On the recordMay 21, 2014
This chart--for those with keen eyesight--kind of puts this in perspective. The blue is what we spend on the civilian workforce. The green is what has been spent over the last decade on military personnel. The yellow is on contract services. And the white is the rest of it. The premise of this amendment is that the blue is too big. There are times when competition, especially on acquisition, is extremely helpful. There are also times where competition on sustainment or maintenance has a habit of unintentionally hurting our readiness, at least that was the result of the GAO study in 2010. So the committee has wisely tried to strike a balance between those two, making sure that there is competition when it makes sense, all of which is defined in title X of our code, which demands a core workload be established by the military of what our needs are and what is most cost-effective. Unfortunately, the first line of the amendment which says that ``notwithstanding any other provision of law'' simply turns all of that on its head. This takes precedence over the entire code, which I am assuming is the reason DOD communicated the Defense Department does not want this amendment. I yield back the balance of my time.
