“We need actual budgets – budgets that give us certainly and predictability – and the flexibility to make the management internal decisions about what’s required to deal with current and future threats for this country”, said Hagel. Pictured here US troop re-loading ammo into weapon in Afghanistan after coming under fire by the enemy.
On November 15, 2014 Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel gave a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Simi Valley, CA, Saturday, November 15, 2014.
Here is a partial except of that important speech:
“Since 2011, DoD has been forced to operate on continuing resolutions every year, impairing our ability to plan, invest, and reform. As I reminded Congress earlier this week before Chairman McKeon’s committee, you cannot run any institution on continuing resolutions. It will not work – especially the national security of this country.
We need actual budgets – budgets that give us certainly and predictability – and the flexibility to make the management internal decisions about what’s required to deal with current and future threats for this country. We have also been prevented from undertaking critical cost-savings measures, especially reducing excess basing and facilities.
Despite numerous efforts and almost 10 years since the last round, DoD has been unable to secure another round of base realignment and closure. Today, DoD has 24 percent excess capacity in our basing and facilities – excess capacity that is costing us billions of dollars every year, money that could otherwise be invested in maintaining our military’s edge. We need Congress to help end this excess spending.
We also need Congress to support proposed reform to military pay and compensation. No one who wears our nation’s uniform is overpaid – no one is overpaid for their service. But since 2001, DoD’s pay and benefits for service members has outstripped private sector compensation growth by about 40 percent. For military personnel, DoD has proposed continued but more moderate pay increases; continued but more moderate growth of tax-free housing allowances; and modest increases to insurance co-pays.
But again, we need Congress to act. And the longer we defer the tough choices, the tougher they will be to make down the road and the more brutal the outcome.
Without the ability to make programmatic adjustments like retiring aging aircraft, and without base realignment and closure, the department will face a bill of about $30 billion over Fiscal Years 2016 to 2020. Denying DoD the flexibility to make modest adjustments to military compensation is expected to cost tens of billions of dollars more. Factor in new bills arising from urgent investments – including our new effort to renew our nuclear enterprise, space infrastructure, and technological modernization – and the hole in our budget could grow to more than $70 billion over the 2016-2020 Future Years Defense Program. That is the equivalent of what our Navy – what our Navy will spend to buy all its battle force ships over the next five years. Or more than what the Air Force – more than what our Air Force will spend to buy all of its aircraft over the next five years.
Let me underscore that all of this comes before we address the possibility of a return to sequestration in Fiscal Year 2016. Sequestration is still the law of the land, and it will return unless the law is changed. The continuation of sequestration could impose nearly $1 trillion – $1 trillion in cuts to our defense budget over 10 years. As you all know, we have already begun taking those deep cuts over the last few years. That would devastate our military readiness and threaten our ability to execute our nation’s defense strategy.
Congress has an opportunity this year to help the Defense Department, and all the leaders of DoD and I will work closely with Congress on this issue as we address the realities of what this fiscal pressure is doing to this institution and to our future security.”
Source: DoD
Read entire transcript click here: http://www.defense.gov/Speeches/Speech.aspx?SpeechID=1903