Ed. Note: Congressman Courtney spoke at the invitation-only President’s Breakfast with Annual Symposium Sponsors.
Thank you, John. That’s high praise coming from a person that is so respected both back home in Connecticut, but obviously with this great coalition that’s here this morning. Congratulations on your great service in terms of this – I mean, it was seven years of a lot of transformation in terms of where the League stood seven and a half years ago when you took over, in terms of some of the challenges both in terms of Congress and the Navy. You’re leaving, obviously, on a high note in terms of, as you said, a good place right now for the Submarine League.
Congratulations to Jay Donnelly. He’s still a part of Red Sox Nation, as far as I’m concerned, in terms of his roots. So, congratulations on tak- ing over. Again, I can’t think of a better person to keep the momentum going forward.
I know a lot of the folks here are so attuned and well-versed in terms of what has been going on that I don’t need to really start from scratch in terms of where the budget process and NDAA process is, which I’m sure is probably the most relevant topic that people are interested in hearing about this morning, as Admiral Jabaley and I were just talking. So what I thought is I’d just sort of jump right in in terms of where we are today, on November 2nd, as far as trying to keep this momentum moving forward. Ten years ago we were sort of limping along in terms of the build rate and there was no design work being done for Ohio Replacement. As the admiral said, we’re certainly in a much different place today.
So what I want to begin with is just sort of a positive vignette in terms of Washington, as far as the NDAA. About a week and a half ago we had the passing of the gavel ceremony at the conference committee, which was actually a pretty special moment as far as I’m concerned, because it was really John McCain’s opportunity to really preside over something that was near and dear to him. Not just the content of the conference committee, which obviously was the authorization for our military, but also the process that was sort of taking place there.
If you look at the Congress today, a lot of the real indicators of the fact that we’re just not really functioning the way that we’re supposed to, which obviously the whole country is sort of frustrated by, is the fact that it is a rare bird now to actually have a conference committee. In fact, there are many staff in terms of committees all across the Congress that basically wouldn’t even know how to conduct a conference committee because it has been so long since some of the committees have actually gone through this process. The Armed Services Committee, in some ways, is sort of the one happy place or safe haven where they actually know how to do it still.
In this room over on the Senate side where the House and the Senate conferees met, again it was really like an old school process that was taking place with the chairs and ranking members and a lot of the other conferees that were appointed by leadership, in the room. There really was just like School House Rock, the exchange that took place between the House members and the Senate members about different areas where there was sort of a Delta between the two bills that came out of both chambers.
For Senator McCain in particular, he actually got pretty almost emo- tional and passionate about the fact that if you look at the votes that came out of the House and the Senate on the NDAA, in the House it was the largest bipartisan vote for an NDAA since 2008. That was only surpassed by the Senate vote that took place. I don’t think it’s unrelated to the fact that both committees actually, again, are old school.
They allowed the subcommittees to meet and mark up a subcommit- tee mark. That goes to the full committee and, as we all know, a long day of markup takes place in the House and Senate, and it goes to the floor and there’s a relatively open amendment process that takes place there, and then you get this conference process. The fact that it allows the process to breathe, clearly is, I think, the reason why there’s so many buy-in and the vote totals are so impressive in terms of bipartisanship.
Again, I give great credit to Chairman Thornberry and Adam Smith and Reed and McCain about the fact that they really respect that process. If an amendment is offered on either side, and they’re on the losing side, it’s okay, let’s go to the next one. There’s no sort of scorched Earth requirement that their members and their caucus have to line up in lock- step just because there’s a “D” or an “R” next to the person offering the amendment. As I said, he got pretty – almost choked up talking about the fact that this is something that is really missing in too many other places in the Congress. We really should sort of all take that to heart, the members that were there, in terms of trying to really foster that type of process.
So having said that, the process itself that’s taking place, as we know, the president’s budget that was submitted was actually strong in terms of submarine funding, both for Virginia and the Ohio Replacement Program. The numbers were, I think, really in line with keeping the mo- mentum going forward. I would sort of note that last December when we did the CR to keep the government open and allow the new adminis- tration to weigh in on the 2017 budget, the fact that we were able to get that anomaly in for Columbia-class, which had to be the biggest anomaly if not close to the biggest anomaly, that really again underscored the fact that the support for the Columbia-class program really was even able to overcome the sort of drag or momentum of the CR, and it shows the really strong support for that program.
