>> later, house arms committee chairman mac thornberry talks about making changes to the pentagon's acquisition system. on our next washington journal, we talk to texas congressman michael burgess about a bill that tries to solve the annual medicare doc fix. then congresswoman gwen moore talks about the 2016 budget.

later, jeff mauer will discuss world oil and gas prices. washington journal is live each morning at 7:00 eastern. we also take your phone calls facebook comments come and tweets. >> at the same time hillary clinton was speaking at the center for american progress this morning, ted cruz announced he is running for president. he made the announcement of liberty university in lynchburg virginia. [applause] sen. cruz: thank you so much president falwell. god bless liberty university. [laughter] [applause] sen. cruz: i am thrilled to join you today. at the largest christian

university in the world. [applause] today, i want to talk with you about the promise of america. imagine your parents when they were children. imagine a little girl growing up in wilmington, delaware. [applause] during world war ii, the daughter of irish and italian catholic families, working class. her goal ran numbers -- her uncle ran numbers in wilmington. she grew up with dozens of cousins the kaiser mom was the second youngest of the 17 children.

she had a difficult father. a man who drank far too much and frankly, did not think that women should be educated. yet, this young girl, pretty and shy, was driven, was bright inquisitive, and she became the first person and her family ever to go to college. forin 1956 my mother, eleanor, graduated from rising diversity with a degree in math and became a pioneering computer programmer in the 1950's and 1960's. [applause] sen. cruz: imagine a teenaged boy. not much younger than many of you here today.

growing up in cuba. [laughter] jet black hair, skinny as a r ail. [laughter] involved in student council and yet, cuba was not at a peaceful time. the dictator batista, was corrupt. he was oppressive. this teenaged boy joined a revolution. he joined a revolution against batista. he begins fighting. to free cuba from the dictator. this boy at aged 17 finds himself thrown in prison, finds himself tortured beaten, and

then at age 18, he flees cuba. he comes to america. imagine for a second, the hope in his heart as he wrote that ferry boat across the key west and got on a greyhound bus to austin, texas. [applause] sen. cruz: to begin washing dishes making $.50 an hour to come to the one land on earth that has welcomed so many millions. when my father came to america in 1957, he could not have imagined what lay in store for him. imagine a young married couple

living together in the 1970's. neither one of them has a personal relationship with jesus. they have a little boy and they're both drinking far too much. they are living a fast life. when i was three, my father decided to leave my mother and me. we were living in calgary at the time. a got on a plane and flew back to texas. he decided he did not want to be married anymore. he did not want to be a father to his three-year-old son. yet, when he was in houston, a friend, a collie from the oil and gas business invited him to a bible study, invited him to a baptist church. there, my father gave his life

to jesus christ. [applause] senator cruz: and god transformed his heart and he drove to the airport, he bought a plane ticket, nt he flew back -- and he flew back to be with my mother and me. [applause] senator cruz: there are people who wonder if faith is real. i can tell you, in my family there is not a second of doubt because were it not for the transformative love of jesus christ, i would have been saved and i would have been raised by a single mom without my father in the household. imagine another little girl

living in africa, in kenya nigeria. [applause] senator cruz: this is a diverse crowd. [laughter] senator cruz: playing with kids. they spoke swahili, she spoke english. [applause] [laughter] senator cruz: coming back to california. [applause] senator cruz: where her parents who had been missionaries in africa raised her on the central coast. she starts a small business when she is in grade school, making bread. she calls it heidi's bakery. she and her brother compete making bread. they make thousands of loaves of bread and they go to the local apple orchard where they sell the bread to people coming to

pick apples. she goes on to a career in business, excelling and rising to the highest pinnacles. and then heidi becomes my wife and my very best friend in the world. [applause] senator cruz: heidi becomes an incredible mom to our two precious little girls caroline and catherine, the joys and loves of our life. [applause] senator cruz: imagine another teenage boy being raised in houston, hearing stories from

his dad about prison and torture in cuba, hearing stories about how fragile liberty is beginning to study the united states constitution, learning about the incredible protections we have in this country that protect the god-given liberty of every american. experiencing challenges at home. the mid-1980's oil crisis crater. his parents business go bankrupt. heading off to school over 1000 miles away from home at a place where he knew nobody, where he was alone and scared.

his parents going through bankruptcy meant there was no financial support at home, so at the age of 17, he went to get to jobs -- two jobs to help pay his way through school. he took over $100,000 in school loans, loans i suspect a lot of y'all can relate to. [laughter] senator cruz: loans that i will point out i just paid off a few years ago. [applause] senator cruz: these are all of our stories. these are who we are as americans. and yet, for so many americans the promise of america seems more and more distant.

what is the promise of america? the idea that the root -- the idea, the revolutionary idea that this country was founded upon which is that our rights do not come from man, they come from god almighty. [applause] that the purpose of the constitution, as thomas jefferson put it, is to serve as change to bind the mischief of government. [applause] senator cruz: the incredible opportunity of the american dream, what has enabled millions of people from all over the world to come to america with nothing and to achieve anything. and then come of the american exceptionalism that has made this nation a clarion voice for freedom in the world, a shining

city on a hill. that is the promise of america. that is what makes this nation and indispensable nation, a unique nation in the history of the world. and yet, so many fear that that promise is unattainable today. so many fear it is slipping away from our hands. i want to talk to you this morning about reigniting the promise of america. 240 years ago, on this very day, a 38-year-old lawyer named patrick henry -- [applause] senator cruz: -- stood up 100 miles from here in richmond, virginia and said "give me

liberty or give me death." [applause] senator cruz: i want to ask each of you to imagine, imagine millions of courageous conservatives all across america rising up together to say in unison, "we demand our liberty." [applause] senator cruz: today, roughly half of born-again christians are not voting. they are staying home. imagine instead millions of people of faith all across america coming out to the polls and voting our values.

[applause] today, millions of young people are scared, worried about the future, worried what the future will hold. imagine millions of young people coming together and standing together saying, we will stand for liberty. [applause] senator cruz: think just how different the world would be. imagine, instead of economic stagnation, booming economic growth. [applause] senator cruz: instead of small businesses going out of business at record numbers, imagine small

businesses growing and prospering. imagine young people coming out of school with 4, 5, 6 job offers. [applause] senator cruz: imagine innovation thriving on the internet as government regulators and tax collectors are kept at bay and more and more opportunity is created. [applause] senator cruz: imagine america finally becoming energy self-sufficient, as millions and millions of high-paying jobs are created. [applause] senator cruz: five years ago today, the president signed obamacare into law. [booing] senator cruz: within hours liberty university went to court

filing a lawsuit against it. [applause] senator cruz: instead of the joblessness, instead of the millions forced into part-time work, instead of the millions who have lost their health insurance, lost their doctors and faced skyrocketing health insurance premiums, imagine, in 2017, a new president signing legislation repealing every word of obamacare. [applause] senator cruz: imagine health care reform that keeps government out of the way between you and your doctor and

makes health insurance personal and affordable and portable. [applause] senator cruz: instead of a tax code that crushes innovation that imposes burdens on families struggling to make ends meet imagine a simple, flat tax. [applause] that lets every american fill out his or her taxes on a postcard. [applause] senator cruz: imagine abolishing the irs.

