'I've Basically Been Told To Piss Off': Adam Smith Calls Out DoD For Shutting Out Congress Contact

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During a House Armed Services Committee hearing before the Congressional recess, Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) spoke about communications with the Department of Defense.

Transcript

00:00Yield my friend the ranking member for any opening comment he may have. Thank you

00:03Mr. Chairman. Thanks for anything for your leadership on this issue.

00:07Acquisition reform is something we've been working on for a while. I think we've

00:11made a little bit of progress. Some of the past reforms have helped. They simply

00:15haven't gone far enough. Chairman Thornberry I think really did show some

00:19great leadership on this. Secretary Ash Carter when he was there began to move

00:23us in this direction. We've done some other transactional authority. We've

00:27learned some valuable lessons from programs that have you know struggled

00:31like the F-35 so that the B-21 other programs we've moved in a different

00:36better more positive direction but on a scale of 1 to 10 we've got about a 2 in

00:41terms of how far we've gone and the acquisition reform bill that you've led

00:44on gets us much closer to that 10 we need to get to and it is crucial that we push

00:50it all the way through the process for all the reasons that you stated. Innovation

00:55is happening faster now than it ever has in the national security world. The

00:59Pentagon Congress or defense industrial base are not where they need to be to

01:04innovate as quickly as they need to. We need to realign the incentives as you

01:09said and we need to fundamentally change the culture and I've said this

01:14probably a hundred times in this committee now but the best summary of it I've

01:18ever read was in a foreign affairs article a couple years ago where they

01:21said the Pentagon was built to be the 1950s Ford Motor Company it needs to be

01:262022 Apple it needs to be an innovative company and all the cultural pieces that

01:31get us there to make that happen are going to be necessary and it's all sort of

01:36three pieces of this the Pentagon needs to change Congress needs to change and the

01:41defense contractor base needs to change because there are incentives in place for

01:45all three of us to just keep the system where it's at you know process if you

01:50work at the Pentagon if you follow the process you just sort of slowly stair step

01:54your way up and if there's 15 people who have been in charge of a program when it

01:58fails it's very easy to go it wasn't me it was him those incentives are in place

02:04Congress you know we you know get parochial we protect our districts we pound on

02:10you know bureaucrats when they make mistakes meanwhile we tie their hands so that they

02:15can't do it right so we have to change as well and the defense contractor base you

02:21know if they get these contracts that just lock them in to getting paid over and over

02:25and over again whether or not they produce a product we need that works for them too

02:29all of those incentives need to be changed and the culture needs to change we've talked

02:33about this a lot I won't go on on length about that just want to close by saying the

02:38one big problem here is DOD and Congress is going to have to work together to get this

02:43done you're not gonna be able to do it your own way and this administration this DOD has

02:49shut out Congress more than any other DOD administration I've ever dealt with it's

02:54it's stunning I have not personally had a one-on-one conversation with the

02:58Secretary of Defense I've sought out meetings with the undersecretary for

03:02policy I've basically been told to piss off okay that's just not gonna happen

03:07which is which is unbelievable to me it is not just us I mean I understand that you

03:14know to a certain degree this administration wants Democrats to go

03:16away that sort of partisanship isn't that unusual but even the majority

03:21struggles to get basic information we have still not been told about what

03:25weapons are being shipped to Ukraine by this administration and what their plans

03:28are and again we've been told not really our business okay we cannot get meetings we

03:35cannot have these consistent conversations and that's going to be a

03:39problem in getting to the acquisition reform that we need so I hope that

03:45improves now you know don't have to just do what we tell you or whatever but the

03:50basic communication has to happen and it is not happening on an unprecedented

03:56level between Department of Defense and the House Armed Services Committee and the

04:02Senate Armed Services Committee that needs to change and with that I yield back

04:06mr. chairman I think

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