Hearing of House Committee on the Budget House of Representatives - National and Homeland Security: Meeting Our Needs
HEARING OF HOUSE COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES: NATIONAL AND HOMELAND SECURITY: MEETING OUR NEEDS
FEBRUARY 16, 2005
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. Baird. I thank the gentleman.
One of my challenges, as I look at these budgetary projections, is the inaccuracy of projections we have heard in the past in this committee, and let me give you some examples.
In February of 2003, Secretary Wolfowitz said, in quotes, Every time we go down on a briefing on the Iraq War, it immediately goes down six different branches of what a scenario might look like. If we costed every single one of them, we could maybe give you a cost range between $10 billion and $100 billion. Well, we are approximating $200 billion already, and the President has got another $80 billion he is asking for.
So I have a concern that there seems to be this exponential growth almost in the reality of some of these costs versus the projections. And again, I am sorry the Secretary cannot be here; he made a similar kind of statement about the numbers of troops we would need. So I would just preface the remarks I am going to make with a concern about the validity and accuracy of some of the information we receive in this committee from the administration.
Something I did not hear from your remarks, and I understand it may be a different budgetary line, but we have, already, waiting lists for our veterans when they are coming back, waiting lists in terms of who can get seen, etc., and I am very concerned about that. Last year in this committee we heard testimony that the President's proposed budget was a couple billion dollars shy of needs. Myself and Darlene Hooley and some others have proposed a $1.3 billion addition to the $80 billion proposal by--$82 billion proposal by the President.
Do you have any comments on the importance of making sure we take care of the soldiers? It is fun to talk about all the weapons systems and all the gizmos and whatnot and how we need them and whatnot, but at some point troops on the ground matter, and if the soldiers are not taken care of when they come back, we are not going to have troops on the ground in the future. Any thoughts about the role of the veterans in this and taking care of them today so that the future needs of the soldiers can be met?
Mr. Carafano. Yeah. I think that is a reasonable point. This is an all-volunteer force. I think we should strive hard to keep it an all-volunteer force. And it is primarily an all-volunteer force because of economic reasons. People do this not just because they are patriotic, but also because they think they are getting a fair deal, and I think that that is a reasonable cost of doing security.
As we look forward, where I really see the issue--and I think here is a point where Mike and I disagree--is this notion about growing the military I really think requires some serious debate and discussion, because if you grow the military in a volunteer force, basically you are bringing somebody on for 20 years, which intends all those costs that you talked about, veteran costs and everything else. That is an enormous expense, which, again, when you are trying to avoid a hollow force, modernization, current operations, trained and ready force, that is going to put a lot of things in competition.
My problem with the notion of let's raise the force level is we still have a force structure which is still very much predicated on the cold war. We have a Reserve component which is still very much created and structured to fight World War III. We have Active Forces which are still--if you look at the structure in Europe, for example--which is still structured for the last war. If we just add people to the force--and the reason why those things never got dealt with was because they were all politically difficult; those were hard choices to make about restructuring Europe or Asia or restructuring just components, and we just ignored them----
Mr. Baird. So your point is--I am going to jump in----
Mr. Carafano. But the point is, very simply, if we just increase the size of the force, we are never going to go back and fix these inefficiencies, and I think fixing the inefficiencies will give us just as much usable force structure, guys in the foxhole, as adding in the 20,000 or 30,000. That, I think, is a big part of the problem of keeping, you know, the defense entitlement issue under control is keeping the force structure at a reasonable size, and I think growing it, particularly growing the Active component, is not the right answer.
Mr. Baird. My concern is that we don't tend to want to pay for the commitments we have made to these soldiers, and that we are willing to send $82 billion over to the theatre, but when the soldiers come back and they need health care, they need prosthesis, they need all the other things, we may not have the resources available in the real time now when they need it. And if we postpone these, I think we will pay greater costs in the long run.
Let me make two other quick comments. One, Mr. Larsen--and I think Mr. Gaffney also raised this--Mr. Larsen, you talked about just bringing a nuclear weapon into this town. I have for several years now, since the night of 9/11, tried to promote the issue that this Congress should be taking care of its own continuity; in other words, what happens if they do bring that nuclear weapon into this town?
Mr. Gaffney, you observed that people don't know about their own evacuation procedures. I would assert that neither do we in this body, and we might be considered somewhat of a high target.
Any comments on the potential that someone might actually one day do that, bring a nuclear weapon into this town and get rid of us very quickly?
Colonel Larsen. Sir, as a former military officer, I spend a lot of time thinking how the enemy would think about doing this. This would clearly be my number one target. And the House of Representatives, to the best of my knowledge, still does not have a plan about how they could quickly reconstitute if we lost the majority of it.
Mr. Baird. That is correct. We have a modified quorum rule that says as few as five or six people could constitute a Congress, and we have a mandatory 45-day election period; assuming it could be done, you would have 45 days with no checks and balances. That is the status in this institution today, and a very ambiguous Presidential succession line.
Colonel Larsen. Yes, sir. I certainly think that should be addressed.
Mr. Baird. Thank you, sir. I yield back my time.
Mr. Gaffney. May I just respond as well, since you mentioned me?
First of all, just on the veterans issue, I am enormously admiring of the veterans and people who have served, at great costs in many cases, to their country. You have touched a very, very important point, though, and that is can we afford the price tag associated not just with their service, but their postservice situation? I don't envy you in this committee, or, frankly, in any other committee of the Congress, the job of wrestling with these numbers. They are staggering.
I have to tell you, with the greatest of respect, that the price tag you have just saddled up to--what is it, I think $100,000 now for death benefits--may look like it is something you can accommodate if the death rates that we incurred stay about what we have been incurring, and horrible as those are. But God help us if any of the kinds of calamities that we have been talking about here take place involving our forces.
On the second point----
Mr. Baird. I appreciate that, but it is only $1.4, $1.5 billion right now, relative to the costs of some of the systems that you have advocated.
Mr. Gaffney. I understand. I am just saying to you, sir, if it grows by a factor of 10, which in most wars----
Mr. Baird. It almost equals the cost of one fighter.
Mr. Gaffney (continuing). Is what we incur in the cost of the battle, it is a staggering sum. Again, I do not begrudge the people who have lost their loved ones, I am just saying that the economics of this are incredibly important to understand.
I commend you for thinking and worrying about the succession issue. Every time we get through an inauguration a few blocks from here or a State of the Union Address, I am holding my breath because it is such a soft and lucrative target.
I think the kind of work that needs to be done on this, it is being done, I gather, sort of piecemeal and episodically; but it is one of those things that we really don't want to think about, but it is like this EMP attack. One of the findings of this Commission was our vulnerability to it invites the attack; our inadequate preparation for succession invites an attack designed to trigger it.
Mr. Baird. That is precisely my concern. I thank the gentleman.
I thank the chairman for his indulgence.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=109_house_hearings&docid=98866.wais