John Spratt: “As the gentleman knows, we get the budget the second week in February. Our hearings start almost immediately in the…”

“As the gentleman knows, we get the budget the second week in February. Our hearings start almost immediately in the authorization committee because we have got all four services, we have procurement, personnel, research and development, all kinds of issues that have to be thrashed out every year. We do not mark up and bring a bill to the floor typically until May, sometimes until June. Then we wait on the Senate to get their work done; and usually, if we are lucky, they get theirs done in July. If we are not lucky, theirs gets done in September or October, and we find ourselves playing catch-up, which is what we are doing in the extreme this year. Nevertheless, it is a year-long process. We carefully sift through all these issues. We go back to what we did the previous year and see if it worked. If it did not, we make adjustments. It is an ongoing, continual process. An immense amount of work goes into this. You can say the appropriators do the same thing; but their committee is much, much smaller than ours. Therefore, they do not get into all of these elements nearly as deeply as we do. That is why this authorization is so critically important as part of the process.”