[applause] senator cruz: instead of the lawlessness and the president's unconstitutional executive amnesty, imagine a president that finally, finally, finally secures the borders. [applause] a senator cruz: and imagine a legal immigration system that welcomes and celebrates those that come to achieve the american dream. [applause] senator cruz: instead of a federal government that wages an assault on our religious liberty, that goes after hobby lobby, that goes after the little sisters of the poor, that goes after liberty university, imagine a federal government

that stands for the first amendment rights of every american. [applause] senator cruz: instead of a federal government that works to undermine our values, imagine a federal government that works to defend the sanctity of human life. [applause] senator cruz: and to uphold the sacrament of of marriage. instead of a government that works to undermine our second amendment rights, that seeks to ban our ammunition, imagine a federal government that protects

the right to keep and bear arms. [applause] senator cruz: instead of a government that seizes your e-mails and your cell phones imagine a federal government that protects the privacy rights of every american. [applause] senator cruz: instead of a federal government that seeks to dictate school curriculum through common core -- [applause] senator cruz: -- imagine repealing every word of common core. [applause]

senator cruz: imagine embracing school choice as the civil rights issue of the next generation. that every single child, regardless of race, regardless of ethnicity, regardless of wealth or zip code, every child in america has a right to a quality education. [applause] senator cruz: and that is true from all of the above, whether it is a public school or charter school or private school or christian school or parochial school or home school -- every child. [applause] senator cruz: instead of a

president who boycotts prime minister netanyahu, imagine a president who stands unapologetically with the nation of israel. [applause] [applause] senator cruz: instead of a president who seeks to go to the united nations to end run congress and the american people, imagine a president who says, i will honor the constitution and, under no circumstances, will iran be allowed to acquire a nuclear weapon. [applause]

senator cruz: imagine a president who says, we will stand up and defeat radical islamic terrorism. and we will call it by its name. [applause] senator cruz: we will defend the united states of america. now all of these seem difficult. indeed, to some, they may seem unimaginable. and yet, if you look in the history of our country, imagine it is 1775 and you and i, we are sitting there in richmond listening to patrick henry say

"give me liberty or give me death." imagine it is 1776 and we were watching the 54 signers of the declaration of independence stand together and pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to igniting the promise of america. imagine it was 1777 and we were watching general washington as he lost battle after battle after battle in the freezing cold, as soldiers with no shoes were dying fighting for freedom against the most powerful army in the world. that, too, seemed unimaginable. imagine it is 1933 and we were

listening to franklin delano roosevelt tell america, at a time of crushing depression, at a time of a gathering storm abroad, that we have nothing to fear but fear itself. imagine it is 1979 and you and i were listening to ronald reagan -- [applause] senator cruz: -- and he was telling us that we would cut the top marginal tax rates from 70% all the way down to 28%, that we would go from crushing stagnation to booming economic growth, to millions being lifted out of poverty and into prosperity and abundance, that the very day he was sworn in our hostages who were languishing in iran would be released.

and that within a decade, we would win the cold war and tear the berlin wall to the ground. that would have seemed unimaginable. and yet, with the grace of god that is exactly what happened. [applause] senator cruz: from the don of this country and at every stage -- the dawn of this country and at every stage, america has enjoyed god's providential blessing. over and over again, when we faced impossible odds, the american people rose to the challenge. you know, compared to that repealing obama care and abolishing the irs ain't all that tough. [laughter] senator cruz: the power of the american people, when we rise up and stand for liberty, knows no bounds.

[applause] senator cruz: if you are ready to join a grassroots army across this nation, coming together and standing for liberty, i'm going to ask you to break a rule here today and to take out your cell phones and to text the word "constitution" to the number 33733. you can also text "imagine." we are versatile. [laughter] senator cruz: once again, text "constitution" to 33733.

god's blessing has been on america from the very beginning of this nation and i believe god is not done with america yet. [applause] senator cruz: i believe in you. i believe in the power of millions of courageous conservatives rising up to reignite the promise of america. that is why, today, i am announcing that i am running for president of the united states. [applause] [applause] [applause]

senator cruz: it is a time for truth. it is a time for liberty. it is a time to reclaim the constitution of the united states. [applause] senator cruz: i am honored to stand with each and every one of you, courageous conservatives, as we come together to reclaim the promise of america, to reclaim the mandate, the hope and opportunity for our children and our children's children. we stand together for liberty.

[applause] senator cruz: this is our fight. the answer will not come from washington. it will come only from the men and women across this country, from men and women, from people of faith, from lovers of liberty, from people who respect the constitution. it will only come as it has come at every other time of challenge from this country, when the american people stand together and say, we will get back to the principles that have made this country great, we will get back and restore that shining city on a hill, that is the united states of america. thank you and god bless you. [applause]

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[country music] [indiscernible conversations]

>> senator ted cruz announcing he will run for president today. this headline from politico. anna palmer writes, after the theatrical launch of his presidential campaign, ted cruz melt faces a massive hurdle raising the tens of millions of dollars it will take to mount the 1.5 year-long campaign. the darling is month hind competitors and recruiting donors and bundled essential to a credible gop primary bid. his uncompromising policy positions and role in enforcing the government shutdown in 2013 don't exactly excite the business executives who comprise the elite donor class. those considerations along with the need to capture attention in a crowded field of conservatives

conservative to the decision to become the first republican to formally enter the race. that is from anna palmer and politico you can read more at po litico.com. next, former secretary of state hillary clinton and julian castro take part in a discussion on jobs, the economy, and urban development. we also hear from labor leaders and the mayor of compton, california at this one-hour event hosted by the center for american progress will stop -- progress. neera: good morning.

welcome to the center for american progress. my name is neera tanden. i'm honored to have all of you join us for this very special round table focused on expanding opportunity in america's cities. we are very proud to co-host this event with a union focus and improving our cities. we are also very fortunate to host such a wonderful group of participants with us today including former secretary of state hillary clinton. welcome. [applause] neera: in a moment i'll introduce our other guests first i'd like to say a few words about why we are here. america's cities are the engines of our economy. generating opportunity and prosperity not only for the people who live in them, but for suburban, rural, and tribal areas as well. our nation's top 100 metro areas alone account for at least 75% of the nation's gross domestic product. today more and more middle class families want to live in cities. and the more we make that

possible the more our cities and our country will grow. yet urban areas face ongoing challenges. the shortage of affordable housing, struggling schools, and concentrated poverty. that's why we are here today, to bring together leaders from across sectors to address these challenges with new ideas so today's cities are places families can grow and prosper. now it's my great pleasure to introduce today's round table participants. secretary hillary clinton served as the 67 secretary of state. before that she was also the senator from the great state of new york representing our country's largest city. lee saunders is president of afscme which represents more than 1.6 million public sector workers across the country. we are also very honored to have secretary castro from the department of housing and urban development.

he's also the former mayor of san antonio. asia brown has spearheaded a number of creative initiatives as the youngest person ever elected to mayor in compton, california. glenn is co-founder of silver lake, a technology investment firm. bruce is the vice president of the brookings institution. founding director of the brookings metropolitan program and an expert on urban competitiveness. janet is president and c.e.o. of the national council of la raza, the largest national hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the united states. and the executive director of the policy institute which serves more than 100,000 youth and young adults at 125 programs in los angeles.

