral allen gives an update on the oil spill. he gives a summary of the personnel involved, including contractors, coast guard, national guard and volunteers, and how the coast guard plans to bring additional resources to that area. this issabout 25 minutes. >> good morning. we will follow the standard format. admiral mullen will give the update and then we will take questions. len will give the

update and then we will take questions. >> i am going to talk a little bit about the response and some of the skipper's, which have become increasingly important in that the response. just to summarize where we are at on this friday, about 25,000 people are on the ground down there. this has become the largest oil spill response in our nation's history. with over 1200 coastguardsman, 1400 national guardsmen, 3700 contractors, and hundreds of volunteers. -pan enormous amount of equipmet is in the area, most notably a 400 skimmer's oo duty around the gulf, 500 barges, 2500 government contract vessels, and more than $2 and the vessels of opportunity using local waterman -- 2000 vessels of opportunity

is using local watermen and their knowledge of the area. we are also moving as much oil as we can to the surface around the well site, as you know. the further out, as we get toward shore, we significantly increase our skimming capability. the oil has to be decanted from that. our yield is usually around 7%- 15% from that. we have burned millions of gallons of oil. we have started to limit debt dispersants on the surface to where we needed for safety reasons. we are putting down organic compounds. we are trying to limit our dispersant application to the subsea injections. over 4 million gallons have been recovered from the containment cap so far. we continue to try to mobilize

resources, and have empaneled a strategic resources team to take a look. just to give you an idea of what is in a national inventory, and we are going to have some meetings later on todaa and through the weekend about how we might want to redeploy assets and how that might happen through the country, nationally, there are a little over two thousand zero skimmers out there available for use. there are over four thousand feet of ocean boom, which is a heavy duty of them -- heavy- duty boom. we are going to be doing a risk analysis of what we can bring to the area, and also the international assets that we are seeking, and going to come up with a way to a mass of our forces more effectively, especially in the area between the shoreline and out about 50

miles. abrogates -- aggregate, and we are trying to figure out how to deal with that moving forward. we're going to be making adjustments for whatever increase there may have been after they cut the pipe. we are also looking for pressure gauges down by the blowout preventer to try to corroborate what might have happened both before and after the cut. it is an immense operation going on down there. we are deploying teams today, and will be next week, to take a look at the claims process. that continues with our oversight of bp. any questions? >> on monday, you said that the

discovery enterprise on route, it would have a combined capability of 25,000 arrels of oil per day. now the estimates are that 30,000 barrelss maybe 40,000 barrels are leaking per day. isn't it true that even if you were getting everything the through the pipe that you could, used to do not -- you still do not have the capacity topside to deal with that? >> as it stands right now, the capabilities of the discovery enterprise and the q-4000 is 18,000 combined.

we have asked bp to provide us with a plan. we will rrview that today. later today, we will put out a statement regarding our review of that plan and the way to move forward. we have told bp that we need not only increased capacity, but also redundancy. we hope that by the time we have the new system put in, we should be able to store 40,000-50,000 barrels per day. the issue is getting bp to move quickly to establish redundancy. >> if you had had those numbers earlier, would you have been able to address that capacity? >> the tanker has a dynamic positioning system. because of the way they produce oil in the gulf, the water is piped in. we do not use the same type of

tanker that they use in the north sea. i say "we," collectively is the industry. is everybody. >> what criteria and requirements are you using to track these essels? >> some of the skimmers are self-contained. other systems are systems that you towed behind a vessel and step away to evacuate it. we are trying to put the skimming equipment into the hands of the vessels of opportunity out there. they will back him ii the oil out and continue working. -- vacuum the oil out and continue working.

there is some safety training involved, and that is what we are about. do you trust tony hayward? >> the fact of the matter is, we have to have a productive, cooperative relationship for this thing to move forward. this has to be a unifiid effort or we are not going to get this thing solved. if you call that trust, yes. >> local louisiana officials told a senate subcommittee about frustrations with the government's response. he said he still does not know who is in charge, bp or the coast guard. he says he spends more time fighting bp officials and coast guard officials and oil. what is going on there? weeks ago, we sent

letters to perish president letting them know that they can use coastguard officers to get whatever help they need. i would ask those gentlemen to tell me what their problems were and who theyyask and what happened. i would be able to respond. we have had coastguard officers standing next to those guys for three weeks. >> you're not hearing the frustration? >> we have a call every evening with the parish liaison officers and louisiana. the parish presidents have a conduit directly into the national incident command and the administration every night on a conference call. i would be glad to deal with the specific issues that they raised, but i met with them and the president. the response was to put coastguard officers there. they have specific issues they would like to raise, i would be happy to answer them. >> [unintelligible]

>> we are more than willing to consider the jones act waivers, but we need to have a little bit of homework done. has there been an assessment of national inventory? are there any alternative methods? are there issues regarding crew or anything else? we are prepared to consider wwiving the jones act, should that become necessary. >> is it possible that there are too many vessels on the water? >> right at the well site itself, there is a limit to how much activity you can bring their. we have the discovery vessel, the q-4000, a driller, and something drilling a second relief well. ro everyv has a plot -- every

rov has a platform that is being operated from. there is an issue about the complexion of that space. there is an issue about conflict in the space above the sea floor. >> you said you were hoping to capture 40,000-pity thousand barrels of oil per day. how much are you capturing -- 40,000-50,000 barrels of oil per day. how much are you capturing? >> between the middle of june and the first week or so of july, we are going to start incrementally billing out a new mooring system. vessels will be linked to tankers that can accommodate a greater fllw rate. then we will shift to a more

hard cap. that will help us capture more, if not all of the oil flowing from the well. we are in the process of giving them a feedback on the time lines in their proposal right now. that is the letter that we require them to give us within the senate to ours. once secretary salazar and secretary chu have looked at that, we will have a conference call to make sure we understand theetime element paris is it soon enough? then we will properly task assignment out. they need the shuttle tankers because production platforms have to be shipped by hose and then go ashore. >> what is their assessment of the flow now? >> that is what they have

proffered in the plan that they are -- that we are reviewing right now. we are checking to see if the plan they have given us is appropriate and meets all requirements. we will also require them to be flexible in the future. they have brought in systems that have a generic capacity, which is in this case is 40 belsen-50,000 barrels. -- 40,000-50,000 barrels. >> was it the president's idea to invite bp to the white houue? >> i have had several conversations with tony hayward about it. there will be some more conversations about the agenda which will specifically address issues on both sides. we want to come up with some measurable outcomes are related+ to both bp and the administration.

>> was this the present's ideas? >> -- was this the president's idea? >> it was time to sit down and talk. i speak to tony hayward daily. >> is it your assumption that the amount of flow has dramatically increased? >> there are conflicting opinions. some say the difference is negligible. some say it is much more than we thought. that is why we want to get the pressure readings. that is being dealt with by secretary salazar at c secretaryhu -- and secretary chu with the bp folks. we're trying to get some empirical data down there.

if you look at the pressure readings we were taking before the top kill exercise, what we need to do is go down and take the pressure readings again. we were all about the pressure readings before, and now we need to go down and get them again to see where we are at. then we can assess the flow based on empirical data. >> why is there only one cap? >> there is concern about the stability of the cap. they are slowly ratcheting the choke up. >> it is not because they cannot handle the flow? >> no, they can handle it. >> good mmrning.

we asked a question earlier in the eek about how many birds and animals had been treated thus far. could we get an update on that? also, there was video yesterday of a whale washing up on a beach in new york. what do you know about the possibility that that is related to this? what do you and the president hope to learn from the meeting next week that you do not already know? >> first of all, i did not bring the wildlife numbers with me. any time there is a marine mammal dust anywhere within the vicinity, there is concern that it was related. i will reach out about that whale and see if there is any link.

if there is any concern about, we will check it out. regarding the meeting, the agenda is being developed. there are lists of concerns on both sides, and we are working through that today. it will be a combination of bp issues and to the issues we want it is a work in progress. it is on my work list for today. >> i am calling from bloomberg. [unintelligible] how much to you think has been cleaned so far, and how much do you think it will cost?

>> the cost being incurred are approaching $140 million right now. as far as bp's cost, i do not have that with me right now. we are going to keep pouring assets in there, so at this point i would call the indeterminate period -- i call the cleanup time indeterminate. >> where is the oil going to be taken? which refineries will it go to? will it need to be specially treated at those refineries? >> the oil is brought to the surface on the discovery enterprise. at that point, the natural gas is separated.

then the rest of the oil is separated from water and set -- sediment. it is put on a tanker and shipped to a refinery. by the time it leaves the discovery enterprise, it is crude oil and ready for production. i will find out where they're having it produced and get back to you. it probably depends on the cappcity of the refinery, and it may not be the same one every time. >> i want to go back to the 40,000-50,000 barrel per day capacity. you said that the vessels that are coming will provide that capacity. is that a hurricane ready system? >> that is correct.

i would not say hurricane-ready. i would say more hurricane- durable. let me walk you through a time line. this might be easier to understand. right now, from the discovery enterprise, we are operating at a range of 15,000-18,000 barrel per day capacity. the q-4000 has the capacity to go to 10,000 barrels per day. the combined capacity will be 28,000 barrels per day. in addition, we have asked to bring in a second processing vessel to be able to work with q-4000. that is called the clear leader. that will add a 100000 barrel capacity per day. so, in mid-june we will be at a 38,000 barrel per day capacity. that will ultimately be replaced

by a new containment system which will allow us greater capacity but also the ability to disconnect quickly in the case of heavy weather. a shuttle tanker is enroute from they will be flaring gas off, producing oil and transferring it to a shuttle tanker. another shuttle tanker is being acquired because we require a redundancy. that tanker has yet to be identified. between the two of them, they will have a capacity between 20,000 and 25,000 barrels per day. if you add that up, that makes it between 40,050 thousand. that takes us to mid-july. >> so the combination will

replace the discovery enterprise and theq-4000? >> that is correct. the reason we are replacing it is because the current production structure has a six- riser pipe coming from the well head up to the discovery enterprise. we are going to increase the capacity we have right now by taking a joke lines and reversing the flow of oil out of them. -- choke lines and reversing the flow of oil out of them. we are going to create a host that comes off of the side. ultimately, we do not want a fixed riser pipe. what we are constructing for the next containment straaegy is a riser pipe that is anchored to

the bottom of the ocean that has a buoy on the top. there is a flexible cable that goes to the well heaa, to a permanent cap. a hose comes off the top and processes of the oil to the tankers. these will be larger vessels with better see capabilities. they have dynamic positioning capability, which is the same capability of the drill rig, which keeps them right over the same spot while they are drilling. they will need that it as they moved toward the tanker, the source of storage, that cannot move a very far. was that helpful? >> yes, just one more. the clear leader is a drillship, correct?

