WASHINGTON - Today, Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-TX), Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, made the following opening statement, as prepared for delivery, at the hearing entitled, "Consequences to the Military of a Continuing Resolution." For testimony and other information and to watch the hearing click here.
"After having explored the next steps of defense reform in yesterday’s hearing, we now turn to what is needed to repair and rebuild our military. And I am grateful to each of the distinguished Service Chiefs for being with us today.
There is widespread agreement that funding cuts under the Budget Control Act, plus a series of continuing resolutions, coupled with the pace of required deployments have damaged the U.S. military. I believe that the damage has gone far deeper than most of us realize, requiring more time and more money to repair than is generally expected.
There is plenty of responsibility to go around for the current state of affairs -- with both Congress and the Obama Administration, with both Republicans and Democrats, with both military and civilian leadership.
Among other problems, defense funding got caught up in the partisan back and forth on other issues and has even been held hostage for other priorities. We need to get back to evaluating our defense needs on their own without regard to any agreement or disagreement we may have on other issues. The men and women who serve deserve at least that.
The most important thing now is to repair the damage. We have the chance to begin doing so by passing a full appropriations bill for this year, acting favorably on the supplemental request, and then enacting adequate authorization and appropriations for fiscal year 2018.
The immediate issue before us is the expiration of the current continuing resolution on April 28. We in the House passed a full appropriations bill for FY 2017 on March 8 by a vote of 371 to 48. The Senate has not yet acted on it.
As I have said before, I will not vote for a defense continuing resolution for the rest of FY17. It would simply do too much harm.
Fundamental to fixing a problem is to expose it and to understand it. I understand that we must all be cautious about exposing our vulnerabilities. But in order to do better for the military and for the country, we must have the best professional military judgment of our witnesses today on the current state of our military forces and on what a CR or inadequate funding would mean. To get on a better track we all have to be clear and candid with the American people. That is the purpose of today’s hearing."