randy is president of the american federation of teachers, which represents 1.6 million educational professionals. and finally, seth williams is c.e.o. of rockford technology company, a company with mission to give back to its urban community by creating jobs and manufacturing earth friendly products. so, we have a great group of people here today. i'd like to start out the discussion with lee saunders. lee, why should we actually care about our urban areas? mr. saunders: first, let me thank you for coordinating this and sponsoring it. we believe that this is a discussion that's long overdue. in fact, there is a tragedy going on within our urban centers across this country. the lack of jobs, good-paying jobs, and we have to talk about t not only on the labor side but business, academics, elected officials, all of us have to think outside the box to talk about the problems that exist in the urban areas right now. you know about the detroits of the world. you have heard about atlantic

city. you have heard that some these cities are actually having a comeback, but if you look at those specific comebacks, you will see that in effect it's just in small areas of that particular city. and that, in fact, when you go outside of that area you see a lot of poverty. you see a lot of joblessness problems with public education with the infrastructure, so we believe we have to have a dialogue. we have to have a discussion collectively thinking outside the box and saying that our urban areas are the engines of our states for job growth and job creation. to pay particular attention to resolving this problem and rebuilding our urban centers across the country. we view this discussion as the beginning not the end. we believe this should be a priority not only of the federal government, but it should be a priority and we should coordinate our activities between the federal, state, and local level. to resolve the problems, provide

quality jobs, provide employment, to provide hope for people who reside in these areas. just want to -- they are playing by the rules every single day. they want to have a chance. they want to have an opportunity to achieve that american dream. so we are very, very excited about this. we are looking forward to having more dialogue on it. neera: excellent. secretary clinton, as i mentioned you were a senator from new york. you represent new york city. why should the country care about the city's success or failures? secretary clinton: i join with lee in thanking you and caps for pulling us together on this, i thank you, lee, for motivating this conversation. i did represent new york for eight years and i not only represented new york city, i represented buffalo and rochester and syracuse and albany and binghamton and a lot of other places that had very different challenges, but they all fell under the category of

how do we make sure our cities are good places for people to live and work. that's become even more important as we have watched how cities are driving economic prosperity. it used to be that jobs were moving out of cities into suburbs and rural areas. that trend is reversing. so people want to live in cities. there are all kinds of reasons. and there's research i'm sure we'll hear from bruce about millenials wanting to live and work in the same place. so cities have always been the engines of prosperity. but now what we are seeing is, unless we pay attention and come up with some very creative and i would argue effective solutions based on our past practices, we will not see our cities doing what cities do best. it goes to lee's point. a lot of our cities truly are divided. they have a lot of inequality that has only gotten worse.

they have some of the most dynamic, well educated, affluent people in the world. and people who are trapped in generational poverty and whose skills are not keeping up with what the jobs of today and tomorrow demand. so i'm looking not just at what can be done by working across governmental lines, because as we said that has to be absolutely critical, but what we can do in partnership with the public and private sector. i'm glad we have people on the panel who are speaking to that. let me just make three quick points. one, i think that we for a long time, especially at the federal level, but also at the state level, shifted resources to follow people. which meant that we shifted resources out of cities. it made sense because roads had to be developed. all kinds of utilities and infrastructure had to be put into place in suburban areas and

even further out. i remember having all kinds of conversations as a senator with people who wanted to bring jobs to upstate new york in particular, and they would move out into what they called green areas or clean areas, even though the utilities and a lot of the other infrastructure was actually in the old cities. and so how do we begin to make what we already have more of an attraction? but then that raises the second point, how do we repair and update a lot of our infrastructure? a lot of the older cities we have terrible problems with water systems, sewer systems. to say nothing of not keeping up with an electric grid or broadband access that are the infrastructure of the future. we have to do what i would hope to see as kind of a mapping of our cities. and an understanding that when it comes to the physical infrastructure, we have to take care of what we already have

upgrade it, modernize it. we have had problems here in washington. we have problems in new york. potholes exploding, all kinds of issues. we have to really invest. then we have to throw it into the future. the second big issue is the human infrastructure. that's the most important part of any city. it's the most important part of our entire country. what do we do to better equip our people to be able to take the jobs? how do we keep middle class families in cities where they want to stay? they don't want to leave. but they are being priced out. so we need to do more to fit the human needs with both the potential that people have starting early with pre-k. i'm very much a supported of what the mayor of new york did trying to create pre-k access for every young child in new york regardless of who that child is and who its parents are. we also have to do more on affordable housing and more of the amenities so that families middle class families, working families, can actually stay in cities and have a place to go. i want to publicly acknowledge randy because through a clinton global initiative commitment

the afl-cio and building trades pooled their public pension money to train people to do energy retrofits. energy efficiency. they have now created tens of thousands of jobs. that's the kind of creative work that we can do together. i'm obviously proud that c.g.i. was the convener to make that happen. the final point is this. we know a lot about social mobility. one of the biggest issues we face is income inequality combined with wage stagnation. they really go hand in hand. we don't have enough good jobs. we don't have people being placed into those jobs. we don't have enough social mobility. really interesting work being

done by professor schetti and his colleagues at harvard. it wakes us up as to what we are facing. they have looked at the indicators of social mobility. why do some communities have frankly, more ladders for opportunity than other communities? how do we promote success and upward mobility? it's not only about average incomes. as important as that is. you can look at cities that on average have similar affluence but people are trapped and not able to move up in one city and are moving up in another. i'll give you two examples. two cities with similar affluence, seattle and atlanta. have markedly different rates of economic mobility. it's not about race. white and black citizens of a city like atlanta both have low upward mobility. it turns out that places where the fabric of community is strong, with a vibrant middle class, places that are more integrated across class, places with good schools, places with

unions, places with religious organizations and civic organizations help people feel rooted, part of a community, and then being able to pull together all of the aspects that play into upward mobility. so we need to think hard about what we are going to do now that people are moving back into and staying in cities to make sure that our cities are not just places of economic prosperity and job creation, on average but do it in a way that lifts everybody up. to deal with the overriding issues of inequality and lack of mobility. and that's why i think this conversation is so timely and hopefully cap and others will continue to work on these important challenges. neera: thank you so much secretary clinton. just building off of your remarks, cap actually worked a

little bit on the issue and found that the size of the middle class actually affects how much social mobility you have in these metropolitan areas. we did that work with him and he applauded that work. i think that's a really important point. bruce in the 1990's we saw articles about how cities were dying. secretary clinton referenced this. now they are seen as the engines of growth. what are the strategies you have seen that actually succeed in making cities more hospitable to the middle class families who want to live there? >> the secretary has it right. this is a very different conversation today than 10 years ago. cities have enormous demographic and market wind behind their back. it's the millenials. they want communities where they can live, work, and play. it's also companies that are moving to an open innovation model. they are not staying in their sigh lows, inventing only within the four walls of the company.

