Floor Statements
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STATEMENT BY SENATOR JOHN McCAIN AT THE SENATE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE NOMINATION HEARING OF GENERAL MARTIN E. DEMPSEY
July 26, 2011
“Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I add my welcome to General Dempsey and his family and congratulate him on this nomination.
“I first want to express my condolences to the family of General John Shalikashvili, who passed away last Saturday. ‘General Shali’ was born in Poland of Georgian parents in 1936, fled from the advancing Soviets near the end of World War II, came to the United States as a teenager, and rose in the ranks to become the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1993 to 1997. He was a great American patriot and Army leader.
“General Dempsey, just three months ago, on April 11, you became the Chief of Staff of the Army. You are now poised to become the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Your impressive history of assignments, I believe, has prepared you well to become the principal military advisor to the President and the leader of the Joint Chiefs. Without question, your combat experience and career military leadership, your service as Acting Commander of U.S. Central Command, and your thorough understanding of our transforming force, stressed by a decade of combat, will serve you well as strategic decisions regarding Iraq and Afghanistan must be made and we face hard calls about our priorities in the future.
“We’re conducting this hearing at a time when Americans are deeply frustrated over the enormous debt we have accumulated and the effects of runaway entitlement spending on our economy and on our future. Admiral Mullen has stated that he views our national debt as the biggest threat to our national security. In this very difficult fiscal environment, there is no doubt that the defense budget will be constrained in the years ahead as we seek to solve our debt crisis. Clearly, the Department of Defense cannot afford to waste taxpayer resources on Pentagon programs that are over cost, behind schedule, or fail to provide an increase in war-fighting capability to our troops.
“However, I hope the President and the Secretary of Defense, with your assistance, General Dempsey, will realize that defense expenditures following the attacks of September 11 – which were preceded by nearly a decade of drastic reductions in military personnel, equipment, and readiness – are not the cause of the economic dilemma we find ourselves in today.
“Congress and the President must address the issue of unsustainable deficit spending and unprecedented debt in non-defense spending and entitlements which will impact the future of our military during your term. Since this year began, the President has already asked the Defense Department to cut more than $178 billion by finding efficiencies and taking top-line reductions in proposed defense spending over the next five years. But, even the current direction by the President to cut an additional $400 billion in defense spending by 2023 has been eclipsed by some debt reduction proposals that include $800 billion to a trillion dollars in cuts to defense spending over the next ten years.
“I would be the first to suggest that the Defense Department budget could be responsibly reduced, and reasonable people can disagree over how deep those cuts should be. But what concerns me most about our current debate is that the defense cuts being discussed have little to no strategic or military rationale to support them. They are essentially just numbers on a page. Our national defense planning and spending must be driven by considered strategy, not arbitrary arithmetic.
“The defense cuts currently proposed reflect minimal, if any, understanding of how they will be applied, or what impact they will have on our defense capabilities or our national security. While Secretary Panetta has made it clear that a comprehensive review will precede any decisions of further defense cuts, the Congress currently has no specific indication of how the current proposals would impact the size of our military forces, what changes they would require to our compensation system, what equipment and weapons would have to be cancelled as a result, or what additional risk to the readiness and modernization of our forces and their equipment we would have to accept. If Congress is to make informed decisions about our national defense spending, we need information like this, and I hope, Mr. Chairman, that we can begin holding hearings on this important subject.
“I also hope that you will carefully monitor Department contracting and expenditures. Your frankness and candor on how money spent by the Department will be much needed by the Congress as we assess how to direct Pentagon spending.
“General Dempsey, I’m confident you will be confirmed, and I hope you and Secretary Panetta will avoid misguided and excessive reductions in defense spending that cut into the muscle of our military capabilities. Defense spending is not what is sinking this country into fiscal crisis, and if the Congress and the President act on that flawed assumption, they will create a situation that is truly unaffordable: the hollowing out of U.S. military power and the loss of faith of our military members and their families.
“I trust that you will have the ability and confidence to advise the President and Congress on your views regarding the health of our military and the ability of our forces to meet our cooperative security commitments with our allies around the world. We will need an honest and forthright military assessment of the impacts of funding decisions. I look forward to your opinions today on these matters and your vision for the way forward.
“Senator Levin.”