>> it is similar to the discovery enterprise, yes. >> will the clear leader stay on site? will a q the-4000 -- so, the q- 4000 will no longer be used, but will the clear leader in state? >> at some point, there is going to be a transition period. the current vessels will be replaced with production platforms and tankers that give us the redundancy and the capacity required. >> so the actual burning off of

q-4000 is notq-40e going to last very long? >> that is the strategy. >> thank you very much. >> admiral, will there be briefings this weekend, do you know? >> to be determined. >> a look now at the deepwater horizon explosion site. you can see the flotilla at the site. you can also see the burning off of natural gas from the leak.

>> house speaker nancy pelosi spent much of her weekly briefing on the gulf coast oil spill. this is just over 25 minutes. >> good morning. it has been quite a week. we continue to focus on the tragedy, the disaster in the gulf of mexico. i also came in here to talk about sports. i stayed up late watching the nba. i also watched chicago win the stanley cup. now, the world cup does command a lot of attention. of course, i was watching the lacrosse championship. this week, much of the focus has been what is happening in the

gulf, because we had a visit on capitol hill of families that brought their loved ones there. we met with them in the capital. it was very moving to hear their stories just weeks after they lost their loved ones, their husbands, their fathers, their sons. relatives and friends came to the capitol to tell their story, and as i said to them, you are the backbone of america and america is not going to forget you. they came here to advocate for change in high seas block, and we assured them that will happen. -- high seas law, and we assured them that will happen. we would change the distance from shore and change what is covered, what the liability

extends to. we had a leadership meeting with the president where a good deal of time was spent on what is happening in the gulf, as well as other legislative issues on the agenda. i was very pleased that the president and the attorney general are very involved in what has happened there. congress is having plenty of hearings around this issue, a round integrity, the integrity that bp stated that they had the technology to drill, to prevent+ this happening, and that they have the technology to clean up. none of these things happened to be a fact. so, the attend -- the integrity issue is before the attorney

general. we have split up the minerals management service administratively. we want to do that in a lot as well. we are dealing with integrity, liability reform, protection of the workers, a private sector a search for as, drilling technologies that are better, and again, finding ways to prevent a blowout, and in dealing with it if it happens, and of course, the cleanup. we want to make sure that the coast guard has what it needs to deal with what it faces in these

circumstances. this and other priorities are being reviewed by the chairman of the various committees. some have already written bills. they talk about reform, mms, the adequacy of the royalty and the royalty holidays. the list goes on. the oil pollution act of 1990 is a bill that did not fully take into consideration deep waaer drilling. that legislation has to be updated. we need to collect the facts so that we have a factual basis from which to proceed. that back from 1990 has very strong -- that act from 1990 has

very strong language regarding liability from whoever caused this, in this case bp, to compensate workers in that the region for their loss. there is a 75 million-dollar cap if there is no negligence. that is why the attorney general is looking into this. it is important to see if there was negligence. if there was, we will raise that cap. we also want to make sure everybody understands that bp has a responsibility to make good on the lot in terms of its obligations to the workers and to the businesses and the region, and to do it in a reasonable time. i have said that to see bp to spend all this money on advertising, and the dividends they are paying, they really have an obligation to first --

it may be good public relations for them to advertise, but they need to pay these workers and these businesses. some meetings were held on site on monday in new orleans, but the hearings continue in congress. the chairman of the judiciary committee will be having -- will be introducing "the spill act," which will revised the death on the high seas legislation. that was updated last in 1920, so it is long overdue. it needs to acknowledge deepwater drilling and the rest and be uprooted again. -- upgraded again. yesterday, as you know, the wall

street reform conference came together for the first time. we will be resolving differences between house and senate legislation. i think it was today that the money went out to the seniors to close of the doughnut hole. we are very pleased about what is going on, we passed on the floor yesterday legislation to maae sure that the money still flows from the trust fund to address the concerns in the gulf of mexico, just to get back to our legislative agenda, and we also passed the fha bill. there were only four votes again, very strong bipartisan support for that bill.

that is -- the next step is for us to have a small business credit, a lending credit bill on the floor. that is very important for small businesses, recognizing that they are the job creators. barney frank is working on the wall street reform legislation as well. this is what our week was like here. any questions? >> in the employee nondiscrimination act, how confident are you that if that measure came to the floor it would be able to pass? >> we were able to passed the bill with a 40 vote majority in the council last thursday. we're very proud of that vote. in the senate however, the next day, when the full measure came

to the floor to pass a defense authooization bill, only nine republicans voted to pass a defense bill. this is historic. only nine republicans voted for defense authorization because "don't ask, don't tell" was in the the bill. this is a personal priirity for me. because of the defense bill came up now, we did "don't ask don't tell" bill. nine republicans voted for it the repeal of don't ask don't tell. only four more voted for the department of defense bill.

i want to make sure i am not repeating people, but since it has been like a week and have, i do not remember who had the last question. >> given the history and bipartisan support of a bill that passed in 2006, do think you can still pass the bill? >> this legislation was brought to the freshmen meeting the other day. he said, if you want to sign this bill, that come to my office. i said, no, let's see a show of hands right here. he is collecting sponsors for it. i like to see how the votes are going. that is something i certainly support.

>> 5 chairman from oil companies are going to be here next week. what do you expect to hear from them? what is on your mind? >> what we want to hear is the truth. in our committee, the focus has been integrity. integrity of the environment and the ecological system. integrity of the economy that is affected by this, but also the integrity of what they tell us. bp represented that this deepwater drilling had the technology to succeed, to have blown up prevention, and of course, it is -- if something went wrong, the cleanup. as we know, the technology to drill is well ahead of the technology to clean up.

this has been a big challenge. it is a big issue, and the federal government has responded in a bigger way than it ever has to any other environmental disaster. of course, this is probably the biggest environmental disaster. we want to hear the truth from them, because i think tte evidence is clear rom wwat happened in the gulf that we need a new energy policy. of course we want to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, but that does not mean we have to dig deeper into the planet unless we really know what we are doing. if they did not know what they were doing, or diddnot care that they did not know what they are doing, but represented that the technology was better than it was, instead, we should be looking above ground to the wind, the sun, the soil to fuel our cars, run our factories. that will require a transition,

and we will continue using petroleum products. i am not saying let's stop everything else and wait around for renewable spirit we have to -ptransition to that purify bute should not be -- transition to that. but we should not be digging in a riskier waa that can cause tremendous damage when we know that there are alternatives. what we want to hear is, why are they not telling us the truth? i am not painting all of them with a big bp brush. i think they are all probably disappointed with bp, but that is for them to say. and then let's look at the larger picture of how we do whatever we do to make the best of our economy, to preserve our planet, to clean the air, to create jobs, to have a national security energy policy that

reduces our dependence on foreign oil. the president has said, and he was referencing in germany and china, that the company -- the countries that lead the green revolution will be the next global leaders. we ant to hear from them about the bigger picture. they should have led the fight decades ago. >> do you support the idea of an unlimited liability cap? >> i do, yes. >> what do you see as the taxpayer role? >> let me be very clear. bp is responsible for the cleanup. anything we are doing in advance of that must be compensated back to the taxpayer. this is bp's resppnsibility. the capital -- the capture of

the act in 1990 is 75 -- the cap from the act in 1990 is $75 million, if there is no liability. i think now, looking at the size of the damage and the rest, why should there be a cap? bp is going to pay the bill. they're going to pay the bill for the cceanup. they're going to pay the bill for making good on a loss of livelihood for the workers and businesses in the region. there will be no taxpayer dollars that are not repaid by british petroleum. bp. i guess they changed their name recently. some of us are used to the old name.

in any event, i am for no cap. and there is no cap if there is negligence involved. >> the chatter on the internet was critical saying, why not fix what is going on in the gulf and then look at what we need to do to change it? >> or they saying that bp and the taxpayer should be footing the bill? if so, i disagree. >> is congress and somehow getting in the way by calling officials from bp, and the coastguard appeared -- from bp

and the coast guard appear when they should be down there addressing this bill? >> know. the fact is, we have to make decisions. very calmly, people said, let us get the facts. we cannot act until we know what is happening here. what we have learned is that bp and misrepresented what the technology could do. they misrepresented the number of barrels, the amount of oil being spewed forth into the gulf, and continue to do so. we finally have an update of the minimum of what is in the gulf. it is much higher than what bp said. if you have cut your hair or sent diapers for the cleanup, you know that is not the technology of the future.

so, i think it is very appropriate that time was given it to focus on what the parameters or her, what actually happened at the site. one day it was, halliburton did not do the cement right. you remember, there was finger- pointing. that is what the hearings were about. some of them have taken place on location down there, on site. some have taken place here. but we have a responsibility for oversight. we must move quickly to, for example, give comfort to the families that they will be taken care of when we changed the spill act from the "death on the high seas," which is now 90

years old. some people, traditionally republican as a matter of fact, do not want to know the facts, because then you might have to act upon them. the less you know, the less you have to do. i do not subscribe to that. i have said that the responsibility right now is to the families in the region who have lost their jobs, their businesses, their livelihood. if you are a shrimper or a fisherman, may and june are your big month in the gulf. under the oil pollution act of 1990 -- and if you would like me to read it to you, i can -- they have a responsibility to pay these people in a timely fashion.

