John Garamendi

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I call to order this hearing of the Readiness Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee.

The Navy and the Marine Corps failed to effectively integrate with each other.

The Navy and the Marine Corps totally failed to ensure that personnel were adequately trained.

We are trying to green the military.

I think we got a good shot at this.

And I can assure you that, this year, if anybody suggests a plus-up, there will be one hell of a fight, and I don't propose to lose it.

There are so many things that are screwed up here that it is hard to find a focus.

It is going to be some hard decisions being made on this program. We are not going to let it go any longer with a lot of happy talk.

Yeah, it can fly, maybe two-thirds of the time, but it can't do what it is supposed to do all of the time or even half of the time.

So, don't expect more money. Do not expect to have more planes purchased than authorized in the President's budget.

It seems that the case of this industry solution to many of these problems is simply to ask the taxpayers to throw money at the problem. That will not happen.

The F-35 is the most expensive program in the history of the Department of Defense, and the sustainment costs are expected to exceed $1.2 trillion over the life of the program.

I do think in some cases it will diminish our extended deterrence and assurance commitments.

The viability of the Minuteman III to be extended one more time is clearly possible by the documents and the testimony of the Strategic Command.

I have introduced H.R. 1881, which would provide for a 10-year permit, rather than a 5-year permit.

My final point is that it was Richard Nixon that decided that the Federal Government had a role in cleaning up our sanitation systems.

So he may have tweeted that at the beginning. I am not exactly aware of the time when he did or didn't do it.

Is it true that President Trump reduced the number of troops from 10,000 to 2,500 via a tweet last year

I don't think that investment is justified at this point.

I think this is the right decision. There was no easy, good decision here.

I want in detail because of the work that we need to do in the NDAA, the posture in Europe...

We want to make sure that we pay attention in the NDAA to the necessary investments to maintain these bases.

For all of us that are actually all across the Nation, in the South as well as in the West, the Federal Power Administration, Western Power, WAPA, in the West, is providing energy to Beale Air Force Base.

The climate and the geology have given us a heads-up.

We are going to write a new NDAA.