they are looking to interact with researchers and others. that revalues proximity. authenticity. there are four strategies that matter playing out in the past that play out today. innovation. you have to as a city, your companies are clustered, continuously innovate on products, medical campuses and the companies that cluster around them. skills, stem skills. science technology, energy, and math. not just people with four-year degrees, but people coming out of high schools, community colleges, business training efforts. as you said, not just roads, transit, and bridges, but to move energy. to move ideas, broadband. ports, airports, logistics cities are trading entities. and last the quality of place. this probability matters more today than it has in the past 50 years. authenticity, amenities, vibrancy, vitality. that's really critical to the

innovative process which makes cities hum, metros hum, and the economy hum. it's worked for cities. as we go around the country what we are seeing, not just governments, but private, civic, union, community, philanthropy stepping up and doing some really hard work. louisville, lexington they are making manufacturing innovation a priority. charlotte and chicago, they are changing their community colleges to equip workers with the actual technical skills they need. you can go to denver and l.a., they are using local resources to build out state-of-the-art transit. then you can go to the heart of detroit and to the heart of buffalo and you'll see the cities coming back from the core. it's still a very small landmass, but when you put that innovative economy on steroids one innovative j.b. equals five other jobs. it can expand out into the

neighborhoods if we are smart about skills and education. there's not a recipe about there. it's about collaboration. it's about public-private at its core. it will fundamentally, i think and we can come back to this change what the national government does. in some cases the national government really does need to lead, a lot of this advance research is really coming out of the national government. no one else does the same work on basic science or even applied research. but on skills, infrastructure, quality place. the national government needs to be a better partner in the service of city priorities and city vision. so there's exciting work out there, and there is a road map for prosperity, shared prosperity. but it does mean that we need to recognize the world has fundamentally changed. neera: thank you so much. secretary castro, i'm going to come back to you to discuss what the federal government should do

towards a little later. first talk about your experience as the mayor of san antonio. you took a number of policies to really address some of those -- these key challenges that we have raised. what worked for you as mayor and what can we learn from your experience? secretary castro: thank you to cap. this is a very timely subject. i'm convinced we are living in a century of cities. and that here in the united states that america is falling in love again with cities. the census bureau estimates that by 2050 we are going to see 80 million new people in our country, and about 60 million of them are going to live in urban areas. in san antonio, one of the things -- if i had one piece of advice for local leaders around the country, it would be to break through the silos that often exist at the local level. one of the things that we saw the administration up here doing very early on was an effort called sustainable communities that was h.u.d. working with the

department of transportation working with the e.p.a. we said, hey, i think what we should do is organize ourselves in a similar way. the city government needs to be talking to the community college district, needs to talk to the housing authority, to the transit agency, to our electric utility, water utility. and it is absolutely surprising how often that actually doesn't happen. even at the local level. when we did that what we found was that first of all there are a lot of resources out there if they are coordinated in a better way, they could make a bigger impact. that's money and resources you already have. secondly, it really allows you as a community to create long-term vision for lifting up parts of the urban core that are most in need. in our case, in san antonio, we focused on the east side of the city. one of the poorest areas of san antonio. and looked at improving the schools, looked at improving the roads. making the neighborhood safer. ensuring we had better bus

routes to that part of the city. not only does that help us eventually get promised neighborhood grant, choice neighborhood grant, promise zone, but maybe more importantly we saw the attendance rates going up at the elementary schools in the neighborhoods. the graduation at this high school going up. you start to see by coordinating and making investments in housing, in education, in safer streets the actual bottom line on the ground results that you want to see, and that would be my piece of advice for local leaders out there. the number one thing that you can do immediately is to break through your silos and get into meetings with the community and amongst each other as leaders to look to the future. neera: thank you so much. mayor brown, throughout your career you focused on spurring change in disadvantaged

communities. what's been working in compton to foster growth? mayor brown: we were busy. before i became mayor i was an urban planner. when i came into office i brought every sector of government, community, faith-based organizations together and i introduced the vision that i have for the city. it came from hearing what the residents. really wanted in their community. we focused on public safety and crime. when you think about why do middle class families flee from inner cities because they want to raise their kids in a safe environment. we brought together every single level of law enforcement. labor unions, we had our wrap around services. every single entity that touched compton, we came together and focused on two issues. one on eradicating human trafficking, a huge issue and impacts 90% of people involved in human trafficking they are minors. we also addressed gang violence through intervention and prevention measures.

through our task force we focused on what factors allow these activities to happen in our communities? we number one for human trafficking we eliminated hourly motel rentals. let's face it, tourists don't rent motels by the hour. [laughter] mayor brown: we really actually were able to identify really what the hub of these activities were. we also focused on addressing gang violence. we wrote out prevention programs. we focused on truancy and how can we work with the worst kids and get them back on track. we also focused on -- i asked every single level of leadership in temples our gangs and city to come together. we sat in a circle. there were about 50, could we have peace? who was going to be the last man standing? at the end of the day i think something came really apparent to them they have been in a fight. -- a cycle. so they committed to having peace. eight months later haven't crime is down 40%. we didn't spend any additional dollars on law enforcement. we have less long-term on the national law enforcement on the

street. we also focused on creating mentorship programs and bringing in ex-gang members and gang members to make them accountable, but empower them to make their community better. we also focused on the job creation component. and tying it back to infrastructure. 126-year-old city, we have to like many others, repair our water lines and streets. i proposed a tax measure. we also sat down with labor leaders and said how can we make this a group project? with our community members, they are excited about the opportunity not only to have clean streets but also to have jobs. we are creating the employment development programs now. we have community benefits agreement legislation that i practiced where 35% of new hires have to be compton residents. we also have employment development programs at the onset of the project so there can be no excuse there are not qualified residents ready. we have done amazing effort and it's all through collaboration and it's about empowering the stakeholders you have in your community because i learned that everyone who is doing amazing things bus they are in their

silos. can we do a few great things together well? we have seen phenomenal results. lastly i think that when we focused back on people, when we think about what america is and the pride of really being an american, it's about having strong people and strong people build strong families, strong families build strong communities. that's where we have a robust nation. we are focusing on the basics in compton and we have had tremendous results. neera tanden: thank you so much. that's very inspiring. beth williams, you're c.e.o. of a company that actually also does a similar thing. you were hiring people, used 10% of your hires have a criminal record. what -- you have a particular goal of revitalizing your community as you do business. what has helped enable you to grow your business? ms. williams: first i'd like to thank you for having this

conference. now after listening to what i represent, i represent that group, that community we are talking about that needs to be revitalized. we are seeing tremendous revitalization in certain pockets of the cities, but there's certain pockets that are truly being left out. and historically been left out. basically my company's growth has been focused around green technology and really has benefited from the corporate diversity programs and people wanting to spend x number of dollars as minority women business. we work every day to increase employment opportunities for low-skilled labor force who are often trapped in that circle of poverty as we talked about. they have no real clear path out. when we think about it, this isn't new. america's cities were built on manufacturing. immigrants came here, got jobs. were able to build skill sets. then move on. the american dream just as you said. people just need opportunities.

we have proudly supported core reform, which is criminal record information. 20% of our work force are ex-offenders and ex-gang members. we make a big effort to hire young men. i feel like young men, particularly young men of color, are at tremendous risk in this country. and that unless we do something about it, those communities are at tremendous risk as well. we really focused on how there are ways to prevent recidivism. you have to create jobs. people want jobs. i felt like i had people at my job, yes, we build imaging supplies for staples. they are my biggest customer. it's not learning how to build a toner cartridge or ink cartridge. they are learning how to read detailed manufacturing instructions, warehouse shipping and receiving, skills they can

take on to other companies. so i feel like i have been successful when i have turned a young gang member around who said ms. williams you saved my life, i'm now working as an apprentice or warehouse at neiman-marcus. those are things that say success to me. we really made a positive impact. we made manufacturing happening in the inner city of boston. the value of those companies like that and bringing those partnerships together between corporate and small businesses and minority businesses that have the capacity and ability to do that is that you create a primary business that feeds the secondary business, the main streets. when my folks go to lunch, my 75 employees, they go to eat, the nail salons, it's sort of that's what revitalization means. someone asked me in our debriefing room. how do you get your people? it's word of mouth. i cannot tell you. we live in a labor surplus.

