mr. mccord: we will have to get back to you on the status of the report. >> thank you. eld back. >> thank you. mr. whitman. >> thank you. thank you for joining us today. general dunford, in the previous hearings the armed house services committee has held, there has been a lot of discussion about readiness. concern about returning to full spectrum readiness is at the top of our list. i think general milley said it best when he said it does not have a constituency. i think that is why it is critical to make sure we are the constituency for readiness for the men and women in uniform. tell me are with the current budget situation, where we project to be the best project to be on the path to restore readiness. we are at the point of setting conditions to restore readiness. tell me how far away we are and what milestones you expect to achieve. gen. dunford: we took input from all services as to what they needed in fy 17 along their path to restore readiness. that was a priority for the secretary. we fully resource for service plans for readiness restoration, keeping in mind w

mr. mccord: we will have to get back to you on the status of the report. >> thank you. yield back. >> thank you. mr. whitman. >> thank you. thank you for joining us today. general dunford, in the previous hearings the armed house services committee has held, there has been a lot of discussion about readiness. concerned about returning to full spectrum readiness is at the top of our list. i think general milly said it best when he said it does not have a constituency. i think that is why it is critical to make sure we are the constituency for readiness for the men and women in uniform. tell me are with the current budget situation, where we protect to be the best project to be on the path to restore readiness. we are at the point of setting conditions to restore readiness. and me how far away we are what milestones you expect to achieve. we took input from all services as to what they needed in fy 17 along their path to restore readiness. that was a priority for the secretary. we fully resource for service plans for readiness restoration, keeping in mind we knew we could

mr. mccord-- us mccord: you do not see walk away to accommodate the left fall. on the readiness sided, the primary difference between the is ayou described and now heavy degree of contingency operations that are ongoing and multiple theaters. i think that has necessarily consumed the attention of the readiness computing -- community, service providers, and the commanders. differentobably a problem, a more compelling problem in the readiness phase of maintaining as much readiness as you can you give an amount of manpower and logistics we have had to devote to iraq, afghanistan, and operations like that in recent years. i think if we all looked at this program and this budget, and i will ask jamie to comment here, most of us, most of the leadership of the department itself, if there's anything we idealized, we did not take any more risk than we already war. mr. morin: i would add two points that are very important, thinking about this issue. first, and in a background sense, the large parts of the force are by their nature here in readiness. the navy of course it

mr. mccord we have talked a lot about readiness and training and maintenance.is true is it not that virtually all of the money for training, for maintenance of aircraft and support this in the base part of the budget. >> that's correct, the vast majority mr. chairman. >> secondly my understanding is as you all were putting together your budget request, over $5 billion of that request, $5 billion was savings, inflation and especially fuel savings great obviously it goes up and down and you have a very long period when you have to formulate your budget. my question is, as you look at it today how do your assumptions on the process of fuel measure against the reality of today? is it better or worse than you assumed? >> it is better. are you talking fy16 or 17? >> 417. >> the prices we were directed to assume are higher than today. as you note the fiscal year hasn't started and want start for some time after that but there's a long time these prices at the hole before such savings would actually be realizable that they are lower today. >> i'm just a little concerne

mr. mccord to be guided solely by his own conscience and conviction. at. >> mccord isn't so willing to go to prison and not speak up. he feels hirerups shouldn't get off scot-free. >> mccord wrote the judge a letter. in it he says, other people not yet named were involved in the break-in at democratic national headquarters. >> mccord says there are efforts being made to keep us quiet, and there are people responsible who are much higher up than us. and you're being denied that information. >> i think what bothers us as republicans is that there is apparently so much more to be revealed. and every day, every week, when something else happens, it's one further dagger in the heart. >> by and large, it was a national consensus, listen, the president is saying one thing, the prosecutors are saying another thing. there are a lot of very serious accusations in the air. let's get to the bottom of it. >> senator sam irvin of north carolina was chosen today by the democrats in the senate to conduct a full investigation of the watergate case. >> once that senate c

mr. mccord: we have had challenging discussions as well on areas like health care over the years. i would say, on your first point about agility as well, that seeing that two of my predecessors,

mr. mccord, i warn you, i promised mr. conaway we will do a briefing and hearing on the audit issue. we'll be talking with you and other folks about that, about dates for that. but it is something that mr. conaway's going to stay on our case until we see it all the way through. all of us are committed to doing that. ms. bordallo. ms. bordallo: thank you very much, mr. chairman. as a representative from the asia pacific area, i'd like to start out by expressing my sincere sympathy for the people of belgium and for the family -- and the u.s. house gaveling back in today considering seven bills. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2016] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] understanding, give us strength and reason during these perilous times. bring consolation to the be reefed in belgium and public servants represent the great united states. collectively brothers and sisters, you are a tapes try of america, a beautiful quilt of diversity. the best of who we can be. our res

mccord? do you have any statement? >> i do not, mr. chairman. >> thank you. i thank the witnesses. mr. secretary, i appreciate your comments about the iranian behavior and their subsequent behavior exploiting this humiliation of american service members. what action have you recommended that we take in response to this? >> we're -- everything we're doing in the gulf, chairman, including all of the actions that are funded in this budget, which include tens of thousands of americans in the region, we want that. our ballistic missile defense is in the region. we want that. >> i see, but all of these things are planned and in the budget. i wonder if you had planned on any specific action that iranians would know is a result ,÷ service members. >> well, i've made it quite clear -- >> you've made it quite clear a that you're outraged and all that. but what specifically are you doing in response to that? >> we're continuing to take all of the actions that we need to -- >> obviously, specific action in response to the iranian outrage. >> at the time of the incident, we prepared to protect our

