with only days after president obama as title in japan economic revitalization mr mchugh of my week with us trade representative michael from many in washington the two talked for hours from morning till night and at first to iron out their differences over the trans pacific partnership free trade pacts. and they did make some progress america is agreed that the japanese can keep terrace on race week and so far the two sides remained wide apart on issues regarding beef and pork americans want cares on the east to be reduced significantly. japanese decent green. in those days too we've made some progress you know we have a long way to go. us farmers export hundred and fifty thousand tonnes of beef to japan a year. they're hoping that a trade agreement would allow them to produce these experts the cd instead. mark get the chance. currently standing at twenty point five percent. a story. cities need to push forward to try to get used to after lesson are relieved that we can teach him not me over there japanese farmers are demanding that government officials not him. and some lawmakers say t

mrs. obama, deputy secretary of defense fox, secretary mchugh, general and mrs. dempsey, general and mrs. odierno, lieutenant governor duhearst, visitors, civilians, and most of all, the family and friends of our wounded warriors, thank you all for being here today. and we sincerely and from our heart of hearts appreciate your presence and your support and your compassion as we struggled through a very difficult time. today we mourn. we mourn for those we lost one week ago on april 2nd. and today we honor the lives they led. the three fallen soldiers came from hometowns as far apart as

mr. chairman. thank you to the entire committee for allowing me to testify here today, and i look forward to your questions. >> thank you both. secretary mchugh, do you have anything to add on the posture statement at this time? >> mr. chairman, i juwant to be respectful of the committee's time. i have a statement, but by and large, it tracks what the chief said. i fully indorse all of the comments he made, and if it suits the committee and you, sir, i think, if you like, i could enter that into the record. >> we will enter that into the record. let's start with a seven-minute first round. secretary, first of all, let me thank you both for those very heartfelt comments about the events at ft. hood. the army stands as one. and i hope that everyone in that family knows that congress stands with them as one. and i mentioned anything we can do to be helpful in the aftermath of this, to help the grieving families and the installations, please just call on us. we will all be there for you. and for them. on the question of sequestration, this is one of the issues which i believe we've got to hit head on. it's going to affect not just this year and i

mr. mchugh and i were both congressmen that i had a constituent whose son was over there. he ran his own machine shop and he had had spent the last month and a half basically telling all his customers i'll get back to you when i can and created an extender who it can catch a line that it was 30 feet, 15 feet, 5 feet. and he said, look, if i can't get somebody else to do this, i want my son to come home safe. he said i came up with this all on my own at night. those are the kinds of things that jido has been able to help improve on, develop, take to ten degrees further. we certainly don't want to lose the capability that we have there. when we look at the mental health screening that's going on and the challenges that we face in that area, do you think there's a way to try to have more mental health screening tools associated with the periodic health assessment that goes on every year? >> we're always looking, as i mentioned a number of times this morning, for ways in which we can do things better. the challenge we face particularly as we look at what occurred just yesterda

mrs. obama, deputy secretary of defense fox, secretary mchugh, general and mrs. and most of all, the family and friends of our wounded warriors, thank you all for being here today. and we sincerely and from our heart of hearts appreciate your presence and your support and your compassion as we struggled through a very difficult time. today we mourn. we mourn for those we lost one week ago on april 2nd. and today we honor the lives they led. the three fallen soldiers came from hometowns as far apart as puerto rico, central illinois. they had different hobbies and passions and they all had different lives. but they were united by a single desire. a desire to serve their country and their willingness to answer their nation's call in time of war. to the families of the fallen, although all of our words you hear today are inadequate in the face of the magnitude of your loss, we want you all to know that we here at fort hood, we here in central texas, we here in the united states army and the entire nation want you to know that we stand with you, that we grieve with yo

mrs. obama, fox,y secretary of defense secretary mchugh, general and general and mrs.erno, lieutenant give duwhurst, distinguishing and civiliansiers and most of all the families and and ds of our fall en wounded warriors, thank you all deeply for being here today. e sincerely and from our heart of hearts appreciate your and nce and your support your compassion as we struggle .hrough a very difficult time today we mourn for those we lost one week ago on april 2. honor the lives they l led. three fallen soldiers came from as far as puerto rico and central illinois. hey had different hobbies, passes and different lives but they were united by a single esire, the desire to serve their country and their willingness to answer their in time of war. fallen, amilies of the although all of the words you the today are inadequate in face of the magnitude of your loss we want you to know that we at fort hood, we are here in central texas, we here in the and the ates army entire nation want you to know e stand with you, that we grieve with you, and that we will be here for you. tod

