Haley Stevens: “I want to set the stage for consideration of this amendment. The House proposed rescission of $502 million in what is…”

“I want to set the stage for consideration of this amendment. The House proposed rescission of $502 million in what is known as this Technology Reinvestment Program [TRP]. TRP will be in conference, in other words. Our committee responded to the Department of Defense's appeals to the Senate to support the TRP program. To date, the Department has received 3,000 proposals for TRP, and selected only 251 for funding. It is an extremely competitive process which has produced about an 8.5-percent success rate. That is unfortunate. The Senate recommendation allows the Advanced Research Projects Agency [ARPA], the agency of the Defense Department that has jurisdiction over this program, to continue the ongoing TRP projects. We have provided enough funds to begin new projects and to continue, as I said, the ongoing projects. The new projects will focus on areas selected by the military services themselves. This is a mandate promoted by our committee and approved by Congress. The Senate's proposed rescission will reinforce Congress' requirement that we mean to assure that defense needs are the dominant element in each TRP project and will eliminate funds for projects that do not have defense relevance. Indeed, the Congress took specific legislative steps to ensure this greater service role in the TRP effort.”