mr. mccord, we've talked a lot about readiness and training and maintenance. it is true, is it not, that virtually all the money for training, for maintenance of aircraft and so forth, is in the base part of the budget. >> that's correct. the vast majority is, mr. chairman. >> secondly, my understanding is, as y'all were putting together your budget request, over $5 billion of that request was -- $5 billion worth was savings, inflation, and especially fuel savings. now obviously the price of oil goes up and down. and you have a very long period when you have to formulate your budget. my question is, do you look at it today, how do your assumptions on the price of fuel measure against the reality of today? >> for -- for -- >> is it better or worse than you assumed? >> it is better today. are you talking most about fy 16 or 17? >> 17. >> the prices that we were directed to assume are higher than what are prevailing today. as you note, that fiscal year hasn't even started. so there's a long time for these prices to have to hold before such savings would actually

mr. mccord, i understand you do not have an oral statement. is that correct??eciate you being here today as well. mr. secretary, i think you're exactly right to condemn the attacks in brussels and you're exactly right to express sympathy for the victims. i think the question for, especially for this committee but for the american people is okay, what are we going to do about it. and in last year's bill, section 1222 asked the administration to provide a strategy for how we were actually going to implement the president's stated desire to degrade and destroy isis. and as i mentioned, it's be radio silent. we have heard not a word from anybody. now to be fair, it's not just a matter for the department of defense. it's not just the military who will defeat isis. and the requirement in law was not just directed to the department of defense. but do you have any idea when we might see a strategy on how to beat isis in. >> well, thank you, chairman. and you're right, the brussels attacks reinforce our need to accelerate the defeat of isil. we have a strategy for doing

mr. mccord, with respect to procurement, my understanding, but please correct me, is that you've done allou can to maintain multiyear contracting for systems which essentially keeps us in the ball game, if you will, but if we do not fix the sequestration problem next year, this fragile structure will sort of fall apart. but we are still maintaining the cost-efficient multiyear contracting? >> we are. >> we're not cutting back on those deals? >> no. we are. and this gets to the point the chairman raised about how did we accommodate the difference between what we planned last year and what we got in the bipartisan budget agreement, what i described as a net of $11 billion of our almost $600 billion. how did we accommodate that? as the chairman said -- i was very insistent on this as was the chairman. we protected readiness. the prince pal impact dame in a number of modernization programs to i believe collude aircraft, shipbuilding, a number of minor modernization programs. that's what we did. it's all out there, and i'm sure you'll be reviewing it. what we didn't do was not fund the service

mr. mccord as well. that's partly where the rub comes. >> that's correct. and to get a marginal increase in oco this year without knowing we can count on it in the future is pretty suboptimal for us in terms to be able to plan and use that money as effectively as we might if we knew would be taken care of permanently that's much better for us. >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you. mr. jones. >> mr. chairman, thank you. mr. secretary, i'm going to take you in a different direction, totally different subject. i want to personally thank you and especially thank secretary robert work. i have spent 13 years of my life trying to clear the names of two marine pilots who crashed a v-22 osprey in arizona on april 8th of the year 2000. secretary carter, i want to thank secretary work publicly because he did something i could not get the marine corps to do. and that is to look openly and evaluate the information that we had put together working with experts, many of those were marine pilots themselves, they were aeronautical engineers who came to the aid of saying

mr. mccord. the administration has said consistently that the defense budget you presented matches the two-year budget deal from last year. the republicans in congress are constantly saying you're $17 billion to $18 billion short of what you were allowed under the budget deal. the numbers just don't seem to match up. could you explain to us where you're matching the two year deal or where you're not? >> thank you. yes. well, in our view, in my view, we did match the deal. the deal has a face budget number and an oco number in it. the oco, the base budget number includes entities like the nuclear nnsa as well so obviously it doesn't track directly to the department of defense target but it's obvious we're about 95% of that. on the oco side, which i think more of the discussion has been, there's an oco number in the deal and there's language in the deal. it's the same number and the same language in both '16 and '17. we treated it the same way congress treat td last year. congress wrote to that num

mr. mccord, we talked a lot about writing is in training and maintenance.true is another virtual all the money for training, for maintenance of aircraft and so forth is in the base part of the budget? >> that's correct. the vast majority this, mr. chairman. >> secondly, my understanding is as y'all were putting together your budget request, over $5 billion of that request was, $5 billion on savings, inflation and especially fuel savings. obviously the price of oil goes up and down. you have a very long period when you have to formulate your budget. my question is asked to look at it today, how do you assumptions on the price of fuel measure against the reality of today? is a better or worse than you assumed? >> it is better today. are you talking fy '16 or 17? >> seventeen. >> the prices were directed to some are higher today. as you know that fiscal year hasn't even started able to start for sometime and we will go a year after that so there's a longtime these prices have told before such savings would be realized but they are lower today. >> i'm just a li