educated that somehow you dream differently than we do. i'm serious. think about it. ine you ever known a mother a tough neighborhood that didn't dream for the kid to go to college even though she dropped out of school in fourth grade or was strung out. you're in a family in a tough neighborhood or a ghetto who didn't have a dream for their kids? it's all about giving people a chance. so i am proud to be associated with all of you. , mayless we you have done god protect our troops and i apologize for getting so into this. [applause]

>> here on c-span, "newsmakers" is next with republican ngressman mac thornberry of texas. 8:00, a conversation with a vanity fair columnist on "q&a." >> on newsmakers, we are joined by congressman mac thornberry of texas, chairman of the house armed services committee and on wednesday saw his defense policy

bill passed in the house. to help with our questions today we are joined by a reporter from the washington took -- washington post. >> the bill did pass wednesday night, but now he had toward the next stage where there will be seven points of disagreement between the bill that came out of the house and what is likely to come out of the senate. the money questions will be the first and major one which is that your bill dips into war funds more than the senate bill does in the mccain may put an extra measure on the you're saying your approach is necessary for readiness. what dot doesn't match you see going forward and where can you stand to make a compromise without losing your position. >> the first question is what the bill looks like when it comes off the senate floor.

we've passed our bill pretty overwhelmingly in the house. as you mention senator mccain has talked about adding money on the senate floor. i waiterally for me until the bill comes off the senate floor and that i have a better -- better feel for what we're dealing with. the other thing that we will have in the coming week is hopefully the defense appropriation bill will come. generally i believe it will follow the path that we have taken. at some point everybody will have to get together and figure out how to have a common position to get bills to the president. but we will take it a step at a time and this was a pretty good step that we took in the house this week. pushing worst -- worth this foe to dip into the war fund that the senate will not follow suit or push as hard as you is it worth trying try to take the survey. >> the way that we approach this is consistent with the agreement

of last year because the agreement was there would be a minimum level to meet base requirements for the military. pay ande things like training and maintenance and procurement and then there would be additional funding for overseas deployments depending on what oversees the plummets the president wanted to pursue. it turns out that president obama would like to pursue a lot more overseas deployment and yet he did not ask for the money to pay for those as was envisioned in the agreement. we try to stay with the base requirement under the basic principle that it is wrong to send men and women out on deployment or missions without making sure they are fully supported and fully trained to carry out those missions. i do think that it's essential that we turn around these trends that show an increase in aircraft accidents, pilots not

getting the training that they need, cannibalizing aircraft. in every service were seeing examples of readiness which basically means men and women are not being supported the way that they should. i think that's wrong and we've got to turn that around. >> can i get you to explain something on the funding strategy. this bill that you passed sets up the overseas war fund by $18 billion come the springtime. >> we fund the overseas deployments for six months into the new fiscal year. part of the reason that we do it is that's exactly what was done between bush and obama in 2008. in june under a democratic majority, congress passed the full year base requirements for the military and then several months for the overseas deployments to give the new

president a chance to take a fresh look at it, make adjustments and maybe he or she does not want to have all those the planets and make adjustment present thatd then to the new congress and then you finish up the fiscal year. that's exactly what happened between bush and obama were following the same approach this year. the democratic argument now in the springtime when this is short by that amount of money that your gambling with war fighter funding. >> i would say two things. one is, if we can all come to an agreement to fully fund everything it would be better, but taking the same approach that was done before -- the other thing is in the obama years, we have had continuing resolutions 23 times that have not lasted the whole fiscal year. that's the same thing. your funding part of the year, not the whole year.