the name has changed so many years since the 1970's. affirmative action, hub zone there are tons of workers we have that just want jobs. when they heard that -- anywhere i go if i say i hire ex-offenders, my cousin, brother, can they fill out a application? it's really very, very critical that corporations and governments continue their focus to allocate resources to helping small businesses and women and minority businesses. typically when these programs were established they were established, too, with the mindset that minority and women business programs -- companies will hire people from their community. so the government's one of the largest consumers in the country. i really hope as we continue to look at this issue that we try to figure out ways that we can find of tweak some of these programs the government has to make them more effective. in partnering and looking at ways to help grow these

businesses. neera tanden: thank you so much. i'm going to turn to you, glen. you invest in companies in range of cities. innovation is a critical component. i love to get your view what cities are working and what cities are not working. >> after listening to this i want to invest in compton. and in pittsburgh. and in boston. i have some investments in boston. you two are real heroes. i admire what you have done. mr. hutchins: i talk very quickly, three minutes, over the course of the last 30 years i have had the opportunity to help build businesses that became world class businesses in both pittsburgh and detroit. over that time period i saw one city go through a renaissance

and the other collapse in a bankruptcy. it was -- i had a front row seat to view that. it was interesting. pittsburgh -- both cities were vulnerable to declining basic american industries. basically the same set of problems. in the 1980's pittsburgh lost 75% of its basic metal employment. but over the course of the next 30 years built a world class city. and what i saw was a collaboration between all parties. business, labor, government, universities, hospitals, etc. they built a tech hub. based on robotics and computer science around carnegie mellon. built a health care hub base at the university of pittsburgh. medical center. the philanthropists derived from the steel fortunes invested in education, cultural institutions, historical preservation projects. made the city an interesting place to live. government together with private players invested in a bunch of

brownfield redevelopment projects that revitalized, as well as technology investments to bring companies in. and the students who came to go to universities got good jobs and affordable housing and stayed and created a resurgence in the economy. by 2009 when i will note the automobile industry in the united states was in bankruptcy, pittsburgh was voted by the economists intelligence unit as the most livable city in the united states. in contrast, in detroit which had the very same set of challenges, decline of a major industry, loss of high value taxpayers and businesses collapse of public revenues, massive increase in city obligations, pension health care as a result of declining tax base responded what i observed the response was, based upon a culture of contention. rather than one of collaboration. i often thought it was -- they came out of a historical relationship between the largest industry in the community and its labor base. but it seemed pervasive across the community. what i observed was the zero sum

exercise over a dispute of resources. and the capital, defined broadly, financial capital human capital, all migrated away from the city. notably as bruce has taught me over the years to ann arbor. a place that flourished at the same time as detroit was in decline. the lesson i took from that is you can have a collaborative approach and forward thinking point of view. or you can find yourself mired in old disputes that you're relitigating in a culture of contention. it seems to be straightforward. it seems also as i have learned more about detroit these days that post bankruptcy its leaders are focused on that. understand that lesson and have the exercise of the bankruptcy are getting to it. but it's a lesson we have to learn and relearn. as a businessperson there's only so much we can do. we can thrive in the cultures of collaboration. and we can succeed in the cultures of contention. it's a lot easier to see it

elsewhere >> i hope some folks in washington will take note. hillary clinton:neera tanden: my word. not yours. randy, i wanted to ask you about something that glenn mentioned which is human capital. capital resource as well. you have heard throughout this discussion the importance of attracting business and growth is from the human capital potential. bruce has really referenced that as the high point for cities. what are strategies to make sure that our schools are developing kind of the human capital of tomorrow? >> it's absolutely doable to create these kind of -- it's absolutely doable to create these kind of human capital

strategies. the real question is how do we do it for every child? the real question is sustainability and scalability. let me just start with this. three districts quickly. district on the brink of collapse, community fighting its way back from recession, lawrence, massachusetts. could have closed schools, instead decided with a new superintendent to focus on a strategy of, this will sound familiar to both glenn and secretary castro, everybody's been talking about this, engagement, intervention collaboration. working with teachers and working with parents, working with kids. in one year, i don't want it to sound like it is -- that this is going to happen every single year, but they turned around schools so that the -- in massachusetts they had a five point or 10 point increase in school scores in one year. second, school with health and

dental care, social workers for students, families, guidance counselors, support for housing, early childhood settings, you say this is school system? yes. cincinnati. half the schools are community schools. the schools have become centers of community. what we have seen is that cincinnati is the highest performing district in ohio. as secretary castro said breaking down the silos. it was done economically well. third, and this gets to the whole point, think about a school where kids get to learn under water, work with their hands, building and operating boats, harvesting oysters, designing submersible vehicles. i know it's your husband's favorite school in new york city. this is the new york harbor school. it's one of hundreds of career tech ed schools that got not only new york city but the

landscape. this is what's so important about these schools. when you align the work that's in a community, just like you talked about in terms of manufacturing, we are doing this in pittsburgh as well. peoria, illinois. when you align manufacturing or the other kind of skills, the employers that are in the city and the high schools and community colleges. you create this amazing robustness in terms of that pipeline. and in fact, that's where someone like nick, chairman and c.e.o. of snap-on tools said we are in a global competition for jobs and the single best weapon is c.t.e. we need to outskill the competition. why do i start with these three? then i'll end. because if we know we can do it, then we need to make these the norm not the exception. if we want to help all kids, the way we have to do it, to borrow the phrase that the secretary used many years ago, it takes a village. because economic and educational policy have to go side by side.

even though it's not an urban setting, we learn in mcdowell county, west virginia. where we are building housing, trying to create jobs, the eighth poorest county in the united states, while at the same time working with our union with folks in san francisco to build housing there. it is this public-private partnership where we are collaborating as opposed to simply engaging in conflict. we can do it, but if we don't have the -- we can do it in this ad hoc way. if we don't have, as lee said before, the kind of intervention and strategies that promote this all throughout the country, they will still be outliers as opposed to the norm. neera tanden: thank you, randi. randi was talking about strategies. matching up human capital with economic development. i want to talk to you about how

a number of urban areas are facing she's issues of inferior housing, failing schools. one of the initiatives that secretary castro talked about was promise zones. which is really looking at the fact that today research shows that a person's zip code has more to do with their life expectancy than their genetic code. how do we really directly address those -- what's happening to the individual in that community? promise zones is one of the initiatives. can you tell us how that helps tackle some of these challenges and what you're seeing from your experience? >> thanks. i want to echo what an honor it is to be part of a distinguished panel this morning. as we have already heard, there are a host of collective impact initiatives going on in urban communities across the country.

