William M. ``Mac'' Thornberry: “I have an amendment at the desk. The Acting CHAIR. The Clerk will designate the amendment. The text of the amendment is…”

“I have an amendment at the desk. The Acting CHAIR. The Clerk will designate the amendment. The text of the amendment is as follows: At the end of subtitle B of title IX, add the following new section: SEC. 9__. REFORM OF NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL. (a) Findings.--Congress finds the following: (1) The National Security Council has increasingly micromanaged military operations and centralized decisionmaking within the staff of the National Security Council. The size of the staff has contributed this problem. (2) As stated by former Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, ``It was the operational micromanagement that drove me nuts of White House and [National Security Council] staffers calling senior commanders out in the field and asking them questions, second guessing commanders'', and by another former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, ``[B]ecause of that centralization of that authority at the White House, there are too few voices being heard in terms of the ability to make decisions and that includes members of the cabinet.''. (3) Gates stated, ``You have 25 people working on a single military problem... They are going to be doing things they shouldn't be doing,'' and Panetta noted, ``The National Security Council has grown enormously, which means you have a lot more staff people running around at the White House on these foreign policy issues.''.…”