it's that the best way to do it but it is not a catastrophe when it happens. in this case it allows us to turn around this slide in readiness and against the new president an opportunity to take a fresh look at these to plummets and make adjustments accordingly. argumentsecond counter waged against that which is that it happened in 2008 but there were no budget cuts. maybe before if you wanted to switch levels he could continue them in future years but because they exist you are funding programs in fits and starts with morearantee you can put money where you have put money for a few months. >> my response is that there are no care and teased about any of these things, particularly budgeting, but for each of the last four years, we have made adjustments to the budget caps. we've been adjusting it. i don't know any reason to think

that some sort of adjustment in the future is possible. but in the meantime what this allows us to do is turn that readiness around and make sure we're able to begin to catch up on maintenance facilities replaced 1970's helicopters with 2016 helicopters and stop the cut in the number of people in the military. one of the things i've come to realize is we are not going to fix the readiness program just by putting more money into operations and maintenance. getting to a point where we just don't have enough and the ones that we have were working harder and harder, seven days per week and some of them are leading to go to the airlock. if to stop the personnel cuts to really fix this. >> hasn't got to the point where servicemember's lives are at risk because of these budget cuts?

>> i don't know, but maybe. the alarm bell that went off for me was when i saw the class a mishap rate which means you lose the aircraft or somebody dies, it went up drastically for the marines and also for the army. as we dig deeper and we are still digging into what is like the air looks force has real problems, the navy has real problems. so the lives are exactly what is at stake. it's not just budget numbers were political leverage. when they don't get the training, it is lives and that's why i feel so strongly about it. >> my readers would say congress created this problem with budget caps. it's been five years, why can't they fix that. >> i think they're right.

congress contributed to the problem. congress and the president can eliminate these caps which have not worked out the way they intended. what was intended was at these caps would be so drastic it would force mandatory spending cuts and yet that didn't happen. mentioned, we found raise -- we found ways around the caps. 2010, we have cut the in realbudget 23% terms. the world's not 23% safer than it was then. yet, we have not fixed the problem. >> you're not the only one who wonders if the class a mishaps could contribute to the budget cuts.

when you look at the january crash that killed 12 marines, can you drop a direct line between budget cuts and that fatal crash? >> i have not been briefed if they have finished the investigation on the exact causes of that crash. but needless to say there have been a number of mishaps, crashes, some of which have been fatal that cause enormous and certainly i think it's important to say that military training is inherently dangerous to some extent. what is disturbing is i look at the tenured trends. the ten-year average is plus the more recent trends. and something is drastically going wrong. i do think it's up to the leadership in the pentagon the military and us to find out what

it is and to take action today to fix it. can't wait for new president or congress to fix the budget control act to say we will put these lives at risk until we get our act together. we will go into a lot of details about where the rubber hits the road, but there is one policy related matter what to ask you about that stem set of the bill that since of take on a life of its own at this point. you had arguments happening analyst with four hours arguments about lgbt writes with federal contractors that stem from a provision that began in your committee about congressman russell deciding to introduce that amendment that was voted for to give religious organizations exempt mints -- exceptions. thatems at this point

democrats not being them to get a say in the vote on that on the four are going to raise this is an issue with various appropriations bills as we saw today. budget numbers seem to matter. getting the money seems to matter. when he spoke to my paper's editorial board if expressed some regret about how the women in the draft them it was handled in the community. would you handle the russell situationand the lgbt differently? a second. clarify for what i think we could have done better in the armed services committee on women participating in selective service was to understand better the scoring ramifications of it. gets technical in the weeds but my understanding was that the memo was going to be withdrawn and it was not in it lead to all sorts of cup

locations about how we could do with that issue going forward. on the russell amendment that you refer to, i read it on the floor last night for everybody and a have to say i'm a little confused at the argument made. theuse the provision says federal government shut do anything that violates this provision of the civil rights act of 1964 or this provision of the americans for disabilities act of 1990. that's all it says and it is maybe 10 or 12 lines and somehow that has mushroomed into some terrible discrimination. >> i'm a recovering lawyer. in aen't practiced law and long time but i've read it several times and i do not understand the argument. i think it's possible you may have some outside groups stirring the pot for their own

purposes and it's possible a number of members have not read the language or do not want to. in the military's best interest to reverse any sort of -- to go backwards on discrimination. concern. >> the concern was that these things that are law are what takes priority over the president's executive orders. maybe there is a conflict there but the provision that has , 1964 controversial says civil rights act, nothing contradicts that. i am muchu the truth sure why this is all blown up by m struck by the degree to which extraneous issues come out in our defense authorization bill. this is about the troops come about their pay and weapons