really a modern day war on poverty. the federal government is playing a major role in this work. we are thrilled in los angeles to be at the forefront of these efforts. effort to break the intergenerational cycle of poverty. so targeting specific geographies, in our case the community with about 200,000 residents, and saturating that community with resources. the policy institute happens to be the only agency in the country that's been awarded all four of the initiatives, that's the los angeles promised zone. that's the promise neighborhoods which is modeled on the harlem children zone. there are now 12 promise neighborhoods in the u.s. choice neighborhoods, that of h.u.d. and the byrne initiative out of the department of justice. i'm pleased to announce in the last two years, $100 million in new targeted federal investment has come into the los angeles promise zone from seven different federal agencies.

mr. slingerland: these are $100 million in programmatic funding for a specific community. what we are learning on the ground there is no silver bullet for these urban challenges. you have to do everything and you have to do it well. in our case that's a focus on the continuum from cradle to college and career. with high quality schools and early education and wrap around services for youth and families. targeting disconnected youth who dropped out of school and don't have employment. all of that has to be part of a strategy and results driven. we have a common system that all our partners within the community use so we can track these outcomes over time. and i think you got to have everybody at the table. in l.a. we are lucky the annenberg foundation has put together something called l.a. in sync to bring lowell philanthropy in. i want to add that leadership is really critical.

we have a fantastic mayor in l.a. who is a big believer in this approach, who is innovating and restructuring at the city government level. none of this would have happened if the obama administration hadn't taken on what i think is a herculean challenge of getting federal agencies to collaborate, break down silos, to better support place base work in communities like l.a. i think it's the best kept secret of the last six years here in d.c. we are just so happy to be part of it and happy to be here today. neera tanden: thank you. janet, i want to come to you. one of the areas that we have really seen take off is latino entrepreneurship. that's grown immensely over the last 15 years. we know from research that latinos actually more than any want to stay in cities. how do you we harness that energy as part of an economic development agenda for the

future? >> sure. it's great question. latinos are entrepreneurial and we are clearly punching above our weight when it comes to the small business area. and the facts show that there are more than three million hispanic-owned businesses in this country. generating more than $1 trillion into our economy. and one of every five new entrepreneurs is latino, and hispanic women-owned businesses are leading the way. latinas are the fastest growing segment of the small business owner community. many times they are doing that out of shear grit and will. yet they are still not -- there is still not enough support and services to help keep these small businesses sustainable. and the theme that we have heard already today is really one that absolutely needs to be reinforced, and one area, group

or i guess sector that i'd like to highlight is that community-based organizations. they are doing so much to pitch in and collaborate with those community colleges and with the businesses, larger businesses often with the chambers. for us, it's going to be essential that community based organizations who know these communities, particularly in the latino community, can help give them the skills, that support that they need so that they can have that access to capital. secretary clinton knows, your deputy secretary, she was part of a great model with axion international, there's one in texas. there is now a new spinoff called lift that is helping many small business owners, particularly across different sectors, they are doing it by using this model we talked about. breaking down the barriers that are often there and the silos. we at the national council are looking to make sure that our

affiliates, dixon here is one of them and a shining example. there's lots of ways we can be doing more. i will say that prince charles was in the washington, d.c. last week. and while he did many things one of the things he did was visit the carlos rosario center here in washington, d.c. and he was looking at, i was told, the way they were integrating immigrants to have the skills to be able to succeed in the mainstream. oftentimes many of them need small business assistance and learning about the access to capital. but sometimes it's just the language skills that we need to transition so that they can be fully successful and i think that there's much more that we can do. one of the things i would just say as i close is that we are doing a lot as a community, i think, to be part of that

vitality in the urban core. i would say that one reason that oftentimes some of these folks turn to the small business sectors is because still the labor market is still not sort of an even landscape. there are limited opportunities. i would hope that we can still look at adequate way that is we can support our work force development system. because i think we need to be moving on several fronts to make sure that the urban progress we make is inclusive of all of our communities. >> i know i'm not on the agenda. i agree 100% with her with one of the points she made. that is we are looking at partnerships with the community colleges. we are looking at partnerships with the schools but we are not looking at partnerships with the small businesses, particularly the small minority and women businesses that are there. we don't have the bandwidth to reinvent ourselves as a large corporation. as we are looking at changes in

innovation, we need to be partnered with some these corporate partners and be a part of that. be at the table. and we are not. i couldn't agree more -- 100%. that's where i am right now. i know a lot of folks, but i'm looking at the -- my peers and what's happening and we are seeing a big, big change. wonderful things happening in boston particularly in the innovation district. it's not filtering over. really if we could look at ways corporate and government to pay attention to the small businesses and integrate it into this new process with stem and community college, etc., that i think that it would really have an impact. neera tanden: did you have anything else you wanted to say? >> no. i was finishing up. i think that for me it's real important to reinforce this notion that a hidden gem in these core urban centers are these community-based organizations.

and they are hustling out there trying to support. i really credit a number of folks in the public and private sector, foundations have stepped up in the new way, to offer us models so that we can scale some of these programs. it has to be a partnership and there has to be coordination and collaboration. there's a lot of folks working really hard out there. they want to make t they want to contribute. they need a little bit of help. and again having a small loan, doesn't have to be a big one for some of our folks to be able to open those doors but to keep them open for their small business, that's going to be how we are really making sure there's vibrancy in these urban centers. >> we talked about this before. the only thing i would add to this, kids who come out of good schools with science and engineering degrees are going to do fine. what we need is to focus on the people who have never had a job. the jobless. the long-term unemployed. and the post incarceration population.

and that's a lot about -- not about stem research but it's about skills training. integrated with the local businesses, small and large. and it still amazes me in our unemployment insurance system is based upon job search as opposed to training. if you're going to break into the employment -- hard core unemployment at those levels we talked about earlier, you have to be able to do that. secretary clinton: this is exactly on point. we have 5.6 million young people in america between 16 and 24 who are neither in school or work. and if we don't consciously try to set up better systems to reach out, find these young people, and train them, we are doing something at the clinton foundation called job one, as glenn said, a lot of them have never had a job before. and so -- a lot of them have

never had the job b they don't have the hard skills, they don't have the soft skills. part of the challenge is working with companies that will do exactly as you're saying that is to make it possible to have these entry points where companies with i think either already existing government support or revamped support for skills training will coordinate. it's -- the other thing that germany does is instead of an unemployment system, they have a wage subsidy system. you don't let people go in the first place. i think that there are lots of creative ideas both in our own country that are being tried and elsewhere in comparable economies, but we have to focus on that first job and get people into that system so that they then can maybe get better educated and better opportunities will come. neera tanden: randi, did you want to say something? >> what we often do is we do top-down rather than bottom-up. this whole notion of neighborhood based and thinking how you work, how you both work

with the assets, you leverage the assets, including human assets, and community based organizations, and the faith community to actually find your kids in the neighborhood. and that's part of the reason that what we have seen when we wrap services around schools and try to think about the school as the center of community or church as the center of community, we find the kids. because kids actually, if we can engage them, they don't drop out. if we can engage businesses small and large in terms of the c.t.e. process, we actually have a pipeline to jobs and pipeline to more learning. >> i am getting a number of things out of the discussion. there are a few words people have constantly repeated. one is collaboration. unfortunately, in many cases

there is contention. in detroit, the first thing they were looking at cutting was retirees benefits who are not average $19,000 per year. they looked at cutting those right out of the box. our retirees live in these communities, they provide essential public services. but rather than starting off in a contentious mode, it seems to me that there are enough examples where we can collaborate and we can bring all of our communities together, whether it is the nonprofit community, the business community, labor. we can sit down and talk about resolving these problems. i think that is what's missing in many of these cases. we have to bring this discussion together so we can honestly have dialogue about how we can

rebuild our structures. infrastructure, educational system, provide housing provided quality jobs. there are examples. people are doing it. but we just have to talk about it and fitted into a strategic program, a strategic plan. neera tanden: some ideas for us to go forward. >> collaborate to compete. if there is any place that is more collaborative than any other metropolis in the united states, that is denver. they were flat on their back in the early 80's and the city and suburbs came together and vested back into the downtown. they knew they needed a vibrant core. you fast-forward 25 years later and they are building 122 miles of light rail transit.

