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“Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to today’s hearing on Resourcing the National Defense Strategy: Implications of Long Term Defense Budget Trends. In the first week of February, 2010, the Department of Defense will deliver two critical documents to this committee. One is the Quadrennial Defense Review, which will outline the national defense strategy and some of the major policy changes required to implement it. The second will be the President’s budget request for fiscal year 2011, the first true budget of the Obama Administration and one of the primary mechanisms for adopting the QDR’s recommendations. These documents, along with the two ongoing wars, are likely to dominate the discussions of this committee next year.
“The QDR is, by design, a process that is not supposed to be constrained by the budget. However, the FY11 budget request is of necessity so constrained, though also deeply shaped by the QDR. So while the QDR will not and should not be limited by the budget, we in this committee will be required to confront some of those limitations simultaneous to our review of the QDR. It is critical that we understand the budget constraints that are likely to shape the FY11 budget, both in that specific fiscal year, and over the future year’s defense program that will accompany it.
“The picture is not a pretty one. We owe a debt to our colleague, John Spratt, who held a hearing in the Budget Committee on October 14th to review this question featuring two of the witnesses we have before us today: Dr. Matthew Goldberg of the Congressional Budget Office and Stephen Daggett of the Congressional Research Service. These two gentlemen shared testimony with the Budget Committee about the need for continuing steep increases in defense spending to carry out the current programs of the Department, increases that may not materialize unless the Obama Administration is able to add funding to the defense budget projections left to them by the Bush Administration at a time of exploding deficits.
“These witnesses are joined today by David Berteau of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and Tom Donnelly, now of the American Enterprise Institute and formerly of the House Armed Services Committee staff. After hearing from them, we will have a deeper understanding of the implications which rising costs in the areas of operations, war spending, health care, personnel, and acquisition of major weapon systems have for DOD’s future and a better appreciation for the challenges that go into building the FY11 budget. I now turn to my friend Buck McKeon for his opening remarks.
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