readiness and we seem to spend a lot of time talking about other things including this. >> one issue that has come up in recurrent years has been the guantanamo issue and in this bill you don't let any of the funding be used for the transfer. week the senate confirmed the secretary and the was a hold along the lines of the same issue and senator robert said he was listing the whole because he felt like republicans have successfully run out the clock on guantanamo. i wonder if you agree? if you think it is a done deal and it is too late to do anything. have the republicans won? >> i don't know about won. we did have a direct vote and overwhelmingly the house voted to leave the restrictions in place and the house has voted that way ever since president

obama has been in office. those restrictions have been in place. i think that's where congress is and i think that is where the american people are. >> are you still concerned this is something to protect against? >> i think the current restrictions which say you cannot bring guantanamo detainees to the united states and you cannot alter facilities to house them -- i think that will stay in place. i do not for see that changing. >> when you talk to service members about how budget cuts have affected their lives, what do they tell you? >> some of them get quite emotional. they don't say that budget cuts have meant this to me, but they say, this is what i'm dealing with now.

i talked to pilots who do not have the aircraft they need when they are about to deploy. i talked to mechanics who talk seven days a week and never seeing their kids and they feel like they are deployed overseas. talked to a top pilot for one of the services leaving the service, he loves what he does but he doesn't think the aircraft that he flies are safe anymore and he has two young kids at home. frustration, of not being able to do what they signed up to do is certainly closer to the surface than i have ever seen in talking with the military. i do think it is a cumulative effect, not only of budget cuts but also the pace of deployment

over the past number of years. andwe have been asking more more of these folks and am afraid we are reaching the brking point. >> white is it that the president and congress are unable to fix this. it's got to the point where you are now worried that budget cuts may have led to aviation crashes, perhaps fatal ones. is there a general apathy in washington toward national defense? >> i would not say there is apathy. both the house and the senate passed the defense authorization bill and the president vetoed it because he was not going to approve defense funding until there was more money spent on domestic programs. ever, theyst time

were held hostage by the president trying to leverage it for more mastic funding. there may be good reasons to spend more money on domestic funding but one answer to your question is that it is a political foot wall and too often, some people on the republican side to not want to increase spending at all for anything. want to do it if you can increase an equal amount for the domestic side and who is caught in the middle? the men and women who serve. >> we have six to seven minutes left, but a little while ago you mentioned that you were surprised at the provisions that get added to this or the debates that come up have nothing to do with defense policy. a debate over whether congress should authorize the fight against isis is a debate that should go through the process? >> congress has watched as the sinceent has bombed iraq

august its way 14? up. think it should come we should vote on it. i think this is of such import that it ought to stand on its own and not be part of the bill that we are talking about. we did have a debate and vote umft appealing the 2001 a that we considered this week but i think it needs to be updated. 2011 past updates to that. i think that we are to have that debate. the speaker has asked us to have listening sessions. there have been several meetings about it.

the challenge is that lots of people have different ideas. i don't think there is one approach that is got a majority view. amount ofn with the resources and money allocated to the islamic state, kent -- can you say our strategy is to win or contain? >> i would categorize it as avoid disaster. you can see him slowly dialing up the pressure, a slight relaxation of the rules. it's not really to win. success oneen some the ground, but the rest of the story is that isis is spreading to more countries than ever before. it's not even successful in containing them geographically. >> of the u.s. is not trying to defeat isis? >> it may be somebody's stated

intention, but that is not what the facts on the ground would show. >> one of the things that you added to the defense policy was the move to shrink the national security council. that has grown over several administrations. if the concern of the republicans is that we should be doing better, is that too much of a shock to the system to quarter the part of the administration that handles this sort of policy planning? >> to be clear, i did not say how many people there should be. my him him and said if it goes above 100, that it has to be confirmed by the senate. national security adviser would be available to testify in front of congress. at a certain size it is inevitably more involved in