mr. chairman. secretary mchugh, general odierno, i know you've had a very long morning, so i just have a brief question. but before i ask that, i just wanted to express my condolences to both of you, to everyone in the army over the tragedy at ft. hood. i know that we all share in mourning the victims and offering condolences to their families. i wanted to ask both of you about a hearing that i held yesterday in the readiness committee, where assistant secretary hammock -- we were discussing the whole issue of brack. and she commented -- and i'm going to paraphrase. but we have the quote, if you would like to see it. but to paraphrase what she said is that if the army -- i assume d.o.d. -- can't get the authorization for brack in 2017, that you would go ahead -- you might go ahead and list some basis for closure in your budget request because of the concerns about because of the concerns about the ability to continue to run those bases in the way that they should be run. and while i appreciate the budget constraints that defense has at this time because of sequestration and certainly think we should do

mrs. obama, fox,y secretary of defense secretary mchugh, general and general and mrs., lieutenant give duwhurst, distinguishing and civiliansiers and most of all the families and and ds of our fall en wounded warriors, thank you all deeply for being here today. e sincerely and from our heart of hearts appreciate your and nce and your support your compassion as we struggle .hrough a very difficult time today we mourn for those we lost one week ago on april 2. honor the lives they l led. three fallen soldiers came from as far as puerto rico and central illinois. hey had different hobbies, passes and different lives but they were united by a single esire, the desire to serve their country and their willingness to answer their in time of war. fallen, amilies of the although all of the words you the today are inadequate in face of the magnitude of your loss we want you to know that we at fort hood, we are here in central texas, we here in the and the ates army entire nation want you to know e stand with you, that we grieve with you, and that we will be here for you. today,

mchugh. >> good afternoon. mr. president, mrs. obama, sir, ma'am, thank you so much for being here.that their commander in chief and first lady would be here to share in this great sorrow. deputy secretary of defense fox, chairman and mrs. dempsey, chief and mrs. odierno, distinguished members of congress, lieutenant governor dirhurs, and most of all to the men and women of fort hood, soldiers, family members, civilians, our army family. we are here again far too soon to mourn more loss all too great. as an army, we accept this is is a dangerous profession. and all who wear this wonderful uniform and pledge to defend our nation and its way of life understand they may one day be called to make that ultimate sacrifice. but inside these gates, behind these walls, we expect a much different order of things. a special sense of safety and security, of brotherhood. simply a sense of home. and yet, for a second time, horrible violence and unspeakable tragedy have breached these walls and torn through our very souls and once more, yet again, we come together to grieve and to remember to cons

mr. chairman. coincidentally, i was with secretary mchugh when the news came and we both got it at the same time, the tragedy at ft. hood. i can pretty much identify too, given the deterioration of the military readiness and capabilities over the last five years and the significant end strength cuts planned for the army. we're all concerned that we can't meet the missions outlined in the strategic guidance without unacceptable risk to the force in our country. we have to remind ourselves and others that when risk goes up -- you were talking about lives. we've been wrong before in the past when it comes to assumptions recordiassumptio assumptions regarding the size of our ground forces. sat income next to each other o house armed services committee when we heard testimony in 1993 by some expert in ten years we would no longer need ground forbeses. so we've been wrong before on where we are. today, the greatest risk our military faces, a hollow force. that has been accruing. we're digging ourselves a readiness hole out of which it will take several years to climb. not only does the budget underfund cur

mr. jones: madam speaker, thank you very much. last week at a hearing of the armed services committee, we listened to the concerns of army secretary john mchugh and chief of staff of the army, ray odierno. they appeared before the committee to tell us the rious problems in the u.s. army, specifically the budget. i asked questions of funding being cut from the army. why do we continue to spend billions of dollars in afghanistan when the money could be going to support our service members? as i did last week, i would like to read a short paragraph from the world affairs journal article and the title is "money pit: the monstrous failure of u.s. aid to afghanistan." the article states that in 2012, the united states budgeted $11.2 billion for afghan military training with another $5.8 billion for 2013. the article goes on to say that in afghanistan a big problem is illiteracy. almost three years ago when lieutenant general william b. caldwell iv took command of the nato training mission, he noted that overall literacy among afghan military and police stood at about 14%. how about illiterate policemen trying to read a license plate, the general as