the only thing i would say is if you put your stem economy on steroids -- every job in the stem economy yields another five jobs. in many respects, in cities there really is the difference between the stem economy and the non-stem economy. these are unified communities, essentially. going forward, we need to think about stoking the fires. if you go to downtown detroit, buffalo, st. louis, we have to focus more on supercharging those economies. the yield is off the charts for people living in those neighborhoods. >> can we call it steam, not stem, and put the arts in there to?

building on that, there is research on how higher educated stem cities raise the wages for everyone. mr. secretary of housing and urban development, i am going to start to close with you. from this conversation, what are the strategies that we can really learn from to go forward and what are you working on from the federal ms. bass: i got elected to san antonio -- secretary castro jy and we were putting on street maintenance and repair and one of the

neighborhood association meetings who came up to me and said that they had been waiting in their neighborhood for many years for sidewalks to be created on their streets and it meant something to her because her mother her mother had diabetes and the doctor had advised her mother to walk, to try and walk to help out with her health condition, but she couldn't do it because there were no sidewalks and there were dogs in the neighborhood that would harass people who walked by. it drove home this idea all of these things we are doing is connected to policy, but it's infrastructure health, economic development, for housing. the best things we are doing is bringing all of those issues

together. ensuring there is good, affordable housing mange irevering sure that there is affordable housing. education, safety, sustainability, promise zones, promise neighborhoods. i believe that we need to do more of that in the years to come to lift up the urban coerce of communities that have been out there struggling and the metros make up 75% of our national g.d.m. and in this 21st sebt try and nations that are rising around the world, we need

for those ties so ex see and we collaborate and think of the policy in a way that blends all of those areas. host: thank you so much. lee. closing thoughts. mr. saunders: you have have a good amount of recommendations. let me just say this and this is again just a discussion that i believe as we should continuity. and we are committed to that. and let me highlight a couple of things. jobs are a key to rebuilding our cyst. good jobs are the root of the challenges that must be addressed. improving education and improving education addressing

health disparity and preserving affordable housing. every community has got to be included in this discussion and every community has got to have the funt to advance and advance to make a better life for themselves and invest in our infrastructure. we are going to need help and resources coming from the federal government and the private sector. i'm excited about this endeavor. this is the right thing to do and important thing to do. we have the examples of where we with we can be successful.

secretary clinton: nice to get back into what works and try to learn from examples that i think can teach us all a lot of lessons and that to me is the most important takeaway. we have cities that are working well because they have been re-inventing themselves and have done so in a collaborative and inclusive manner. they have work to do, by they are demonstrating there are a prompse we can learn from and can apply. there are other cities that are having difficulty overcoming the

contentiousness and figuring out ways to collaborate and it is a political battlefield than a policy discussion. i hope that cap and the others represented here this morning can do together what is so needed and that is to stimulate a conversation in cities themselves because i think it is both bottom up and top down. and cities going to state capitals and coming here to washington and saying we need to create the coordination and collaboration and need to have your help in convening and looking at what works and looking at what results, which dixon has pointed out to. and get out of a very

unproductive discussion that we have had for too long where people are in their ideological bumpingers having arguments instead of trying to reach across those dwids and come across those solutions. and mayor, what you have done with gangs and gang members has to be done with so many places in our country. don't be surprised you don't get a call. maybe we'll start not too far from here. beautiful dome building. and put everybody in the same room and start that conversation. it could lead to collaboration and better results for our cities and country. thank you. host: thanks everyone for participating. [applause]

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>> you can't undo of saddam-era stuff where think are going to have part necessary with them. afghanistan, according to the president's announcements, we have troops but going to draw down to 5,000 next year. i would warn we would have seen a similar result. that afghan army is going to be very shaky. >> tonight on the sale of u.s. strategy in iraq and afghanistan tonight at 8:00 eastern and pacific.

the chair of the house armed services committee, congressman mac thornberry laid out his plan to cut out paperwork and increase accountability. congressman thornberry spoke today. >> thank you for joining us. this is a great way to start a week. it doesn't get any better than when you have the chairman of the armed services committee saying he wants to kick off a week of discussion and have it here, so i'm pretty happy this morning. i want to say thanks to chairman thornberry for doing this today, but also for becoming such an important leader at this time. we were just chatting when we

were waiting for everybody to gather. probably not been a time when the country and the congress faces more complex issues, security issues, than now. and honestly the country's fatigued about the military. i mean, we've had 12 years of wars and there are an awful lot of americans that just want to forget it. they just don't want to think about it. but the point of genuine national leadership is to bring issues of long-term significance to the public debate so that we don't ignore this. this is a very important time. we're having a huge debate in the congress right now about the budgets and how much money we should be spending on national defense. i think chairman thornberry, i know this is his view, that the reason he's pushing so hard on the question of acquisition

reform is because if we're going to ask more money from the american public for defense, they want to know that the money they were already spending is being well spent. and i think we just have to honestly say we've got a lot of reform that we need to bring to the defense department, to validate our request for a stronger budget. and we do need a stronger budget. i don't know how many of you feel comfortable every night when you look at the daily news, but i don't. to think that we are drifting without a strategic plan for our long-term defense posture at a time like this is genuinely scary. now, the chairman has spent the last two months taking the committee down deep to understand the risks and the threats we face all over. i think it's a tremendous foundation for the markup that's coming, but also for the next two years. today he's going to spend some time talking with us about acquisition reform. it is a crucial and central part

of his overall strategy and agenda. i think we're very fortunate to have a man of his character and his leadership perspective leading the committee at this time. so would you please, with your applause, welcome chairman mac thornberry. [applause] mr. thornberry: thank you, doctor. i appreciate those kind words and i appreciate the chance to be back at csis and also

everything that you and this organization does to help inform and educate and guide many of us, as we try to think our way through the national security challenges that we face. you know how when you're on an airplane, they're about to close the boarding door and somebody says, if you're not going to dallas, this is it's time to get off? i'm kind of thinking that anybody who is here who is thinking this is a texan about to announce something about the presidency, you're in the wrong place. [laughter] there's another speech that you may have a chance to get to if you run. it's ok to slip out the back. i was here in november, 2013, to launch a defense reform project that former chairman buck mckeon had asked me to work on. so i thought it made sense to come back here to unveil the first installment of where we are. when i was here before, i mentioned that nobody that i'd run into thought that everything at the pentagon was going fine. what i more frequently got was a reaction that, an eye-rolling reaction that, oh, yeah, y'all are going to try that again,