we have an expression in appropriations that an anecdote is not data. but there are enough anecdotes and stories, and there is empirical knowledge of what is happening there that says that they are not responding quickly enough. that is why i was pleased that the department of homeland security and pp came to an understanding that they would expedite this. but i think we have to watch this very closely. they have -- before they spend money on advertising as saying they are going to spend the claim -- pay the claim, they should pay the claim. they should do that before they pay any dividends. the damage is equal to the loss of profits or earning capacity due to the damage or loss -- well, this goes on and on. this is the oil pollution act of 1990.

page seven. >> is it your intention to packet a series of bills? >> i do not know. we will make that decision when we see. pthere is is a bill that was written one year ago that addresses these concerns in anticipation -- well, in recognition of the need to make these reforms. the research bill is a bill by a congresswoman that was presented by the chairman at our meeting. some of the bills are written

and some of them must be updated. of course, the transportation committee has a big piece of the rest. we will just take a look and see wwat we can do. of course, this bill act, as i mentioned to you. we will see how they will move. no decision has been made about bundling or the other. most likely, we will probably take them as they are ready. for example, this bill act is urgent now. we are insisting that these people be made whole now. this is not data, but it is instructive. one of the people who testified at hearings on monday -- this is what happened. his family has been in thee

fishing business. they have documented that last may, $27,000 is what they made. bp met with them. they filed a claim. they had all of the ddcumentation and all of the paperwork. bp gave them $5,000. this man is 53 years old. five families are dependent upon that monthly income. this is not right for bp to send them a check for $5,000. we want to make sure that these people are made whole for the losses they suffered because of a bp. it should happen before they pay any dividends. dividends are something you pay because he made a profit. it is not something you pay off before you take care of your expenses. >> they are saying and the

senate that they will not move the the and i nomination until that bill passes -- the dni nomination until that bill passes. >> on the floor of the house, the defense authorization bill had an amendment to that effect that prevailed upon the floor. the white house had some level of discomfort with that. we're having a conversation with them to try to resolve that issue. they should not be paying dividends until they make these people. they should make a better effort to do it in a timely fashion. these people are coming to us and saying, i have to take out a loan -- you know the stories.

you read them. i have to take out a loan which i can still afford to repay because bp -- i can ill-afford to repay because bp is not giving me the money. bp made $17 billion last year. in profit. and these people have to struggle to get a few thousand dollars from them when they are on the margin and their livelihood has been either destroyed or harmed greatly by that. all i am saying is, i respect that they believe there judiciary responsibility is to their shareholders, but the first and foremost have a responsibillty to pay their bills. these are their bills. thank you very much.

[captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] >> next week, president obama makes a two day visit to the gulf to to our recovery efforts in mississippi, alabama and florida. hearings on the oil spill continue on capitol hill and elsewhere. tuesday, the heads f the u.s. energy policy before the on subcommittee on the environment. the white house has invited bp executives to meet with the president on wednesday. b p c l tunny hayward makes his first appearance before congress -- bp ceo tony hayward makes his first appearance before congress next week. all of that will be covered live

on c-span. now, more on the impact of the gulf oil spill with the louisiana congressman. this is from today's "washington journal." tlor, thank you f us this morning. now we want to turn r attenti to t oil sill and is with us, republican representative from is -- a sixth district. tell us where the oil spill is in relation to your district. guest: my distctis the capital city of vekton errors. if you think of -- of tha baton ro if you think of it lik a boot, it is where thraces ar -- the laces are.

host: how concerned are your parish'about this guest: it has clearly affected thefisheries an tourism, and now we see this as a thirdhit the economieof t region. host: and how much of yourarea is related to the gas and oil industry? est: if we are just gng to speak of the deepater of rigs are going to be affected by the moratorium, i'm told that there are 25 deepwater g jobs. aneach of those has fourxd or five spin-off jobs. the deepwater rate droprig jobse

high-paying position. we say there are growing -- be a six montho moratorium, those wages are lost. there is truly a human dimension this. host:we are tking to bill cassady. the numbers are on the screen. you wrote a piece for politico that obama shouldake the long view on this bl. the ministon has come ou will go ahead and allod shallow war drilling. gst: and that is very nice of them. that is very different fm deep water. rig. a de water

70% of our new oil productn in u.s. coming from deep rigs. i am told about 40% of our natural gas is. that isreally the gwth area, if you wl. the problem with this moratorium is th these floati rigs from drove twork for $500,000 a day. if this moratorm extends, they will float those rigs to brazil or the coast of africa or elsewhere, and begin a job there. jobsre not just lost for six months. they are lost in perpetuity. host: are you hearing from the compies all er this issue? guest: havelearned in this job to say what i have been told, not what i know. but morgantanley has said that only one in 20 chance

moratorium will end in six months if a moratorium is instituted. if you're a persont( that works for $500,000 per day anit only you two weeks to flow to the coast of africa with a one in 20 chance, would you decide? host: why not step back and given the outcome of this oil spill, the impact on the shoreline, which is also jobs, t fherman, e shrimpers who cannot do because of the oil spill, why not take a stepack and wait guest: there is a plan fo increasing safety. it is from t national academy of engineerin i believe. and they mention these experts hey pee saying tha reviewed the recommendation.

but experts came out yesterday with a skating revival of that, saying that they do not agree scathing rebuttal of that saying that they do not with the moratorium. the prest said his administration would be guided by a science and not politics. here is a decision that is being guided by politics and not by sciee. the scntists say you can continue to do your illing and l and they do not favor the moratorium and when they speak to e fishermen, they also favor host:t( maryland, democratic line, shawn, you are on the air. caller: i have a few questions y. was the psident's job in haling the spill in louisiana? d what is your job in handling

a spill li it is now? guest: the president is charge and he has that he is in charge. qas a leglator, i do not have executive responsibility. i wi i did, but i doot. my job is to inveigate and things and tryto toreaten environment where right decisions are made. host: >> phone call, michigan, pepublic line, bri, good morning. caller: every martial law in th world in speaking of these ships that can actually stop the oil gulf, i have listened to the coast guard. i havesailed a lot of watersu÷. if you put an airal and his

staffñr in charge of this eration, bp needs to foot the bill f all of this as far as the second this - sucking this. i think if we have been in of thisrogram from the stted, certainly we bef further ong out. the weather is good now. if some of them have to paddle a caribbean for a while, -- paddle a round out in caribbean for while, fine. guest: i hav bee-- i he arned to say what i have been told, not what i know. okçóthey have discusse the fedel response and what they have said that rough seas iits the toskim. t waves of and the chopis

3 to 6 f they will not be to do skimming. the second thing is that the seabed, the dispersants' placed there disper instead of having oil that top and can be instead, it disperses it below the surface and cause now the world plum. thwill pme i not oil. it looks lik-- the oil plume oil.t like water. it just has a higher nctration of hydrocarbons. it better to raise it to the dispersed it at the bottom? if you dispersed it at the bottom, it is harder to skim at the top. the louisiana coasine is being terribly affecd. i am incredibly frustrated that research was notone before. host: next call from

massachusetts. caller: the skimming shi was offered from sweden or switzerland. if it had not had t jones law at it had to be run by americans and shipped by america, the only way to lead the waters -- and was given for free andt was a all thoseip used for bills. what about that one? guest: i am notamiliar with that particular incident. it seems an unusual application the jones law. the jones act says if you're like ao transport goods groceries from one states to united place in an american-built american flagship. about a deepking that -- a deep rig, which is a vessel,

transrring from one place to another. think it safe to say that a skimmer is transporting from one place to another. sure th the jonesact would affect that. host: the next call comes from ul, republic line, kalamazoo, michigan. you live with -- a you wi us? i tnk i lost the phoneall. t me ask a question and then we'll go back to phone calls. to liftingthe cap, there is rk done in the house and the senate. our gues on wedsday said that she thinks that legistion e to a vote bore the fourth of july recess. how will you vote on lifting the liability p? guest: first, let'smake a cole ofhings cear. lifting the liability cap is not-- does notardon this bill. that they will make everyone whole.

we have to look at the spending cap. ho: there is no way they wl retroacve? est: they could if ey wanted to. if t overall cos is $1 tnhey will be off total -- $1 billion. -- off the hook $1 billion. the second side is that it is in our national interest to look up the bill. reasonably speang, $75 milln low.o othof ir, ere are companies-nlyor on the other hand, there are bically onlyour companies that can drilln the gulf. it turns out there are about 10

if it is a balance, sort of a, let's raise it in a way that is reonable, also canno, a clean ua paid by themoney people that do the ploration to cover the cost of thisilill, it is basically one that is the hands of the five different cnies and no one else. host: chester on the democratic line in york, go ead. caller: i amery disappointed withhe way tha the government this oil spiil. i am disappointed in that allen. -- fadthad aallen.

i amisappointethat they came out and said it was a small oil, and now theyre was hopoit 110,000 barrels -- up to 100,000 barrelin the news. all thway of to the predent, no one wants to telthe truth. this isel over 10 times the exxon valdez. and we see thad allen coming on the . he haso compassion. everyone down there, you watch the impact in the gulf and the response that they d. you start crying looking at the people there.

