REP. DEREK KILMER: Thanks, everybody, it’s good to be with you. Anyone here from Washington state? Alright, I think one person is here from Washington state, so I’m going to do my best to please him. I was asked to give you an update on what’s going on in Congress.
Admittedly, I’m a little reticent to do that since many of you are still eating. Initially I was asked to speak for 25 minutes about what’s going on in Congress. I’m not going to do that. I’m going to try to keep it to 10 to 15 so I can take some of your questions. That makes this one of the easier speaking engagements I’ve had.
I will tell you the hardest speaking engagement I ever had was ac tually in Washington state, in my district, at South Colby Elementary School. I was their Veteran’s Day speaker and the assignment was to speak to pre-school through fifth grade for 20 minutes. I showed up in the gymnasium and it was filled with pre-school through fifth grade — 20 minutes. I went up to one of the teachers and said, 20 minutes, I’m screwed. She gave me the best advice I have ever gotten in my time in public service. She said, Derek, here’s the deal. Say whatever it is you’ve got to say, say it in whatever amount of time you’ve got to say it in, but if you see any of the kids start to pick their noses, wrap it up.
(Laughter).
So, I’m going to try to keep it short, but if you feel like I’m running long, you all know what to do. Right up the road from South Colby Ele mentary School is Naval Base Kitsap in my district. For over 125 years our community has been home to the Navy. In my neck of the woods the Navy isn’t just service members. They’re our families and they’re our friends and they’re our neighbors, and it’s a bond that goes back decades You’ll see it when you show up at Bangor, you see it when I stand out side the gate at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and other locations within Naval Base Kitsap.
We love our Navy and we, like all of you, will do all we can for those who serve. In fact, a couple of years back I did something that I didn’t think I was capable of, and that is I spent 36 hours on a submarine, on the USS Hariford, as part of the ICEX. I came away really with three takeaways.
First, the Arctic is really cold. It was very, very cold. Second, the people who are able to work and sleep and live on a submarine for weeks on end are genetically different than I am. Third, and this is probably most important, I came away with an appreciation for the fact that no one comes close to matching the power and the capability of the United States Navy.
When it comes to the equipment and the vessels that our sailors op erate with, you are a key reason why we own the seas. You build and repair the most complex machines ever devised, and I want to thank you for that. And I want to say that frankly Congress needs to do a better job of having your backs so that you can have the backs of our sailors. That success, that strength, your work, should not be taken for granted.
I have a deep respect for what you do. I worked in economic devel opment professionally before coming to Congress. I grew up in a little timber town on the coast of Washington state and I saw our local econ omy crash and saw a bunch of my parents’ friends lose their jobs. So after going to school I came back home to Washington state and worked in economic development professionally.
We had a sign up on the wall of our office that said, we are compet ing with everyone, everywhere, every day, forever, which I admit I found kind of intimidating. But I actually think it’s a pretty good ethic, not just for folks who work in local economic development. I think it’s actually a pretty good ethic for our country, too. And I think it’s an ethic that the United States Congress needs to pay better attention to.
Look at our submarine fleet. If Congress doesn’t get its act together we are facing a very real shortfall of submarines that could jeopardize our operational requirements into the future. It’s a dangerous world out there and we know — listen, I know the vast majority of you, as evi denced by the show of hands, are from the East Coast. We face a number of threats in the Pacific. The Pacific theater is vast, and we need a size able fleet to maintain our footprint in areas where China and Russia and North Korea are looking to spread their influence.
They know that they’re in a competition, and Congress needs to fig ure out that it’s in a competition too. We need subs to double down on deterrence. We need the capability that the guided missile submarine provides to project power, and we need the intelligence that the fast at tack boats can gather and de]iver. And we need to keep our sea lanes open.
That means a few things: delivering the Columbia-class on time; continuing to build the Virginia-class subs; distributing the punch and power of the SSGNs through the Virginia Payload Module. That will get us there. But we need Congress to remain committed and focused on creating the stability and predictability that we need to maintain our world-class submarine fleet, that we need to maintain the industrial base. And none of that will happen unless Congress gets a handle on budgeting and appropriations.
The reality is, the nations with whom we compete, our adversaries around the world, are not sitting still. I can tell you they are not fart ing around with government shutdowns and sequestration and continu ing resolutions and some of the partisan silliness you’ve seen in this town. Your primary customer, Uncle Sam, has really put you through the wringer, and it has been more than two decades since Congress passed a full slate of appropriations measures on time. Your industry has had to watch Congress enact painful budget cuts through sequestration.
I admit, I had not heard of sequestration until I ran for Congress in 2012. I looked it up. It’s a Latin word for stupid. For the life of me — I was talking outside — no family would budget this way. No business would budget this way. No one would — this approach of across the board mindless cutting is just dumb.
More recently, Congress has been so dysfunctional that leadership has resorted to kicking the can and keeping caps on spending levels that were deeply below what’s needed as a consequence of sequestration. You’ve had multiple continuing resolutions. So every time I get on an airplane to fly here the first thing I do is I write my kids a letter. I try to explain to them what I’m going to be doing that week and why I’m leaving them.
If you think about what I’ve written them since mid-September, more often than not I’ve written them a letter that starts with, this week
we’re going to try to avert a government shutdown. My 11-year-old, Sophie, actually called me on it. She was like, “Dad, what is going on? It feels like every few letters I get the government is about to shut down.”
You have seen continuing resolutions from September to November, from November to early December, from early December to late Decem ber, from late December to February, and now to March 23rd. That is an idiotic approach to budgeting. I struggle to explain the inexplicable. I can’t explain it to my kids and I can’t explain it to you.
