Mike Levin: “I commend our colleagues from Oregon and North Dakota for this amendment. They have put their finger on a very…”

“I commend our colleagues from Oregon and North Dakota for this amendment. They have put their finger on a very significant problem in Iraq which is symptomatic. They would be the first to acknowledge this is a deeper problem. That is, we have reduced the number of our acquisition workforce. The chairman of the committee and other members of the Armed Services Committee, including myself, every year for the past I don't know how many years have been to conference with the House of Representatives. They have tried and successfully achieved reduction to the acquisition workforce despite our opposition to those efforts. They have made major cuts in the acquisition workforce. They call it bureaucracy. We have fought against some of the cuts. We have been able to reduce the size of the cuts. Nonetheless, over time, there have been significant reductions in the acquisition workforce, including people to oversee contracts, which is what we are talking about here. Our good friends from Oregon and North Dakota have identified a real problem. I congratulate the Senators for doing it. It is a problem reflective of a deeper problem we have now in the Defense Department. There has been an amendment offered by Senator Byrd which we have accepted which gradually increases the size of the acquisition workforce. That would help get to the underlying systemic cause of this problem.”