Tom Carper

So in terms of the meaningfulness of 8 or 17, that is just a drop in the bucket, isn't it?

If we want to be competitive, we have to specialize, that is to say we have to out-educate, out-innovate, out-compete everybody else.

We have a huge budget deficit, as we know, $1.3 trillion this year, huge increase--a decade ago we had a balanced budget and a surplus.

Most of us in this room today, however, understand that we simply cannot cut our way out of debt, tax our way out of debt, or save our way out of debt.

We need to establish a different kind of culture--a culture of thrift.

If we remain on our current course, our debt may double again by the end of this decade.

I believe our higher education incentives are misaligned.

We should be doing as good a job with respect to managing our finances as well as we are in Dover in handling the airlift and other important duties.

What we measure we manage, and with the cost of the Federal Government we need to do a better job of measuring.

I am grateful to him for his focus and interest in these issues and his staff.

Our focus is to provide the information that the war fighter needs to make decisions.

Better results for less money or at least better results for the same amount of money.

Our ultimate goal here is not a clean financial statement audit. That is a symptom.

There is no substitute for jumping in the pool. We are not going to learn to swim unless we do that.

We could learn from other States what they are doing well or what they did not do well. We learn from their mistakes.

I think it is helpful and it is yet another reason why we have to turn these things on and try them rather than maybe build the perfect plan and only then confront it with the real world.

I think you said you were going to yield to our friends from the Army and the Air Force.

Tech demo, I wanted to use that word today.

If we are able to continue on his path and actually achieve the auditability and get some clean audits by 2017 or thereabouts that would be a great legacy for him

That is encouraging.

Given our budget situation, it is important, like you said, to stretch a dollar as far as we can.

I think the Secretary of Defense has provided that.

It is enormously helpful to be able to say to folks up and down the line in the different branches of our armed forces, the Secretary says we are going to get this done.

Frankly, so are the taxpayers, because we spend money we do not have and we have to do our best efforts for our war fighters.

I think it is just usually helpful to have the person at the top saying this is what one of our key goals and to hold people accountable.