operational decisions. some of the folks who have been about the growth of the national security council make this point. when it gets to such a big it is not doing the coordination function of strategic planning it was designed to do. seens exactly what we have in recent years. >> is it an immediate drop you would like to see, or should it be gradually scaled down? >> it is completely up to the next president. if the next president like to have 99 people he or she may. if the next one has 400 like this one, all that has to happen is the national security advisor needs to be confirmed by the senate. if he wants 1000 people that's fine, it just has to be

confirmed by the senate. a good deal talked about budgeting priorities and you laid it out about what democrats want versus what republican leaders want. would you support a supplemental that had domestic spending too? >> it depends on the justification. i have certainly supported supplementals for disaster relief. i am not for throwing money at things. i am not for saying that you cannot spend one dollar on defense unless you spend another dollar on domestic, but if there is a justification, of course. >> will have to leave it there. i want to thank you so much for being our newsmaker this week. and now we turn to our roundtable.

jeff, we spent a lot of that discussion with the chairman talking about the $610 billion defense policy bill. what is the road ahead? >> difficult. when it is completed the two sides have to go to a conference committee because there are two sides between the sides of this. the senate calls for when and sign up for the draft and the house version does not. there will have to be a meeting of the minds here because these are substantial differences. >> there is a veto threat from the white house. >> correct. >> how will that be done with going forward? what has the republican leadership said? isall the have done so far call on the obama administration to try to drop that veto.

phil be amending or hinting that they are ready to give up certain provisions of the bill. that veto threat came on monday and they voted late last night on the bill. >> a lot of concerns went into that veto threat. you bring up one of the amendments, the russell amendment. sparked.oversy it has >> the chairman spoke about this a little bit. it was brought up during the committee process, very late as the committee or marking up the bill. steve russell says they did it to clarify that under the executive order from .14, which talks about nondiscrimination religiousctors, organizations that have federal contracts would be exempt for certain parts of federal rights law. he was saying that this is

necessary to clarify that there is still images freedom -- religious freedom. democrats saw that as a threat to lgbt rights for employees, that id what a religious organization is, it was not clearly defined. there was pushed back. a bipartisan crew that tried to bring up an amendment to get this part out when it hit the floor but the rules committee is all-powerful in many ways and they did not let it come to the floor. so what you saw happened was an amendment from sean maloney who -- it's not specifically tied to the expected -- to the exact same language but it is born of that frustration that came up. democrats from new york put an amendment on the floor for this appropriations bill.

this happened on thursday morning. it said, you cannot use -- contracts that are discriminating on that basis of sexual orientation or gender getting should not be taxpayer dollars on federal contracts. direct hit on russell but it is born of the same place. after there was an emotional debate about it a few days before. enough republicans voted for the amendment that it seemed like it had won, until the time for the amendment vote was stretched out and he started seeing the yes votes ticking down. so now this has become a thing where people on both sides are saying, there are other things to do here.

democrats say that we need to bring it up again, shame on the republicans who voted no. and this people on the more conservative end who say, there are places where the president overstepped his authority having to do with nondiscrimination issues that infringed on religious liberties. >> could you sense frustration for the chairman about the issues sidetracking the military debate and the readiness debate? >> yes, and it is not just the chairman. you hear people on all sides of this issue getting really frustrated that this has come down to it -- you are talking about enormous national security bills. the bills that will fund the pentagon and overseas operations. >> the biggest bill that congress passes each year. >> even if they are not failing, they are passing. cloudre passing under the

of real frustrations and real anger and veto threats. i don't think anybody likes it. i've heard republicans who support the democrat side. why does this have to be happening here and now? it is interesting to see who is blaming who. i don't think anyone is happy, this just seems to be the necessary existential context. the defense department tends to move ahead of the country on these things. >> before run out of time, if this unusual? >> the chairman seem to indicate cap and frequent. -- seemed to indicate that it happened frequently. to make sure that planes are flying and people have enough training. that this is an unnecessary burden put on defense spending.