mr. walz, are you good to go? >> i am. i have an amendment at the desk, mr. chairman. >> if the staff would please distribute the amendment. >> without objection, the amendment is considered as read and the gentleman from minnesota is recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. this amendment, twofold, first thing it does, it defines and defends the congressional review process making sure that when we're making changes to our military members' lives, that it's this body and this body's first responsibility to make sure that we're there to provide the oversight to see if the changes that we made are doing what we intended them to do. this deals with the commissary, and i think most people in this committee know but many of our colleagues may not know, that's the grocery store in the military. there are nothing predictable about the military and it's very stressful. grocery shopping should not be a place where there is stress. the commissary holds a unique place in military history. for one thing, it is not a business, it's a benefit to the tune o

the gentleman from minnesota mr. walz. >> mr.hairman i have in on the desk. >> staff will please strip the amendment. [inaudible conversations] >> thank you. without objection the amendment is considered as read in the gentleman from minnesota's recognize. >> i rise today to offer a commitment to strike section 311 of the underlying bill. i'd like to thank mr. petersen mr. ashford and a few hours ago the majority of this committee for standing up for american grown energy and the smart all of the above energy policy. this amendment amendment is the way the provision would prevent dod from taking advantage of american growing energy rate on every single day in this country we spend half a billion dollars getting imported oil from countries that hate us. they will do it for free. reducing a dependency on foreign oil is not just an economic issue but a vital national security issue. the department of defense recognizes that and that is why some of the most groundbreaking work on renewable energies happening within dod. hamstring in

mr. walz: thank you to my good friend from new york. it's a phrase we throw in here without a lot of authenticity, but a gentleman who served here in congress, i'm proud to stand with you. and you heard the gentleman's comments why we think now is not the right time to draw down this land force. the size of the force this nation needs should not be predicated. his rise of isis and china has built a new island and a belligerent russia and this is a deter rant not just to aggression. whether it be in haiti to respond to natural disasters or ebola. the best trained and most efficient and most ready force to uzbekistan our diplomacy is this land force. we were concerned about this. the gentleman and i co-authored a piece of legislation. we said let's let the data speak to itself. if they can assess this force is enough that needs to be done by the joint chiefs of staff, that's the way it should be. they came back with some alarming things that they talked about and one of them, we are heading down the wrong path. there is a belief that we c

miller, mr. walz, mr. jones, mr. gibson, miss gabbard, mr. bridenstein, miss graham, mr. cook and mr. zenke. this simple amendment would permanently treat the national guard dual status military texas personnel for the purpose of furlough. dual staff texs are uniformed full-time guardsmen but get paid out of different accounts on weekdays versus drill days. the dual staff technicians wear essentially two hats. they're trained to perform a particular job in the armed forces and drill in that role like all other guardsmen. often time the dual staff techs are maintainers of aircraft and vehicles. they are the lynchpin of readiness for their entire unit are critical to the first response missions. however these currently subject to furlough. we found this out the hard way in 2013. for florida, this was particularly dangerous because of a potential hurricane was brewing off the coast, and national guard helicopters couldn't get off the ground because maintainers were furloughed. i know every state representative faces similar natural disasters. to correct this program, congres

. >> thank you, mr. walz? >> thank you, chairman and thank you all for being here again. we really appreciate it. the strategic need for the f-35, i think everyone knows that. we hear it. it's now crunch time, though, on the delivery piece of it. general bogdan, you were right. there's a perception issue both in what they are going to get and what they expect to get but there's also this perception that i've held and i use this as an example. i've been to know less than 14 hearings dealing with changes to retirement plans, taking away of the housing transferability and tri-car. when the pentagon needs to save money, they go to those programs and i always use the example that we haven't had as many of these. so i hear statements like this from one of our partners from the australian defense, keith jointer said it. he's responsible for evaluating this and he said some systems like the radar are fundamentally worse than earlier. that is not a good sign. here we are with bug fixes for the next seven years and they are looking at -- am i correct in this? they are re-evaluating