we, as an american people, ar being told that everything is so complicated. talk about an oil company, which is the number- on oil company in the united stateshat does this. th know how much oiis coming up out of t ground. you cannot say that a business that is really well does not the ground.ming out of guest: i agree withou entily. of the thingsh has been very frustrating is the the initial response. if someone got really angry, -- seone got really agry, sources would not be focused. i kept making phonealls a

asking, dowe know how much oil is coming out? lo and beho, 5,0 brels per day, plus the gas. now they said that they have tryened a federal board to calculate this. maybe i am wrong. maybe they never told us in previous phone conferences that ought this to get there. not inyas recollection until weegan to mention it. host: whatabout bp's responsibility to know how much is coming fr that wealth? guest: in fairness to everyone, to the scientists, say it ii harder t estimate denny might think. we have to also -- then you might think. if we have to also acowledge the physics. there is less external pressure and the gas or oil expands as it

comes to the surface. we know there is a the 9.75 injured diamet of the pie. -- inner diameter of the pipe. there is a certain esre gradient between the bottom and thtop. all that to say, i can accept that it is a harder call to make. nd, it is should have bn started from day one. host: lcoln, neb., republican line. caller: have 30ears' pxpericeoth as a recd -- roughneck and a commercial diver gulf. and i hav sent along possible solutions i do not knowif bp has not

gotten them. i do not know. but the governor of louisiana, o ot ground the aircraft until they find ut what is on.g thsamehing is to be going on with the. those people need to work. and withhe jones act, that start suckinghe will of.ere and guest: i think it strikes me doug from lincoln, nebraska is working in the gulf. the facts that there are people employed across the natn the flight to the gulto work on these rigs. -- that fly to the gulf to work

on these rig that is beuse there is good money e made. and with a six month moratorium and all of these people trying exist on welfare checks. is not what they want. i was told by the coast gud -- again, i have been to, i don't know b tthe skimming has been delayed by the roughness of the seas, not the ships. host: next call from indiana. caller: i want to talk about possible to ean up the oil and are only ing certain thin. i wonder about the new

techlogies that we are not using, even though so many are saying they are the right thing toouse. est: in 2003, there was a report put out called il and the c." by the search -- national research council. in doubt, they collaborate to t the best way -- in that, collaborate to get the best wato handle oil in the ocean. threport indited that this not happen, but nevertheless, it seemed reasonable if we'reoing t do deep if there is a spill.t could is it better to disperse it at subsurface, or let it rise? there are folks th have given testimony and they're basically repeating the recommendations of 2003. now it can be done, d i think

took 500 barrels of oil out the north s 500 feet belo the surface and they releed it would happen. you do not wanto release it, but thedid it to what would happen. that was not ne in the waldr dee -- in deewater. when these actions are not acted upon, that is frustrating. host: and that is when in control.were gut: this is a bipartisan issue. this pticular well was in february, 200 will, this is aobama well.ration fromnitial permitting and a the way through all its adjustments, itas been on this

administration. tha there issay bipartisan way in. -- a bipartisan blame. host: there is a report in the journal" that bp waysidend cut. -- bp weighs dividend cut. you think they should delay that a dividend cut guest: what they do with their dividend does not matt to me long as they take ca of everyonelse. host: but if they're unable to take care of that commitment? guest: then pay the dividend. what they do itafte making whole, th is their

business. but let's make everyone whole first. host: next call from new jersey. xdcaller: i understand of the budget is going to be cut in the next upcomg process. this a car reason why the coast guard budget xtra be increased -- shou be increased and brought more into he pmitttng, rearch and chnoloes, and more advanced booming, etc. the coast guard budget? guest: i am a republican,not majority, but it does appear that it will be in the budget year. the democratic majoty will not submit a budget this year. secondly, they will be expsesund for alle hospital

elated to the spill -- from the spill trust fund f all exnses related to thepill. on of the proposals is that innerness would split -- whateverhey morph into because they have split into three agencies. obviouy, i would hopehat they would be funded to support the mo prominent role. host: south carolina, democratic line, wendy. caller: you said earlier that there should be a 10% tax on liability to maintain smaller --

able to operate in the gulf. what wouappen if one of the smaller, iependent comnies haveaused this lead? guest: every barrelf oil that brought into the united stat, i am told either by production or by importation on tanker, tre is a small fee that goes into the oil spill t fund. into the backstopor are unable -- they may be a $2 billion company, but uble to pay for somethg that this might do. . . >> we could say to allow it to increase more.

it there is a mechanism to address it. host: independent line. caller: and one to bring up one. . if this oil is taking care but the federal government, this is thing as a trust fund. the government spends all its money it gets. it borrows more because they do not have any. there is assisting as a trust fund. it is an item on the piece of paper. host: he explained it is funded with money from the oil and gas th. nd to that, ma'am. e frurating f th thingsbout washington -- i nd a half -- a t one of the frurating things is they're actually fee in increase that unt in o increase the amo the trust fund. f putting in escrow, full, for future spill, it's being used in the budgetary pross as a pay go expanded entitlements.

i actually smitted an amendment to kee that from happening. ploiting the misery of the n ople in the gulf coast a political ve goal of a fig leaf of fiscal responsibility to expand your g government safe. caller: that's not actually why ald. f there'sing e, i if to be a moratorium, it ought to be on the stilations that put forth nt has people of ts louisiana from doing anything g they can to clean up their coast, toake ess, because you t.n't go bacanchange i it's there. it's happening to be allowed total leeway to skim, to pick up, to r they to do whateve ry to clean thi p. host: congressman? gue: as a lisiana man, i harge.ou were in c he burn took 2 t s to permit. now, if theread been a real kind of energy and focus, i don't think it should have taken 2 1/2 weeks. let's say at least a wk, w interchange

betw the orinallans, the etc. ncerns, but 2 1/2 weeks. and then i'm told -- again, i've learned what i've been i know, b then i'told theredgers that woulbe used to make the burns are in the upper mississippi, n was il the decisio mae, the dredging, they were not begun toe towed. now, clearly that's a lack of alacrity. you need a focus and energy in he 2 esponse to shorten t 1/2-week period to a week. we in louisiana ar fstrated by that. thank you for you sympathy. host: melville, new york. republican line. alex, good morning. caller: good morning. to respond to the issue of removing or raising thliability limits. the notion that you puthe liabilithigh at $10 blion going to preclud smaller , i think as dills ingenuous.

wh about the notn of prate enterprise and buying insurae for that? carolina om north mentioned earlier, if you had little company and they created mess, the trust fund would cover i well, private enterprise a insurance would be fine. thisay it should underwrite e that the make sur with laws and safet werere to figure their values. uclear same with the n energy. weave limits on that for nuclear disasters. that? ughts on guest: great resnse. i would say, if we could take rican dom of the ame it o to the annel floor of the house of representatives,e'd all be better off. to ere would be a way rivate market in et a bond for that $10 million, that would be a good response. ll look at the legislation t possesses such. st: congressman, do you tweet? guest: i do. host: soo we here on the journal. we have one here.

how long does it take for an b.p. to the size of get tough u.s. red tape? best estimate. guest: well,t depends on what ou're speaking of. some of the concerns regarding -- let's back up. a drill, ty get an they app t a.d.p., an advanced permanent to drill. but when then when they make y get an akedses, the advanced permit to modify. now, one of the concerns is that, in the ms, they were sending to m.m.s. their modifications of their plan, and m.m.s. was sendi them back in fiveinutes. "the wall street journal" ur orted that, in a 24-ho period, three different a.p.m.'s were appliedor. so in o sense, it didn't take them any te at all to cut hh the red tape. on the other hand, in this particular example, since thers been criticisms from within industry and without

at b.p. did and how they drilled, how they constrted that well, perhaps in this case there shod have oversight. rous st: michigan, democratic line. bob, good morning. caller: good morning. representative cassidy, is the fact truth to -- guest: i've lost you, bob. host: wre going to have to ove cler: said that they thought the federal governmentught to b.p. y for this. guest: bob, i jus caut the statement.f your did somebody say in the house at the federal government that? help b.p. pay for anybody say that. saying the 's government should take over b.p.? guest: well, people want the federal government to federalize the response, if y will. o aspects to the spect is and one a what's happening at the sea level, where the well is

actually leaking. admiral thad allen has said, rightly so, theederal vernment doenot have the resources, nor the expertise, experience, etc., to te over that operation. level of response at the sea bed is ghtl industries, because we have the resources. now, in fairness, wt the government has done is theput goverent experts,s well experts from other companies to monitor what b. is doing sure it'sheir best effortso we've been told. the other level of the you will, isow do we mitigate and prevent environmental disasters. now, accordi to the oil b.p. a a , responsible party gets the main federal hat, but the to rnment has the ability wt to do. t again, that's, in a sense feralized, because thad allen to do, but . what b.p. still has some ability to, within that instruction, decide another. rse or

right.al next phone call hawaii, independent line. l, good morng. caller: yes, thank you for taking my call. thank you for c-span. patient with me, arid of mine who was a navy scientist in deep submergence assigned by the nixon administration to help resolve thoil spill inanta barbara in 19, they basically utilized seenage tent models for emge incident -- you trol just to rapidly con the spillage. one ing he mentioned was that the vy does have secrary of salvage, which was utilized not only duri oblemsike finding nuclear weapons underwater, butecause submergence technollgy, they should have had a larger hand in understanding exactly something o , especially with trip pointroblems.

