U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Armed Services
06/15/2021 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 06/15/2021 12:48
TURNER OPENING STATEMENT AT HEARING ON FY22 BUDGET REQUEST FOR MISSILE DEFENSE AND MISSILE DEFEAT PROGRAMS
Jun 15, 2021
Press Release
Washington, DC - U.S. Representative Mike Turner (R-OH), Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, delivered the following opening statement at a hearing on the FY22 budget request for missile defense and missile defeat programs.
Rep. Turners' remarks as prepared for delivery:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I also want to join you in welcoming our witnesses back to the Committee. Ms. Tomero is no stranger to us here on HASC. Welcome back. General Van Herk, Vice Admiral Hill, Lieutenant General Karbler, and Lieutenant General Shaw, I'd like to extend a special thank you to you and all the fine men and women who serve under you. This has been an especially challenging year with COVID and high-deployment rates for your warfighters. We truly appreciate their service, and our nation is stronger because of it.
I'm going to begin where I started last week, because it's important. It's June and we just received President Biden's Fiscal Year 2022 budget. This extraordinary late submission by President Biden makes it impossible for us to get an NDAA enacted before the end of the fiscal year, and means we will have some sort of Continuing Resolution, which will hurt our warfighters and their families by slowing down key defense programs. I would like each of our witnesses to specifically address the impacts of a CR to their commands. How many new starts do you have and what are they? I'd also like to reiterate that I have offered legislation, the 'It's About Time Act,' that would align the fiscal year with the calendar year. This would buy the Department of Defense as well as the other Federal Departments and Agencies an additional three months annually, allowing Congress to complete its work, rather than setting the DoD up for failure each year when it has become the new normal that the fiscal year will begin under a CR. I'd like to invite other members of the subcommittee in joining as cosponsors.
Additionally, I am also disappointed in the overall top line number of the President's budget and its failure to keep up with inflation. It puts our warfighters at a disadvantage, particularly in dealing with the China problem.
The missile defense budget is just one example of where the Biden defense budget comes up short. The Biden missile defense request is $8.9 billion, down from the $10.5 billion enacted last year, and is the lowest request since 2016. Key programs are underfunded, such as missile defenses for Guam, funding the Homeland Defense Radar - Hawaii, the Elevated Radar for Cruise Missile Defense of the Homeland, and the Proliferated Low Earth Orbit (P-LEO) Arctic Communications program. These are key budget priorities that should have been included in the FY22 Presidential Budget Request. To those who say that missile defense and programs like the Next Generation Interceptor are too expensive, I say, what's the price of a U.S. city. Are we willing to sacrifice Hawaii, Los Angeles, Guam, or Seattle, in a North Korea scenario? In my humble opinion, we cannot afford the price of not protecting the homeland with the next generation of missile defense technology.
One of the things I was struck by in reviewing the written testimony of our witnesses is the key partnerships we build with allies through missile defense. We have an AEGIS Ashore site in Romania and the Poland site is 90% complete. It is hard to find two NATO allies that understand the Russian threat better than these two countries. We have key partnerships in the Pacific with Japan and South Korea. These are another two great partners who live day-in and day-out with the threat posed by North Korean missiles. Turning to the Middle East, just this past month, we saw our partnership with Israel pay dividends with the Iron Dome program. When the terrorist organization Hamas indiscriminately launched rockets into Israel, the Iron Dome system saved countless Israeli lives. It is now clear that we must replenish the Iron Dome system and help advance next generation missile defense technology developed jointly by the United States and Israel.
With that, I again thank the Chairman for holding this hearing and look forward to hearing from our witnesses.