But I can tell you this, having worked in economic development professionally, my observation is the main thing that industry wants from government is an environment of trust and predictability. In my view, Congress has done a pretty fine job of screwing that up. The secretary of the Navy recently said, kicking the can — and this is a quote, “It has cost us $4 billion, that’s $4 billion in cash in a trash can with lighter fuel, burn it.” Those were his words.
That had real consequences for the submarine fleet. So Congress simply has to get its act together. Let me talk very quickly about the short-term and the long-term and then I’ll take your questions.
The short-term spending bill that passed a few weeks back, that end ed the most recent government shutdown, significantly lifted the spend ing caps, both for defense and non-defense discretionary. I’m hopeful that we’ll get a CR hopefully before March 23rd that will produce some real outcomes for the Navy. That’s good for all of you, it’s good for the Navy, it means jobs for folks back home at Naval Base Kitsap at the naval shipyard.
And I hope that the lifting of the spending caps can bring some pre dictability and some stability to the budget process, at least for a couple of years so that we have a process that ultimately can lead to building the Columbia-class on time. I hope it means that the $150 million that is needed to support supplier-based reconstitution is available in fiscal year 2019. I hope it means forward progress on sustained acquisition on Virginia-class subs.
In the short term, I will also add Congress also needs to get a handle on acquisition reform. I was talking with a few folks earlier; the reality is part of the problem is Congress. Congress has consistently tried to solve yesterday’s problem by consistently making it more and more difficult for the Navy to acquire the innovations that you guys make. My hope is that you’ll see some improvements, frankly, leveraging some of the suc cesses that we’ve seen through other acquisition programs, including the Virginia-class subs. We have multi-year contracting where we provide some flexibility to the Navy.
Beyond that, though, Congress needs to fix its budget process over the long haul. I’m going to talk about something that is not particularly sexy and was not news breaking but tucked into the spending bill from a few weeks back was the creation of a new committee, which needs a shorter name. It is called the Joint Select Committee on Budget and Ap propriations Process Reform, which super rolls off the tongue.
But it is a committee that is half Democrats and half Republicans, half Senate and half House, and its goal is to try to fix what is an undeni ably very broken budget process. I’m going to work hard on that. I think there are clearly some reforms that can provide more certainty, because what is at stake is our national security. In order to build in a way that allows the Navy to compete with our enemies and with hostile nations around the world, it needs Congress to give it the confidence that the money is actually going to be there.
I guess I’ II end with just a quick story. Probably one of the coolest things I’ve gotten to do in this job is when I get to either go out on a submarine or meet with folks at Naval Base Kitsap. I got to attend the change of command for the USS Jimmy Carter, and it was awesome meeting the sailors who were there. I will also tell you I was somewhat stunned, because when I arrived the legislative liaison said, would you like to meet the president?
I was like, the president is here? President Carter was here, and he had shown up unannounced for the change of command, which I guess if you’re Jimmy Carter you just do that. It was pretty amazing.
He told a story that got everyone on the edge of their seats. He told the story of his entrance into the nuclear force. He talked about inter viewing with Admiral Rickover, which was an amazing story and caused me to go read books about Admiral Rickover and watch what was an okay documentary on Admiral Rickover.
He talked about being brought into the office and having to answer questions for hours about everything from naval history to naval tactics to all sorts of topics, including American history, music and other things. As President Carter explained it, he was asked, how did you do at the academy? He said, I stood up and said I was number 72 out of however many.
Admiral Rickover said, that’s pretty good, would you say you did your best? President Carter said, I had this pang of guilt all of a sudden. I had spent a lot of time hanging out with friends and I did pleasure read ing and things like that. He said, no sir, I did not do my best.
As he explained it, Admiral Rickover turned his chair around and had his back to him. Carter said, I just sat there, and he never turned back around. He said, I sort of slinked out of the office and went home to Rosslyn and said, gosh it had gone so well and then I kind of blew it at the end. He said, two weeks later I got a letter saying that I had been admitted into the nuclear force. He said, I was so struck by my inter action with Rickover that it really altered how I approached everything from there.
Then he gave what I thought was the coolest kudo to the story. He said, I was in my post-presidency and I got notified that they were going to name a ship the USS Jimmy Carter. They said, I got to provide the Latin motto for the ship. He said, the Latin motto for the USS Jimmy Carter is semper optima, always the best. All the sailors were like, that is so cool. That was the genesis of the Latin motto.
I will tell you, it is safe to say that the crew of the USS Jimmy Carter is absolutely doing their best. We know that on September 11th the Navy released a photo of that ship coming into Hood Canal on its way back to Kitsap with the Jolly Roger flag posted, indicating a successful mission. Maybe if Congress got to fly the Jolly Roger flag when it did something good, maybe that would help, I don’t know.
But listen, we need to get more things done in Washington, D.C., because what you do matters. It matters to my two little girls who need to grow up in a safer and more secure world. It matters to the sailors I represent and their families. It matters to the security of our country and our allies around the world. It matters to you and your companies and to the jobs of the people who depend on you. Every one of you has the capacity to get the attention of members of Congress, of House and Senate members, and to tell them that Congress needs to fix this, that we cannot have policies like sequestration. We cannot keep kicking the can with these continuing resolutions. Your presence here today is an indication that you’re already willing to do your best to do that hard work. So thank you for that, thank you for your advocacy, thank you for your impact on our economy and our national security, and thank you for doing your best.
