Hearing of the Readiness Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee - Operation and Maintenance Without OCO Funds: What Now?

Hearing

The Subcommittee on Readiness held a hearing today on the Operation and Maintenance without OCO Funds: What Now?. Chairman Rob Wittman made the following opening statement as prepared for delivery:

Witness testimony can be found linked below and on the Committee Repository as prepared for delivery; the committee is no longer providing paper copies of witness testimony. Additionally, a live video feed of the hearing can be seen on the Committee website . Witnesses did not submit written testimony for this hearing.

"I want to welcome all of our members and our distinguished panel to today's hearing focused on "Operations and Maintenance without OCO Funds: What Now?"

"This morning we have with us:

* Lieutenant General James L. Huggins, Jr., Deputy Chief of Staff of the Army for Operations;
* Vice Admiral Joseph P. Mulloy, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Integration of Capabilities and Resources;
* Lieutenant General Glenn M. Walters, Deputy Commandant of the Marine Corps for Programs & Resources; and
* Lieutenant General Burton M. Field, Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations. Thank you, gentlemen, for being here this morning and for your service to our nation."

"Since the terrorist attacks on 9/11, the U.S. military has deployed thousands of U.S. service members, federal civilian employees, and contractors around the world in support of operations focused on counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, ballistic missile defense, and security assistance.

"The military services have also dedicated immense resources to repairing war-torn equipment, developing new technologies, modernizing the force, training units, and shoring up homeland defenses. The bulk of these activities have been paid for outside the normal Defense Department budget process through a yearly wartime Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) supplemental budget. OCO funding has played -- and will continue to play -- an essential role in military readiness. Most importantly, it supports our combat operations and our men and women in harm's way.

"It remains critical to protecting our forces as we draw down in Afghanistan and allowing them to successfully conduct their mission. OCO is essential for the retrograde of equipment from theater and the transition of security responsibility to Afghan National Security Forces. This need will be especially acute if a bilateral security agreement is signed with the Government of Afghanistan.

"Some would characterize OCO as unnecessary after 2014. However, the fact of the matter is that the rapidly broadening scope of challenges now facing our military has led the Department to become increasingly dependent on OCO to support enduring activities--activities beyond Afghanistan's borders that must continue after combat operations have ended. OCO funds a multitude of enduring high-priority activities like building partner capacity, providing humanitarian assistance, conducting training exercises, and performing intelligence functions.

"We must find a way to migrate the billions of dollars in funding for these essential and enduring activities from the OCO to the base budget which presents an enormous challenge that only becomes more difficult if sequestration continues to squeeze the base budget. Until we are able to do so, we have a responsibility to provide the necessary OCO resources to allow our troops to do the job we have asked of them.

"However, that does not mean we will stop providing vigorous oversight of the OCO budget or that hard choices will not be made."

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