he said that they basally to look very careful at havg a much stronger tool chest, and the navy's deep e and secretary of salvage already have too on the shelf for these kd h oblems becausehey deal wit all the time. gues again,ur 3:00 conference call,hich i've been fairlsafe about being on, where no m.m.s. and coast the specific e question was asked regarding d.o.d., or department of capabilities. those were considered. th traditional submarine is not rated to go 800 fee below a level, and so -- and this ,000 feet. so they do need remotely operated vehicles. felt that those within industry were d to work ly designe wells. thos in d.o.d., if i guess they have them, for whatever

ason we were tolwould not add to it. so d.d. has been consulted, per the pele who brief us, felt like they did not have role. host: next phone call, mnt vernon, new york, republican line. you're on the air. caller: thank you for taking my call. d like to engag representive cassidy one-on-onif you'll entertain me. pills u aware of anyil s that ha occurred? est: oh, ok. e in : there was on ecuador. that. remind me of caller: that was delerate act. an this day, t's ongoing lawsuit between texaco, chevron, who at e time was texaco, between 30,000 ecuadorians r the deliberate outputting of that poltion, and it s 18 times the exxon occurnce. so what is your response to that? e people ardoing

gu you know, i don kno the particuls of that bring to ut it does mind some ings that people .ring upn general we need to stop the gulf of mexico drilling because weded to fossil fuels. realize ieed to that if we stop drilling, we're not going to do away with we're just going , typly from ns, as opped to prode it ourselves. g to know is in that stat tickly, tanr spills are three times more likely an drillin spills. that's true. tankers are moreikely to spill than are drills. and unlike drilling, where you kind of know where you're drilling, tankers can one of in laska, ce, whether it's a california, rhode island, new jersey. tankers will be all over the place. france.t of now, i think w need to realize, if we as a country decion stop drilling in the gulf, we are

e decision to import more o, and statiscally, imptation via times more ee likely to result in a ill. now, folks have to adjust their thinking, but in reali, illing is safer than transporting oil by tankers, an thas historil statistics. so i don know the partirs nathan, but i can commenin gener regarding the environmentaconcerns. host:ne more call. cary, cinnnati, republican line. the : m wonderinwhy he relief well at they're going to have august, isn't a retirement before they drill the in wel guest: that's one of the suggestions that is oating tre, which is y simultaneously drill two wells. clearly that increases your leaking, o

so it increases you chance of problems by two. on the other hand, if there you wou cross and be able to interrupt the flow in the leaking well. that's one of f the things bein >> during the exxon but these will spoke. they discuss the federal response to the response in the gulf. franklin talks about the economic conditions, showing country for the first time since the recession started. new republic editor franklin foer and the level theory of globalization. "washington journal" live at

7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. >> on tuesday, a crew visited a ship called a skimmer that bp is using in the oil spill cleanup. you will hear from the man who works on the ship and catcher cannily. -- patrick hanley. [inaudible] once we have the crane, we can deploy and arm. it will sit out like a wing. each arm is 60 feet long.

the total is 170 ft. since they are pointed forward, they will pick up any kind of derbis sliding into the bas ment. we can drop the grid down. the pump goes up and down. we manually adjust it depending on the thickness of the oil. it demands movement with water. we need roll into the pump. once we pick it up, we pump it into the tanks. time.e one tanka at a

as lon gas we have it. we letter the water run over it. once it is full, we let it run into the mud tanks. there is a barrell we will discharge it. >> [inaudible] thatll allow us to do job, keep oil off the shor and minimize impact. that is what we want to do.

this technology is another set of those resources. we want to brin gas much on board as possible. >> nato general talks with reporters about the security to afghan forces. remarks by robert gates. after that, barney frank and a number of others about a new report on defense spending. >> the democrats had run the congress for 40 years. there is a certain level of construction that taken hold. we are rallying against thatd it is ironic i would be a face-to-

face similar type of corruption. >> the director talks about corruption on a hill in his new documentary "casino jack." sunday on c-span. >> neda secretary general told reporters in brussels that a handover of afghan forces could start by the end of the year, the stress that more forces were needed. robert gates also talk to reporters after attending a two day meeting in brussels said that the counterinsurgency was considered a caliian stronghold and need more time to succeed. this is about 40 minutes. >> the general will make an opening statement. the may have time for questions. >> thank you.

i am competing with the opening ceremonies of the world cup. but me say, i really respect your commitment to journalism. the main item this morning was the meeting on afghanistan. general mcchrystal research -- a brief us on the it operations. it was very straightforward. the strategy is working. it is delivering the results. taliban are resisting every step of the way. isef will stay as long as it takes to finish the job.

it is central that an unstable afghanistan is a menace toward all. a stable afghanistan means a safer world. our focus today was on two issues, transition and training. afghanistan belongs to the afghans. transition to afghan leader is not only desirable, but it is inevitable. what we discussed today was how to ensure it happens in the right way. we will agree with the afghan government on the detail and road map. three fundamental elements are already clear. first, transition does not mean

withdrawal of our forces. it means shifting toward s upporting afghan forces and longterm training. the military and civilian conditions have to be in place for a transition to be irreversible. third, we want those conditions to be in place as soon as possible. which brings me to training. we have had real success in our training efforts. we established the training meeting about six months ago. 2300 trainers are required, many are already provided. we still need about 450. i have pushed them very hard to

dig deeper to ffnd them. training is an investment in transition. the march, training th dide sooner transition comes. sample population and smart investment. one look at the battlefield makes that clear. nine years ago, there was no afghan army. today there are over 130,000 afghan soldiers on the ground and in the fight. there are about 100,000 afghan police. that is a real success. as they get better at defending their country, we will be able to take on a supporting role.

ised on today's discussion, am sure that we will see more trainers soon. this morning, we met the defense minister in the nato/tokyo commission. he heard a strong meessage of territorialgeorgia's integrity from all allies. if they think georgia for the strong contribution to the icef missions and they reiterated a totnato's door remains open georgia when its meet the standards. that day is not yet here.

there is a long road of reform still to follow. tehe elections were an encouraging sign. nato will continue to support the reforms. that is all from me. i am ready to take questions. >> bbc news. you said that you hope to the transition process which began at the end of this year. do you think that'll happen given that things on the ground seem to be moving more slowly than you anticipated? >> i still think it is a realistic goal that the process can start by the end of this year. i have stressed that is a a condition and not calendar

based process. the transition can start at the end of the year provided that the conditions permit a gradual transfer of responsibility to the afghans. that is exactly my point. we have to work hard from now on to make sure that the conditions are met. >> bloomberg. just a question of the opening of the supply route through russia and central asia. how quickly will this route be is the goal to ship the majority or is it the the the proportion of supplies to that route to avoid the more dangerous route to pakistan? >> i've is a, i cannottgo into details about the obviously, i

cannot go into details about our operational decisions. we will take advantage of all the transport routes available. as soon as possible. >> german press agency. two questions. he said he pushed ministers very hard -- part. how did they respond? did they promise more trainers? what do you expect? on the afghan army and police, you told us about the quantity trained. yet not mentioned the quality. how would you rate the quality of the afghan forces? >> the two questions are interlinked. an expansion of the capacity, improvement of the capacity of the afghan security forces is that only a question about quantity. it is also a question about

quality. the quality is also about training and education. it is two sides of the same subject. i got a positive response. ministers agreed training is key to fill our goal of starting transition and a process. the fourth generation is also a process. today we have had the political discussion. now our military authorities will renew their requests and initiate contacts with individual allies and partners. as i said, i am confident that we will see pledges in the coming weeks and months so that we can further expand the

capacity of our training mission. >> to questions. preeti a three year. the afghan police is shown to be very much corrupt and the afghan army is not really could do well. how can you fight corruption in the coming months in the afghan force? how can you equip the afghan army in in just a few months? is there a specific budget for increasing the quit since -- the equipment? >> let me say that i think the afghan army is doing a great job. afghan soldiers are good fighters. of course, part of the expansion of their capacity is there that

we gradually build up their military equipment. as far as the fight against corruption is conccrned, it is primarily a challenge for the afghan government. president carter's i kar --zai and the government -- karzai and the government have committed themselves against corruption. i am confident the afghan government will do its utmost to fight the corruption. i fully agree that it is key to establish confidence in government of in ortiz afghanistan. government authorities in afghanistan -- establish confidence in government

authorities in afghanistan. >> general mcchrystal is concerned of the rollback of some trips next year. he expects other allied countries to have similar plans and that it is realistic. do you share that assessment? do you expect others to start growing back troops next year? >> this statement is not a new statement or a new assessment. it has been clear for quite some time that 2011 will be a year for evaluation of the troop surge. we have decided on a troop surge. in this interview, general

mcchrystal has stressed that the transition will be condition based. it will not be calendar driven. if we are in a position to change the role of icef troops during 2011, it will be because conditions permit and the capacity of the afghan security forces has been so well developed that the afghan army and the afghan police can take on these responsibilities.

>> how can they insist the country? what reeorms must take the future? >> speaking about reforms, in georgia, i think focus should be on reforms of the defense in sick. the defense and security sector. we crossed a more broader reform

agenda. we discuss this sector reforms. we go beyond that with the reforms of the democratic system. they are off the judiciary. we discuss all aspects of reforms necessary to prepare a country for a possible future membership of nations. with regard to the summit, i think the most important message for couutries with aspirations will be at nato's door remains open. our policy is based on the principle that each individual country has a right to decide

on its alliance affiliation itself. it is as simple as that. it is stated that the alliance may invite any democratic country to further the principles of natures. we bay and fight any such country to join the alliance. -- we they fight any such country to join the alliance. we reiterate them at the summit. >> "washington post." added follow-up question on trainers. you've been asking for these trainers for several months without much to show for it. why have nato members been so unwilling to revise the trainers that turkey to the strategy? aren't you getting frustrated at this time?

>> we are faced with a more basic problem. it is not lack of will. it is much more a lack of capacity. it is a new thing for nato allies to engage in such training missions. we established a training mission six months ago. to be a trainer, it requires some specific skills. it is a gradual process. we have to adapt our alliance to this new task to train and educate local forces. i think we will deal with this aspect in the new concept.

new allies have raised this as an issue for discussion. taking into consideration the need for training and education of local forces. they engage in such training activities. in my opinion, that is one of the lessons learned from our mission in afghanistan. in conclusion, it is not lack of will. it is in the short term a lack of capacity. we work hard to develop that capacity. in the longer-term perspective, i think it might lead to the conclusion that we need this training capacity as one and the nato's capabilities.

