Hearing of the House Armed Services Committee - Contingency Contracting: Implementing a Call for Urgent Reform

Interview

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REP. HANK JOHNSON (D-GA): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I was just wondering if there's any - I mean, there has been a suggestion that the ability to authorize and appropriate expenditures should be shifted from Congress to a field commander. Is that a fair assessment of what we've been talking about this morning?

REP. SKELTON: Excuse me, may I make a suggestion? Would you get just a little closer to the microphone?

REP. JOHNSON: All right, thank you.

REP. SKELTON: Thank you.

REP. JOHNSON: It just seems to me that that could be a constitutional issue. I don't know if anybody is prepared to answer that.

MR. : All right, when I answered Congressman Hunter about the authority of the combatant commander to make a decision that he needed something, it was certainly intended that that will be within the dollars available. And Secretary Young pointed out that unless, for example, it was in the supplemental of that, that those dollars were needed, then as long as the dollars were available, then you could go get something that the combatant commander badly needs.

On the other hand he needs to be able to say I need this rather than I'd like to have it and I wish I had the money. The money has to be there. That's clearly the -- you don't want to change that responsibility, but within the dollars available, then the combatant commanders need to be able to get what they need when they need it.

And they can do that through the acquisition capability of their organization. They don't do it themselves. They don't go out and buy something on the shelf like we might do at the supermarket. They say, you know, I need a tent city or I need meals or whatever, and then they go through their acquisition authorities and with the dollars available, that was what we're talking about.

REP. JOHNSON: So you're not advocating a change in the law in that regard?

MR. : No.

REP. JOHNSON: Okay.

MR. : No, I'm not. I just -- I would make clear though that being able to do things is extremely contingent on the availability of funds to do it. And in fact in some places the Congress has helped. We could not have built MRAPs, for example, without the extraordinary actions on the part of the Congress.

Another piece of this though is when we build our budget. It is a cumbersome process. And then we come and defend it before the Congress. And so a lot of people do a lot of good work to build a budget that delivers a broad spectrum of capability for the nation through the Defense Department. Those people rightly hold those dollars because it is their chance to deliver a Humvee or their chance to deliver a ship.

And when new requirements emerge, it is not as simple. As I tell people, every dollar in the Defense Department, it comes to a zip code. Going back and getting that mail, getting that dollar back to go do something that's very urgent in the field is tougher than it sounds. And that's why it's critical whether the Congress provides us some flexibility in funding that lets us respond to combatant commander demands to be able to have those funds to do that.

MR. : And certainly --

REP. JOHNSON: The point -- (cross talk) --

MR. : -- to answer your point, the Congress officially authorized during the Balkan's environment that there be a standby fund to be able to address exactly your problem. And they have also authorized, the Congress has also authorized that for AID. They have not authorized that in the DOD activities even in Iraq today, and as a result there are significant, I would say, inefficiencies associated with the flow of money. So there are some financial issues, and we -- I covered that in my statement.

REP. JOHNSON: And once we are able to politically be more expedient in terms of the money, we still need the transformation of the Army's culture towards contracting to change. And we need a major systematic change in the way that the Army organizes, trains, and equips for contracting. How will the Army ensure that changes currently being considered achieve this sort of comprehensive cultural shift rather than just resulting in a reversion to the norm when a tension shifts from this issue?

MR. YOUNG: I'll go ahead and answer that, Congressman. One of the things that we have done and the gist of the point that Dr. Gansler made about making a career path for people who want to come into contracting in the military and have the ability to accelerate and get promoted is we have now developed a structure that will allow us to bring officers and NCOs and -- without the five or six-year- point and give them a very deliberate career path.

For the officers that could be leading a contingency contracting team, they could be developed then to be a battalion commander or eventually a brigade commander. And one of the commands that is now going to be part of the Army Contracting Command is the one-star expeditionary contracting command. So part of changing the culture and getting people who want to be professionals in the contracting career field is to provide that type of a career path.

The other thing that we are doing too, this is another point of the Gansler Commission Report, is we need to make sure that the operational army understands contracting. And so we have expanded the amount of training that we are giving to non-acquisition type people.

So all new two-star general officers now have a block of instructional contracting and contractor management.

We are starting to do that the senior service colleges, the intermediate level education as well. So those are some of the things that we're doing in the army to try to change the culture so that people recognize the importance of contracting and contractor management and also have a desire to be in this career field.

REP. JOHNSON: I would just add, I think your point is exactly right, and it will require the leadership level. They can be worked from those levels, and you do have to have a promotion path that brings people through that -- into that career field and trains them.

But, you know, for example, to the chairman's question, additional flag billets actually rewards the bad behavior where the army took five contracting positions and put them somewhere else in the army. And over time, that erosion cannot happen again.

You can't -- if you -- if the Congress decides to give them five additional flags, the leadership from here forward, and there is no question the current leadership with Secretary Geren has this view, but the ensuing leadership has to keep those flag positions in place and not decide to go to a flavor of the day, command over on the line side and steal those flag officers.

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