In any case, the president’s budget came over and kind of incorporat- ed all the right numbers, as far as that goes. Within the committees the real question was whether we were going to take that to a higher level, and in fact we did, as I think many of you know, in terms of authorizing a higher number for the Block 5 cohort up to 13 subs. We tried to tweak the National Sea-Based Deterrence Fund to allow critical components to be included in the continuous production language which Admiral Ja- baley was extremely helpful in terms of fleshing out the value of that in terms of really keeping stability in terms of both hiring and material acquisition, that continuous production allows.
So going into conference, the Block 5 language was in both the House and Senate. The continuous production, there was a gap. The Senate did not move forward in terms of including that in their provision.
So all I can say is there was a friendly debate on that latter issue, on the continuous production language, and we’ve had some good conversa- tions with Senator Reed, who I guess will be speaking tonight at your dinner, and we feel pretty good that we’re going to have a good outcome as far as that goes. Again, we don’t have final, final yet. The big four met yesterday to go through the last remaining issues that we’re settled at the staff level, or at the little four, or at the subcommittee level.
What I would say is that it’s no great surprise. The sticking points that are left, number one, are the Space Corps, which as many of you know there was a provision in the House bill that wanted to create a new Space Corps, and that was not included in the Senate bill. The Air Force is obviously pretty vociferous in their opposition to that. I don’t have any inside skinny in terms of how that’s going to get resolved. My sense is that’s not an issue that we have any great urgency to have to set up a new branch of the military, so I’m doubtful that that’s going to be in the final bill. But having said that, I know it was certainly a topic of discussion for the big four.
The topline, obviously, is the real question of the day. How we grap- ple with that – I mean, there’s different scenarios that people are sort of trying to think through. As you know, the topline that came over from the president’s budget was $603 (billion). The number that the House used was $640 (billion). Frankly, whether or not people just kind of close their eyes and jump in the water and hope that it’s going to be from the appropriators at the higher number, or whether we just wait to see what the appropriators signal in terms of what the topline will be.
My sort of pundit’s cap is that it will be somewhere in between them probably, and even if we do come in higher with the NDAA – as many of you know a couple of years ago that happened and we just went back in and adjusted when there was a different number that came from the appropriators. So by and large I think we’re at a pretty positive place in terms of the key issues that the Submarine League is concerned about. If we do get a higher number, then that really, I think will lay the ground- work for a larger block buy in the Virginia-class. Obviously, to the ex- tent that we can go above the $603 (billion), that allows some strong potential for advance procurement money that will make a larger Block 5 contract possible. That’s certainly the issue that our subcommittee, Congressman Wittman and I are focused on like a laser, is trying to max- imize the resources so that we can have as large a block buy as possible.
That’s obviously not happening in a vacuum. What again is quite extraordinary, to go back to John’s introduction, is the real change in climate even in the House Armed Services Committee in terms of the value of the submarine force and the urgency to really recognize that the force structure assessment they talked about growing the submarine fleet to 66 subs is something that just gets reinforced over and over again by combatant commanders that appear before the committee, whether it’s Admiral Harris or General Scaparrotti. It is the number one priority, but they are all completely in sync that the undersea domain needs to be jealously protected and guarded. It’s a completely different environment in terms of trying to make the case for the value of the submarine force, which when I came in in 2006 I had pretty hawkish members looking at me saying, why do we need submarines? That is a completely different, as I said, environment that we’re in today.
As I said, I think the Submarine League has been a huge part of that advocacy and change of climate. The Submarine Industrial Base Coa- lition, which again I think has been a brilliant tactical and strategic ally from external forces that really have changed a lot of the members who don’t come from coastal districts or shipbuilding districts, but now un- derstand that the supply chain extends all the way into the heartland. All those have come together really quite impressively in terms of getting us to this new place in terms of people’s understanding about the value of the submarine force.
To all of you here that are a part of that, you should take a bow, for sure, in terms of the success that we’re experiencing today versus a num- ber of years ago. I’m impressed at the early attendance here this morning in terms of talking about a topic like this. I don’t know if you wanted me to take a few questions, but I’m certainly glad to open it up.
