'Great Work': Tim Kaine Takes Swipe At House GOP For Leaving Town After Voting For 'Substandard' CR

2 days ago

During a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing last week, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) spoke about the harm that a CR could have on the military's preparedness.

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Transcript

00:00Senator King. Thank you Mr. Chair and like others I'm just going to talk about the CR first.

00:06You know I came on this committee in January of 2013 and every year you all and your predecessors

00:12sit before us and tell us that a CR is a bad thing and we don't listen to you. You know I mean at

00:19some point you got to measure by the action not by the words that we say. We've allowed a CR to

00:26be normal from October 1 to the end of the calendar year. That's just kind of the norm

00:32but we've often gone beyond that into the next calendar year and we stand on the threshold of

00:38the first time where we've just gone to see our for the entire year and I agree with what the

00:43chairman said earlier the chairman of the subcommittee that a CR is better than a shutdown.

00:47I do agree with that but why do we have to accept you know half-assed over catastrophic.

00:54I mean the house voted on the CR yesterday and they left town.

01:02They're out. They adjourned. This was not and now we're gonna hear what the senate has to say

01:07and then try to do the right thing for the country. They're gone because they're like okay we can jam

01:14you to vote for a CR that is bad for the defense of this nation by skipping town on a Tuesday.

01:21I mean this speaks very loudly about the priorities of this nation and this is all done in public with

01:30our adversaries watching. Admiral Kilby I think you testified in your opening testimony that

01:38under a CR one-fifth of our ships will miss their maintenance schedule. Did I hear that right?

01:4311 specifically 11 ships those maintenance availabilities are at risk. Okay so we want

01:50to get to 80 percent ready on ships and subs. Where are we now?

01:59Depending on the day around 67 percent. On both ships and subs kind of right? Ships and submarines

02:05are a little less. Okay what will one-fifth of our ships missing their maintenance schedule

02:14under the CR what will that do to the quest to get to 80 percent readiness for ships and subs?

02:19It'll certainly be a setback. We'll take a penalty there. We'll have to bow wave that maintenance to

02:25the next year depending on the availability and scheduling of that ship. Worse off we skip that

02:31availability yeah which means it's doubled down for the next one which means we'll have growth

02:35work and a lot of things we didn't anticipate. All right so so we're being told that this is the

02:40public what we're being told in public this is the impact of voting yes on this CR that's coming to

02:46us. That we're just accepting that the quest to get to 80 percent is going to be set back because

02:53maintenance availabilities for one-fifth of the ships under CR are not going to be according to

02:59protocol. The only and I don't want to say silver lining in that because I don't see a lot of silver

03:05lining. If we get a flexibility to move money we may be able to address that but it'll pack

03:11something else. Yeah you'll pull it out of something else of course. But but you know

03:17we're told well that's better than a shutdown hey it's Wednesday morning. I mean we on the

03:23Senate side the appropriators basically had a deal at the end of last year.

03:31And that deal is still basically on the table. My hope is that there will at least be a vote

03:36in the Senate to do a short-term CR and then actually get an omnibus for the rest of the year.

03:42I mean an omnibus is kind of a funny thing word to apply to a budget for less than half of the year

03:48but it would be far preferable to a CR because you'd have new starts you'd have other authorities

03:54within an omnibus that you're not going to get in the CR. And we ought to be able to do that.

03:58And the House decided on Tuesday night we're splitting so we can force the Senate to accept

04:04a substandard CR that will hurt the military. Great week. Man great great week of work to leave

04:12town on Tuesday night feeling good about yourself because you forced the Senate to try to accept a

04:17substandard work product year after year after year after year.

04:26General Mingus I want to ask you one question about counter UAS readiness because

04:30the Army is the DOD's executive agent. Talk to me about how you're ensuring coordination between the

04:36services and developing a joint counter small UAS doctrine and solutions to addressing the UAS threat.

04:42Thank you sir. As the executive agent you're well aware of the joint counter UAS officer the JCO

04:49that is run by the but it is a joint entity and everybody that's sitting at this table

04:55there's probably very few weeks that don't go by where we don't come together to talk about

04:59this problem set whether it's in the venue of what replicator 2.0 is going to bring across

05:03100 plus sites across the country to now what is part of the going to be part of the golden dome

05:09but this conversation on the counter UAS side is absolutely a joint problem yes we have an

05:14army officer in charge of it but he is in a joint billet and he is speaking for and trying to solve

05:20this problem for the joint force and I collectively think this team is trying to get after that.

05:26Give your effort a grade that'll be my last question give your give the the joint effort

05:30a grade right now. I would give it a grade in two ways one compared to where we were two years ago

05:38in the b2b plus category compared to where we need to be it's probably in the c given the the

05:43rate of technology changes in this space and where our adversaries are going in this space

05:48we cannot go fast enough when it comes to counter UAS. Thank you very much thanks Mr. Chairman.

05:53Thank you Senator King.

'Great Work': Tim Kaine Takes Swipe At House GOP For Leaving Town After Voting For 'Substandard' CR

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