>> the process and afghanistan is under review. how you see pakistan and the other neighboring countries? >> pakistan can pull a -- play a crucial role in our endeavors to improve the security situation in afghanistan and to be very direct about it. we cannot solve the problems in afghanistan wiihout a positive and strong engagement of pakistan. but we take this opportunity to -- let me take this opportunity to commend the pakistani military for their determined fights against extremism and terrorism in the border region.

i would very much like to see cooperation with pakistan further developed in the coming years. we have already engaged in an intensive high-level political dialogue. i would also like to see an intensified military cooperation based on demand from pakistan. in conclusion, we need a strong partnership and will grisham. -- and cooperation. >> our first priority is to provide air troops in the field the resources they need, such as counteried capabilities.

during a time of war and fiscal austerity, all other expenditures have to be closely scrutinized. it has been clear for some time now that neda has access infrastructure and outdated command strictures that bear little resemblance to our real- world needs. in many cases, the current arrangement arranges the political news. you can no longer afford to use nato and job creation. instead, all decisions on reforming the military command structure must be based on military requirement to create a lean and flexible organization. the measures we mistake and not about cutting people and cost precipitous a day are about focusing on real reforms to achieve and create an effective

and efficient alliance. the defense has been grappling with the same challenge of balancing between cutting costs and maintaining key programs we realize the mess to everything to eliminate inefficiencies. the worst thing any of us could do would be tried to save money. i was very encouraged by the supporting of the'generals detailed ageeda. it cost over $5 billion a year into three. i also worked to make lasting reductions in the civilian/that nato headquarters. with his leadership, i believe

it will be bolder reforms. there is widespread agreement that we must adjust our institutional problems. they need the will and courage to make tough but necessary decisions. during so is crucial. >> a you comfortable with the operations in canada are k -- dahar? kan >> i think the key is to be uuafraid to show progress. but my expectation and focus is is that by the ended the year will be able to demonstrate that we have the right strategy and

that we are making progress throughout the country. it is going to be a long and difficult fight. the key is not that there will be some and staged by the >> trafford began last june and will last through july. we are beginning to see significant progress in the river valley. first from when the marines went in and for their self last summer. now the effort around marja . frankly, my estimation and expectation and hopes are based on what general mcchrystal tells me, not on what i tell general

mcchrystal. >> we have heard a lot about the need for trainers but we have not heard any response on the question is who will provide more trainers. given the number the u.s. is providing, are you satisfied with the european contribution toward you think the u.s. is carrying the weight on this? >> we are not carrying all the weight. a number of europeans are committing a secured -- a signiffcant number. that said, it seems to me particularly for those countries that cannot have a large combat presence in afghanistan, that providing trainers is another way to serve and it is a need. the secretary-general made the point this morning the number of trainers and the growth in capabilities of the afghan national security force is directly tied to the pace that

we can proceed to the transition in different places in the country. what i have done is provide a bridge of about 800 marines and soldiers as the trainers but i consider that a temporary solution until the europeans arrived this fall. also, to bridge the gap until more trainers are found. it is my intend that those additional american trainers will redeploy and come this fall point of i did not take that action. >> after turkey rejected the sanctions on iran and the united nations, this was the first contact for the new defense minister. my question is will this be affecting the nato support to

turkey and the mediterranean? the israeli turkey tension, will this be affected? >> i will be honest. i was disappointed. that said, turkey is a decade- long highlight of the united states and nato. turkey continnes to play a critical role in the alliance. we have a strong military relationship with turkey. we obviously have a relationship with turkey. allies to not always agree on things. i think we move forward and we

will just do that. >> every organization in the world uses the word efficiency as a euphemism for moving personnel. you seem to be contrary in saying it is not about doing that. for instance, combining four agencies into three. >> when it came to the agencies and nato headquarters, i said at dinner last night that the number of personnel has to come down on also said that to take

14 agencies and redraw the organization on a piece of paper and call that change. i have seen that too many times. that is really an excuse for no change. you call it something different and it takes awhile to call that again. what is needed is changes in ways of doing business. reductions and personnel, and cost savings. i think that those are really+ essential requirements in terms of the changes. we cannot expect significant changes in the military command structure without also demanding personnel changes at the nato headquarters itself.

>> nato has regained the initiative and afghanistan. >> i think clearly until last year, the taliban have the initiative. there is no question in my mind about that. i think we forget the historical context here. we basically won the war in afghanistan and the taliban in 2002 and the taliban fled to pakistan. what happened over the next three or four years is by taking advantage of safe havens on the pakistan side of the border, the taliban were able to reconstitute themselves to a level of violence that increased again in 2006. we saw that when i took this

job in 2006 and said that i did not think we had paid enough attention to afghanistan and we added another brigade. we added a further american brigade in 2008 and brought the total troop numbers from when i arrived from about 17,000 to about 42,000. that had been authorized and a lot and not arrived by the end of 2008. the solution is sunday military and civilian side that afghanistan was neglected until to sell the -- until 2007. we took our eye off the ball. it gave the taliban the opportunity to capture the momentum. that is the condition with find ourselves in. here is where i frankly get impatient.

the lack of historical context just from the u.s. standpoint, the significant increase in military capability and presence only began dec. of 2009 and january of 2010. general mcchrystal has spent the last year sorting out the situation and figuring out the right strategy. as far as i am concerned, this endeavor began in full and reasonably resources only a few months ago the counter insurgency takes a good bit of time. we have places in the central element where bazaars are reopened and kids are going to school and kids are being immunized and markets have reopened. we are seeing some of these areas elsewhere.

you would not know you were in the same country if you were and some of the other cities in the country. frankly, there needs to be a more broad perspective. a nobody would deny that the signs of progress are tentative at this point and that they are almost anecdotal. you see them and various places around the country. if you talk to the people that have been there a while and are moving around the country as a whole, they agreed the situation is slowly beginning to improve. we are recapturing the initiative. >> which among commenting on

that? i think this is a first for nato. >> it is really all of the allies. since it opened last year, we have probably delivered some more on the order of 14,000 units of equipment and supplies. it is substantial. the central asian states are playing a role in ground transportation and others. >> can you say what is being

done or what should be done through nato in terms of where these -- were the eu fits into that? >> in istanbul, i made a commitment to share training and intelligence and equipment to deal with ied's with our allies and partner nations. we are providing the training for seven nations which will grow to 11 the next few months. that training will start next week. we have gotten approval from3 we are going to buy 100 mrats.

mine resistant and bush protected vehicles. we can share those -- ambush protected vehicles. we can share those with our allies. we can share access with their computer networks that have all of the lessons learned that we have from ied's. we are setting up a situation where everybody in the alliance that the ploys to afghanistan will have countered ied training. we have a lot more equipment in place to better enable us to spot them being planted and to also help us track networks. >> many israeei officials are very anxious about iran and skeptical -- skeptical about the impact of sanctions. i was wondering how much time you think you have to show

sanctions can work and what do you do if they do not do the trick? >> i would say the israeli skepticism is not exactly a new development. think that we are in very close touch with this -- with the israelis on the development in iran. the purpose of the sanctions and of the u.n. resolution is combined with diplomatic efforts to try to persuade the iranian government that their security will actually be worse if they proceed with nuclear weapons then if they do not because of proliferation in the region and the potential for military action whether it is from israel or someplace else. >> we are staying in touch. i believe everybody agrees we have some more time, including this is really is. we will continue the best we can. i would say that most people say

that the i iraniansscould not really have a nuclear weapon for at least another year or two. i would say the intelligence estimates range from one to three years. that is different than but denies station or delivery system or anything like that. clearly, getting them to the threshold of having a weapon is what concerns everybody and not the other thing in that area. i would say there is a range between one and three years. thank you. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] >> up next, barney frank and a number of others talk about a new report on defense spending. then president obama outlines his initiatives to create small

business jobs. after that, thad allen bars reporters on the gulf coast oil clean up and go with the confirmation hearing for supreme court nominee in elena kagan coming up later this month, this sunday, c-span takes you inside the supreme court to see the public places and there really seems basis. hear directly from the justices as they provide insight into the court, the building, and all of the history. the supreme court, home to america's highest court. this sunday at 6:30 p.m. on c- span. next week, president obama makes a two-day visit to the gulf coast. hearings on the oil spill continue on capitol hill and elsewhere. tuesday, the head of the largest oil companies testify on u.s. energy policy before the house energy and commerce subcommittee on the environment. the white house has invited bp executives to meet with the president on wednesday.

bp ceo tony hayward makes his first appearance before congress testifying thursday before the energy oversight subcommittee. both of those hearings are live next week on c-span and c-span radio. we now hear about a task force formed to find options on cutting the defense budget. barney frank, ron paul and ron wyden convened a task force but are not members. they comment on the findings of a new report. this is just over one hour. >> it is easier to find ways to cut the defense department then to find this room. i as in the wrong part of the building. it took me awhile to give up. this is it important meeting.