it's not going to make much of a difference. and it's absolutely true that change is hard, especially for a military. which brings me to a subject of vital importance which is trousers. now, when you talk about defense reform, you probably think about fighters, not fabric. but in 1912, just before world war i, trousers were heavy on the mind of the french ministry of defense. see, the british had learned from the war that having those bright red coats on tended to make them more of a target. so they switched to khaki. the french by comparison still wore blue coats and bright red trousers. the french minister of war saw an advantage of being slightly less visible on the battlefield and sought to institute the same reform that the british had taken on, but a general way to describe the debate would be to say that the french have always

held a high regard for fashion. so, taking away trousers would be, as a parisian newspaper wrote, contrary to french taste and military function and of course they put taste before function. one former general even took to a parliamentary hearing, screaming to ministers that they would never eliminate our red trousers. well, later on, after a bloody conflict, the french minister of war wrote that the blind and imbecile attachment to the most visible of all colors was to have cruel consequences. so far we've been fortunate enough not to have had a general scream about the color of military pants in one of our committee hearings. but i do think the french experience is instructive and as we all know their reluctance to change in the next war was to

have even more serious consequences for their nation. militaries are traditional by nature. it's part of their strength. it means that change, even necessary change, can be slow and hard. as the doctor just referenced, i think one of the reasons that military reform is necessary for us is that under any budget scenario, resources are tight and we have to make sure that we get more value out of the money we spend. we have to show our colleagues on the hill and the taxpayers that we're carefully overseeing how their money is used. but i believe an even more critical reason for reform is the need for agility. as the doctor again just referenced, we've had witnesses over the last two months in congress testify that we face a wider array of national security challenges now than at any point, certainly since world war

i, and maybe in the history of the country. we know from the headlines that the threats to our safety and well-being are multiplying and we know from the polls that the public is pretty uneasy about it. just think for a second, if you will, about what's happened in the last 16 months since i was here to start this reform probably. china is pushing out its territory, even building islands on the south china sea while our justice department has indicted p.l.a. members over their cyberactivities. now, north korea's been busy in cyber as well but they shoot off a few missiles from time to time just to keep everybody on edge. u.s. military was sent to africa as the first response to the ebola epidemic and the national guard in texas was sent to our border to help cope with tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors that were flooding in from central america. threatening the peace of europe and post-world war ii stability and putin won't stop talking about where to put his nukes.

they have shot from copenhagen brussels and paris, across africa and south asia in malls museums, grocery stores and even schools. that's not to overlook the success of isis drawing thousands of foreign fighters, humiliating the iraqi army. nor the fall of the government of yemen, the source of the most serious threats to our homeland over the last few years as iran spreads its influence throughout the middle east and maybe a threshold nuclear state with the blessing of the international community setting off a nuclear arms race in the middle east. old problems haven't gone away from afghanistan, pakistan

somalia and palestinians where there was a seven-week summer offensive in gaza. several airliners got shot down with hundreds of people dying. in short, it has been a difficult time in the last year or so. and the truth is nobody can see what is going to happen but the velocity of change is accelerating. the question is how well do we or how well can we respond. so, to help us be better prepared for a world of proliferating threats, including those we can't predict, we need to have reforms in at least three areas, one is personnel to ensure that we can attract and keep the top quality folks who serve our country. and we are looking at the military retirement

modernization and i suspect we will try to do that. organization and overhead, that classic tooth-to-tail ratio as the end strength of the services has declined the bureaucracy in the pentagon and elsewhere has stayed as they say robust. so we need to streamline the bureaucracy partly to save money but partly to streamline the process because every office has a right to make their presence known and there is a good chance we can work with secretary carter. but the third area of reform, is improving the way we acquire goods and services. the definitive edge that our military enjoys comes from two sources, our people and technology and if we use our technological edge, our troops will lose as well.

our military has got to be both strong and agile and people are going to get tired of me talking about the importance of agility. the army that can outmaneuver its foes wins and why the germans valued their formations. russia and china are trying to outflank us using technology whether it is using missiles or building radar that can detect stealth. the only defense is to adapt quicker than they do. i don't want to see america outflanked. the hearings and briefings we have had this year point to an eroding technological superiority. several factors have contributed to that including the general pace of change, our broken budget process and acquisition process where we have a hard time getting modern technology

fielded in a timely way. last week when secretary carter testified in front of our committee for the first time as secretary, i pulled off my shelf, a book that he had edited and partially written from 15 years before. as you can imagine, it can be a cruel thing to do to somebody to cloak their own words to them. but in this case, i think he was right and i think he is still right because what he wrote, is to maintain a technological edge we have to align our procurement system with market forces and we have to be the fastest integrator of commercial technology into defense systems. we have moved further away from those goals rather than closer to them over the last 15 years. one of the many lessons i

learned from dr. hamre is our unique government-industry partnership in the united states has been one of the key factors in our success to becoming and staying a world leader. it is a fundamental strength but also been a persistent problem. since i was last year 16 months ago, i have spent the time listening and hasn't just been me. many of our committee members on both sides of the aisle, especially ranking member adam smith have listened, read and stud yesterday about past reform efforts and how well they have succeeded or not. we have listened to folks in the pentagon such as the under secretary and the service chiefs. we have listened to industry including trade association, companies and individuals and people who have spent years studying the acquisition process.

we have listened to former military and pentagon officials and industry officials. we have listened to people working in the system now managing programs trying their best to get capability delivered on time and on budget and we have consulted with people completely removed fl the defense acquisition system to learn about best practices that could be incorporated into the system. i know this is shocking, but we have listened to each other, because there are members of congress and staff that have a tremendous wealth of experience and expertise in these areas and we have taken that input and compiled the data base with more than 1,000 specific proposals, some of which as you can imagine better than others, more realistic than others, but it's a data base we can continue to mine for years to come. despite the fact that there are a lot of smart well-intentioned people in this field, i don't think anyone has all the answers or to understand all of the consequences to any particular change.

so on wednesday of this week i'm going to introduce in the house a bill that will serve as a discussion draft for the first traunch of legislative proposals to improve our acquisition systems. folks will have a month to do it because our full committee markup of the next year's national defense authorization act will be april 29. so there is a month to make comments. in offering this legislation, i expect at least two reactions, one is, it doesn't go far enough. and you know what? that is exactly right. it isn't enough and doesn't try to be enough, but it's a start. and it's a start that tries to

focus on the basics of the acquisition process. our people, the strategy and the decision-making chain to buy goods and services. another reaction is well, it does too much. well, i don't think that's right, but that's why i want to put it out there. my first rule is the doctors do know harm. this is the best application i know of that overused phrase of trying to fix the airplane engine while the airplane is in flight. this plane cannot go off duty and land for several months while we fix the engine. it has to keep flying while we make improvements. but if we don't try to fix the engine, it's not going to be able to defend the country. so in the proposal that i'm going to introduce, i really break down the changes into four categories, people, acquisition strategy, streamline the chain of command and thin out the regulations and paperwork and let me give you a brief summary of each of those.

it starts with people. that's our most valuable resource in acquisition. we would remove some of the obstacles that make it more difficult for top military talent to serve in acquisition. and we make permanent the defense acquisition work force development fund to help to make sure it can be used more effectively. we would require training on the commercial market, including commercial market research to help close that gap between industry and government. to be the world's fastest incorporator of commercial technology, that there has to be a lot of interaction between industry and government.