WASHINGTON - Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL), Chairman of the Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, made the following opening statement for today's hearing entitled “Fiscal Year 2016 Budget Request for Atomic Energy Defense”
Opening Statement of Chairman Rogers'
Fiscal Year 2016 Budget Request for Atomic Energy Defense
Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL), Chairman of the Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, made the following opening statement for today's hearing entitled "Fiscal Year 2016 Budget Request for Atomic Energy Defense"
"Welcome to our hearing on the President's Fiscal Year 2016 budget request for Atomic Energy Defense Activities at the Department of Energy.
I want to thank our witnesses for being here today. Our distinguished witnesses are:
• Lieutenant General Frank Klotz (USAF, ret.) Administrator National Nuclear Security Administration
• Mr. Mark Whitney Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management Department of Energy
General Klotz, you have a few very able folks in support of you today that I also want to recognize: Dr. Don Cook, Ms. Anne Harrington, and Admiral John Richardson. If any of our Members have questions directly for them later in the hearing, we'll ensure they can step up to the table to answer as needed.
I appreciate you all taking the time to prepare for this hearing, we greatly appreciate it. Before I hand the floor over to the Ranking Member, let me briefly highlight just a few key issues for today's hearing.
First, let's be clear on our nation's defense priorities. Last November, then-Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said:
'Our nuclear deterrent plays a critical role in assuring U.S. national security, and it is DOD's highest priority mission. No other capability we have is more important.'
This is the correct priority, but we must remember that fulfilling the nuclear deterrence mission is the shared responsibility of both DOD and DOE. It is the people, programs, and infrastructure in NNSA's nuclear enterprise that provides our nation with that deterrent. The subcommittee will take a detailed look at NNSA's budget request and scrub it hard to ensure it is meeting the military's priorities.
In the fiscal environment we are facing, we must prioritize the core mission of this agency while finding efficiencies that can be directly applied to the mission. This is a strong budget request for NNSA, but I fear it may have only kicked the hardest choices over to Congress.
And we must hear from our witnesses about how devastating sequestration or Budget Control Act funding levels would be on DOE's defense programs in both NNSA and Environmental Management. Allowing sequestration to hit us again in FY16 would be like designing a nuclear hand grenade—just about the dumbest thing we could do.
Moving to governance and management at DOE and NNSA: we have received the report of the Mies-Augustine advisory panel and look forward to receiving General Klotz's response to it. I agree with a lot of what the advisory panel recommended—but not all of it. General, I think there is much you and I agree on in this area as well. I hope to explore your thoughts on where we can work together to fix the longstanding problems related to governance and management.
We have to get on top of these problems if NNSA is going to be successful in the long term. Leadership and accountability will be the keys to this.
Let me end on a bright note again this year: the B61 Life Extension Program continues to execute on time and on budget. General, please tell the whole NNSA team to keep up the good work. This is an important first step in rebuilding trust and confidence with Congress, the American people, and our allies."