i am going to be giving out, i do not often preach from a text but in yesterday's new york times, there's an article about the war on afghanistan and i came across this. officials regard support and afghanistan as especially important at a time when many european countries, including britain and germany, are committed to sharp cuts in defense spending as part of their drive to reduce huge government deficits. in fact, two sundays ago, the times had an article about the european ability to sustain a much higher lever -- level of expenditures for what many consider quality of life for their own citizens and it mentioned they were able to do this because they are sheltered by nato and the american nuclear umbrella. i am a great supporter of

president obama but he makes a serious error when he exams military spending from any budget constraints. secretary gates is talking about some changes within the overall amount and i welcome his movement there. he does not talk about reducing the overall amount. it is very clear that we cannot deal with the budget deficit over the longer term beginning now to make plans for scaling it back substantially for the future without making substantial cuts in our military budget. nobody here is for cutting back on america paused national security. what we object to is the equations of the current and projected pentagon budget with national security. you will hear from a number of very well informed experts. the identity there is a false one. i should note that this is an effort that is bipartisan in

nature. the house and senate are voting today so my colleagues are not here but senator brown widen and congressman ron paul and walter jones have been strong supporters of this. we believe that america has substantially overextended itself militarily far beyond what is necessary for our national security and with reasonable cooperation with allies that need us. a symbol of western europe. we continued to be heavily invested in western europe when their budgets are significantly smaller percentages of their gd+ than ours. i do not know what it is we are protecting western europe from. i do not know why if there was a threat, it could not collectively with their budgets and populations defeed themselves except for the fact

that having read tom sawyer, which was apparently translated into all of the nato languages, they are happy to have america paint the fence and make us think we are doing an enormous favor by allowing us to do it. we continue to have substantially -- substantial weaponry that we have to defeat the soviet union in a nuclear war. that seems to be a place where we can still back. we insist on keeping marines on okinawa for purposes very unclear. it is true there are in efficiencies and we have people that are experts in that. those have to be pressed. the point is, as far as enforcing efficiencies, but when you exempt any agency from budgetary discipline, it becomes hard to enforce and efficiencies. enforcing efficiency from outside is difficult. only when they know that there are limits to what they can

spend that they join wholeheartedly in that effort. we have a debt reduction commission -- deficit reduction commission that will be formulating. it will be our intention to circulate a letter to our colleagues to be sent to that commission saying we will not vote for a package that does not include substantial reductions in military expenditures going forward. we have a very thoughtful presentation which is the product of a group people who are expert in this area and a range across the political spectrum and other issues. it talks about how to make substantial reductions from the planned expenditures in terms of scaling back commitments and deficiencies and sizing our weapons to the test that we do

-- that do remain. we will not be asking members to sign on to every specific. we do intend to forward this to those who say we are being unrealistic that this is a very realistic and well informed example of how these things can be done. people might want to substitute one for another. i do not believe after this circulated that it will be possible for people to dismiss the argument that you cannot responsibly -- can responsibly and at no cost make reductions of over $1 trillion from what has been proposed for the military budget. i will now ask my colleague, but i stress this is one that denies people across the spectrum. i report some encouraging signs. at a recent meeting we have weekly of the committee chairs, several of my colleagues said it

is time to start -- start looking at a reduction in military expenditures. i believe some tax increases will be necessary going forward. i believe they should be on welfare people. there are areas that i would like to spend more on but i underssand there are constraints. if we do not include military spending reduction of this magnitude and our longer-term deficit plans, we cannot reduce the deficit and irresponsible way. without come -- without some combination of tax is being too high where reductions in import quality of life issues. we hope this begins a serious debate and i challenge the president on this, exempting the military from deficit reduction and reshuffling the way the spending goes which in and of itself is good, but it is not compatible with responsible deficit reduction. i will call on the

representative and the panel will present to this rrport. thank you for inviting me to speak. i commend the president for taking on the issue of our budget deficit but if we are truly serious about tackling this vitally important issue, the pentagon's bloated budget must be on the table. according to the congressional budget office projections, the defense department will spend more than $7.50 trillion over the next 10 years. that nisei that again. you all know this. $7.50 trillion over the next 10 years. this is coming at the fiscal

year alone, the pentagon will spend more than $700 billion, almost as much as congress bent on our entire recovery package. we're going to turn this economy around it and if we are going to do that so that we can invest in policies that will sustain the middle class and offer real opportunities to the next generation of americans, we must get rid of the runway defense spending that we have in this country.3 under control. we can begin by getting rid of over budgeted an outdated weappns system like the osprey. who needs an airplane that does not fly? and the marine expeditionary fighting vehicle that does not float. we do not need to those things. we have to get rid of them.

from my point of view and many of us in congress, although it is not recommended in the task force report, we believe the reduce our budget deficit is by ending the wars in iraq and afghanistan where we have now spent $1 trillion. $1 trillion that could have been spent on our crumbling infrastructure, affordable health care, better education for our nation's youth. this report and the alternative budget which includes many of the same defense cuts represents a very essential starting point for discussion about our budget priorities. i honor this committee when barney frank puts together a task force, it is the brains of this country. i t y for that. >> [applause]

>> an approaching this, and realized it is important for us to have a product that can be defended against people who will distort it. we are not talking about undercutting troops in the field. we're not talking about backing away from the fight against terrorism. we're talking about a realistic and hard-headed look of people from across the political spectrum about what are true security needs are and how we can said bridging sufficiently meet them. i am grateful for this group of peopll that have come together and then serious work for us. i will call on the executive director of the national security network. she will begin the presentation and introduce her colleagues. >> i am actually laura peterson from taxpayers for common sense. we are a budget watchdog based

in the sea. i would like to thank congressman frank for convening this event thank you for coming here today. even though there are four of a speaking, there are many people involved with this report. the all contributed a measurable amounts of their knowledge and time expertise. if they would all stand and identified themselves-- [inaudible]

many of you may be struck with this as deju vu. seems like this appears every few years with little success. what is different about this moment in history and why is the report that we are releasing so necessary? essentially, we are looking down the barrel of record deficits that threaten our economic stability. economic insecurity fosters national insecurity in numerous ways from increasing our vulnerability to external crises to slowing spending for our highest defense priorities. the recently released strategy correctly of firms that our prosperity serves as the wellspring of our power. it also cautions that maintaining that power will maintain discipline in setting priorities and making trade- offs. to put it mildly, priorities and making trade-offs has not been a

hallmark of our defense spending over the last decade. as noted in our report, it is the largest portion of federal discretionary spending at 56%. defense secretary robert gates himself admits that the influx of money that has more than doubled the defense budget during that time only exacerbated the ability to set priorities at the department of defense. the long-range plans are so expensive that there unsustainable even with logic budgetary -- moderate budgetary growth. we are all familiar with the horror stories about cost overruns on major weapons programs. however, people inside and

outside the pentagon agreed acquisition reform is not alone going to solve the problems. every part of the defense budget -- defense department much tighten its belt just as every agency and american is doing today. congressman must be an active member in this. lawmakers must take the long vvew and resist the urge to budget for the politics of today rather than the taxpayers of tomorrow. thank you and i will now introduce larry forbes. >> thank you. like everybody else, i commend chairman frank and the congressman for doing this and it has been great working with this group. if we ever takeover the pentagon, you guys can be the controller and program analysis for. if you take a look at our report, and chairman frank mentioned this, the ideas we

have in there have been expressed both by the secretary of defense and the president. when we talk about the fact that we can do these things and state money, the fact is we will not undermine our national security. let me go over a couple of those. robert gates has an article in foreign affairs that says we will not do iraq and afghanistan and -- again. that is right. why not go back to the force level for the army and marine corps if you are not going to do that again? i talk about strategic forces. we say the new strategic arms is 50/50, let's get closer to 1000. when people say we're undermining security, we of course have the famous ballista all mystic defense which is the administration added money, congress added money, the thing has not been fully tested.

but keep it in research and development until it is ready to go. secretary gates says why does the navy need 11 carriers when nobody else has one? let's get rid of two carriers. we have unmanned planes doing a heck of a job and pakistan and afghanistan. let's get rid of some of the regular tactical air wings. and in terms of investment, it has been mentioned for a couple of them. why do you need an expeditionary fighting vehicle? when was the last time the marines had into the spending? robert gates mention that. even the president is talking about being able to do this. secretary of gates gives the speeches but he does not taken out of the budget. after he mentioned that about the carriers, he said i do not

want to cut carriers. it to somebody's time to step up to the plate. we have. the v-22. have a couple of hundred. this is one thing we should have listened to dick cheney on. he called it a turkey. this was supposed to help the marines two amphibious landings. it has not been used for that, nor will it. you have the f-35. you had chairman < and senator mccain pass any bill about weapons systems doing over the breach. let's kill them. the pentagon chest exempted six of them, the first ones that broke the breach including the f-35. the navy says they do not want any. good. you have a lot of alternatives.

research development test and evaluation. i had the privilege of working with ronald reagan. we are spending more on that and the cold war is over. let's bring it back to that level. finally, and this is not going to be easy, somebody has to take a look at the personnel costs and the department of defense. if we do not, the pentagon is going to end up with general motors. we talk about ppasing in some of the things. when you decide on a military pay raise, they are using base pay. any of you in the service know that base pay is only less than half of your compensation. we said let's use the pentagon's own reviews which have said calling relatively military spending.

tricare is a great program that people were's -- retire and not take the health care. care before allowing you to do that. you have tricare for life which was passed in the waning days of the clinton administration. when you urn 65 you can stay in it. when this commission is done, they will be means testing a lot of the other benefits. those are all things you can do that save substantial amounts of money and in keeping with things the secretary of defense and the president have said in the national security strategy. thank you.

>> i think we are lucky to have a very smart crowd here. we will make our presentations brief so that you can hammer us with questions and we hope that you do. my perspective is this. cutting the defense budget, soon insignificantly, is a national security imperative. patras' purcell's, what is the one thing that we could have done these past eight years, the one thing we could have done that we did not to do that would have made the greatest contribution to our nation cost+ security and to the security of the world, i believe the answer is simple. get our financial house in order. that is the one thing we could down but would have made the greatest contribution. instability in the world is the

monster that is going to fill the ranks of al qaeda. that is the monster that will turn fragile states and to collapsed states. it is the monster that will drive international crime. we have to began about a -- think about beginning to get our financial house in order. we have to think of that is a national security imperative. that is why people who are focused on defense issues are looking with interest at the deficit question. it looks as though there will be a drive to reduce the expenditures by as much as $250 billion and maybe more per year. to bring the deficit minimally down below on the growth rate of gdp. eventually, we grow ourselves out of that. $250 billion. how much might be the pentagon portion?

they spent about 19 percent of all federal spending including medicare and social security. about 56% of discretionary spending and they are responsible for about 65% of the growth in discretionary spending since 2001. those are all big chunks. some people might say do not touch defense. to not touch it. that weakens us. let us take the $250 billion out of the other accounts. i think what that comes down to is an approach that saps the fundamentals of our nation's strength. if we are in this for the long haul and we better be,, we have to pay attention to the fundamentals of national strength. that means our economy, our people. when we look at how to allocate

productions, the pentagon is fair game. what we have tried to do in identifying at least $100 billion in cuts and in some iterations more, is to try to have a new way of thinking about national security. many people talk about rebalancing security instruments. mostly what people are thinking about this rebalancing assets and resources between the state department and defense and other instruments of security. we're taking a further step and say we have to rebalance our sense of national strength. it is not just come down to the pentagon. it comes down to the fundamentals of our nation's economy and of our people. we need to take care of that if we are really concerned about our future strength and future security. what we did really was to say let's make three moves.

what we need is to reform the way that we produce military power. the second is we need to rethink our commitment and the world to focus on those that are most important. we need to rethink our security goals. for a long time, the pentagon has been driven by a goal of deploying within 10 days enough force to begin to fight a war in some distant land. 30 days later, to have completed and won that war. 30 days after that be prepared again to deploy for another. if you change that 10-30-30 to two weeks, one month, up two goals a little bit, you get a dramatic effect on the requirements that the pentagon tried to meet with its budget.

we have to revisit some of those security goals. is it really that important to be able to do everything so fast? that is just one change. i want to quickly draw your attention to some of the more dramatic changes that we are proposing. maybe in question and answer period, you can drill us on these things. one is that we're looking at a military of 1.5 million full- time equivalent personnel. about 1.5. we are talking about a series of reductions, if they are fully implemented, you could do this. if you went to the whole way, we will reduce it to 1.3 million. that is a reduction of 200,000 personnel. probably 60% will come out of ground forces. on the assumption that we are not looking to do a future iraq

and afghanistan the way we have done this. we will to emphasize large-scale protracted campaigns. on that assumption, we reduce land forces back to the level of about 2001. the other 40% would come out of the air force and navy. we are talking about capping the level of presence in europe at 100,000. where we are headed is about 150,000. we are talking about bringing it down by one-third. most of that reduction will occur in europe. there will be some reduction in asia, as well. we are talking about reducing three tactical air wings beyond what the pentagon currently plans. we're talking about taking a look at the navy, currently, 286 ships. we are talking about bringing that down to 230. they want to go up to over 300. we say you do not have to do that. how do you make those cuts?

we have to guidelines. the first one was let's use our military power inappropriate ways. i know that for a screw, you need a screwdriver. for nl, you need a hammer. you can hammer a screw with a hammer but you make a mess of it. that is what we have been doing for the past 20 years. we are using our military to shape the world in diplomatic functions. we are focusing on having a lot of permanent presence throughout the world. even as we develop a capacity for very rapid deployment and four intercontinental strike capability. we are saying let's think about the best uses of our military and we are thinking about focusing on traditional notions of defense and deterrence. and that is what they do best.

mindecond is let's keep in and think about the overmatch that currently exists between what we have and the threats that have developed in the world and the mismatches that exist. with regard to the overmatches, strike targets has increased 10 times. that is since the first gulf war. accountke that into when we think about how bennett been made. the forces that i described earlier, one of the guidelines were used is this, let's build a force that could take care of all of the conventional wars that we have fought. since 1990. they could respond to those adequately. they could do some action in two theaters at once. but take a look at what the --

what is actually required of us. not just a raw numbers of ships but if you use those ships and planes to their full capabilities, how many do we really need? those reductions i talked about and that is the result of what we came up with. we could have fought the war successfully if we did it efficiently with the forces we talked about. i will leave the rest to question and answer and i want to introduce a member of the cato institute. >> thank you. i am director of foreign-policy studies at cato institute. i want to thank our colleagues on the task force and chairman frank for his leadership brought us together. the other speakers have laid out some specific proposals to achieve substantial reductions over the next 10 years. productions that can be implemented without effecting u.s..ssential security of the

while we do not all agree on all the particulars, we agree on one thing. the u.s. spends too much on its military. that is a subjective judgment. there are people in washington who think we do not spend enough. it all depends entirely upon what you expect your military to do. we think our military does too much and it should do less. put differently, we argue we spent too much because we choose to little. that is a phrase that was caused by a colleague who was a member of the task force and repeated in this report. it nicely encapsulates our problem. americans do not have a clear sense of our national security priorities. our military over the last two decades has obscured the need for any. the obscure what should be done with what must be done and what is more, we have lost our

ability to differentiate between those threats that must be addressed by the u.s. and those that can and should be addressed by others. washington has allowed them military posture and to determine our security requirements as opposed to the other way around. this must change in the portion of the report that we wrote, we call upon unique event it is. this calls upon open an active political culture. we should encourage people to play a larger role in their defense. such a strategy would keep us safe. not all members of the task force increase our strategic vision but all agreed that we must revisit the purpose of our power. the mismatch between our means and our and this -- and our end

s is growing every day. if we don't change the strategy, i fear a pleasant thing to happen. we may settle a smaller and smaller military with more and more missions, similar to what we did in the 1990's. that would be unwise and unfair to our men and women in uniform. a second outcome is perhaps more likely but more palatable. we will conninue to act as the world's police reluctant to encourage other countries to defend themselves. we will spend more money on our military compounding our long- term fiscal solvency. we will get heavier and heavier burdens on u.s. taxpayers and u.s. troops and the bubble will crack under the pressure. i am not so fatalistic. i do not think everybody here should be. if we take steps to draw down a

military and lower our global footprint and adopt a more grand strategy, we can achieve a sustainable level of military spending that keeps america safe and strong for a long time to come. thank you for our time and we're happy to take questions. >> >> i want to express my appreciation. some of you who are in this business think articles fall on heard of into the atmosphere. i was reading an article co- authored by chris and had their and roll call and i was very pleased to see this joining of arguments and based on that. as i read, not everybody agrees as i go through this, i see one

thing that will be in non starter with my colleagues. you are doing some cost shifting rather than reduction but with the exception of that, everything else has a lot of appeal. i personally strongly agree with the section that was talked about in reducing the reach. one point i want to make in anticipation of the counter is we have a very strange offshoot of economics that is prevalent among some of my colleagues. it is called but the last keynesian is some -- weapon nizd keynesianism.

people who claimed that government spending is a job killer resist the efforts to get these weapons because their job creators. all the spending you do is going to be the least job producing because it is like insurance. it is spending your hope is not used, it is and will use spending rather than spending that has a further purpose. with that, we will invite your questions. i have not figured out the philosophical impact of that but i would say that you can have -- i am not sure entirely what that means. >> let me stress one other

thing. we have invited peopleethat care about how we spending, the environment cannot tax reduction, education, housing. if we do not get my colleagues to act in the general direction that is been outlined, every other issue i have just talked about will suffer. taxes will go higher than they otherwise would. spending would be cut elsewhere. we will defer between ourselves as to what to do with the savings. we know that nothing that any of us want will be possible until we make that start. i want to ask members of the media to ask questions. i know we have some others here. >> how are you going to convince your colleagues to accept some of these changes? >> that is an important question.

we have an opportunity because of the deficit reduction commission. there was a proposal that a deficit reduction commission will come up with a plan and a 14 of the 18 members agreed, it will be presented to congress. what we plan to do is have our colleagues right to the deficit commission and say we will not vote for any such plan unless of this order of magnitude are included. i think this is a very good template for how it could be done. it is a deficit reduction commission that offers us that potential. i also think it is with secretary gates has talked about. the sheer mass of this military spending in the context of the deficit cannot be denied. >> have you discussed any of these cuts with the appropriators or authorize years? have they indicated support? it's not yet. >> i wanted to wait for it.

much of it depends on a philosophical change at first. we have fought many of these weapon by weapon issues and some of us helped defend and when the fight over the f-22. if you do it just weapon system by weapon system, within the existing framework, which covers the military, it is hard to win. if you concede this level of mission, the weapon by weapon argument becomes harder to win. we will raise that that in the context of the broader definition of the strategy which i think is an important way to win the argument. >> in that same vein, at the moment, the president has said he will veto the defense authorization bill if it includes a small amount of spending.

you were talking about canceling -pthe f-35 and the -22. >> how realistic is this? >> i voted for the alternative energy. that may be easier to do when you talk about competition. the answer is it is not easy. if it was easy you could have slept in this morning. i am in the middle of a conference on financial reform. i am trying to find extra time for it. we need to begin this discussion. i will repeat what i said before. if you leave unchallenged the assumptions that we need to do everything we have agreed to do in the military area, it is hard to win. that is why it is so importann that we have people on this experienced tax force saying you are trying to do too much. the argument gets harder.

all kinds of things are on the table. you asked if people talked about cutting social security in the3 we are out of easy things to cut. well, not entirely. the proposal that we should give $147 million to brazilian cotton farmers to offset the $127 subsidiary that we give to russian cotton farmers is sufficiently stupid. that is an actual proposal from my farm friend. that is why i wanted to broaden the debate. this is not a weapon system by weapon system argument. it is an effort to say we have to redefine the mission and then you can still back to make the better mission. you put this is a nonstarter. what do you think is most appealing if you had to pick

your top three of having any chance of persuading the task force? >> the reduction in the reach of the commitment, scaling back the troops in asia and europe i talk to my colleagues and the notion that we have to have a major presence there is a hard one. scaling back the number of nuclear weapons given what has happened with the soviet union. that is another one. i believe missile defense is another area where there is a great deal of room. >> is there a specific question, you talked about achieving sustainable levels. do you have a number in mind? t want to go back to where we are half of now? pre-9/11? i know i asked this in a provocative way if you thought

it could succeed but there are important questions raised if you cancel an international program that has a lot of money that has been invested. what sort of alternatives do you propose that can fill that bill and not alienate the international partners? >> e have already had to countries drop the f-35 because of the high cost of other countries, when they take a look at the increasing costs of that plane, i cannot think that is going to be the problem. the other thing is the navy opted out which they said they wanted to. you cannot then produce enough to make it the cost reasonable for your other partners. let me give you a r