Rick Scott Peppers DoD Nom With Questions About Lack Of Accountability For Recruitment Failures

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During a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Tuesday, Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) questioned Anthony J. Tata, nominee to be Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, about military recruitment efforts.

Transcript

00:00Thank you very much. Senator Scott. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Well, first off, both of you,

00:09congratulations on your nominations, and I wish you the best of luck. You both have

00:14great backgrounds, and I know you both do a great job. So, Mr. Tata, you've got great

00:20background, and thank you for your military service. My dad was in the 82nd Airborne. He

00:23was one of 3,000 Americans in all four combat jumps, and so he told me I should join the

00:29Navy instead. So, he said there's no Germans, no foxholes, and the food was

00:34better. So, you've got a great background with the school districts and then

00:39in private. Have you ever had to let somebody go because they didn't

00:43perform? I have had to let somebody go because of lack of performance, Senator.

00:51So, when I asked the Army, the Air Force, and the Navy in a recent subcommittee on

00:54personnel hearing who, to their knowledge, was held accountable for failing to do

00:58their job and recruit over the past four years, would they tell me? They couldn't

01:02tell me. Senator, can you ask that question again? I asked, I asked, we had a

01:07subcommittee, and hearing, and I asked the Air Force, the Army, and the Navy, why, who's

01:14responsible for them not meeting the recruitment numbers? They told me they

01:18couldn't tell me who was responsible. Well, Senator, the chiefs of those services

01:24are responsible for infusing the warrior ethos all the way down and having the

01:30recruiting systems in place. The Marine Corps does it in an exceptional way because

01:35they actually have a recruiting MOS and a recruiting system that, where they uphold the

01:44recruits. I can remember a superintendent, I had Marine recruits all over my high

01:49schools. So, do you think that the individuals that were responsible should

01:54have been promoted? Senator, I think there are a lot of things that go into

01:58promotion of, or declination of promotion for an individual. Not having been there, I

02:04can't comment, not knowing the individuals, but certainly it's a factor that should be

02:09considered. So, if you gave somebody a very specific job, and this job was to do

02:14recruitment, and they didn't do it, if somebody worked for you at the school

02:19district at a company, and they had that specific job, that was their job, how many

02:23of those people did you promote? Senator, I hired every principal of my 170 schools. I

02:31interviewed them all when I was superintendent, and I did not hire them if

02:36they had not been successful in their previous elementary school or middle

02:41school, if I was hiring for a high school. So, do you plan on making sure that if we

02:46don't meet the goals of, you know, our armed services, that people are going to be

02:50held accountable, whether they're a flag officer or whoever, whatever their title

02:54is. If they don't meet the goal, they shouldn't be there. Do you believe that?

02:58I do, I do believe that, Senator. In the same subcommittee hearing, the chief of

03:03Navy personnel testified the Navy is short 20,000 sailors at sea. So, this is a pretty

03:09big problem, because we are not manning our ships at 100 percent. Ship submarines and

03:13aircraft squadrons are at the forefront of our need, the readiness, and they

03:17should be manned at 100 percent. So, can you give me an idea how we're going to get

03:21to 100 percent readiness and get these ships manned and submarines manned? Senator, the

03:29manning of the submarine fleet, the ship fleet, how we're going to do that, short 20,000

03:37sailors. That's a tall order, and I understand that there was a throughput

03:42issue getting them to basic training. And, if confirmed, I look forward to

03:47working with the service to try to help them understand how to, A, recruit better,

03:53and, B, expand the aperture so they can scale to meet the demand, particularly if

03:59we're going to build more ships.

04:00What's your experience in the private sector, when you held people accountable,

04:04everybody did better? No, just the opposite. In the private sector, it's rather ruthless,

04:12and you either perform or you don't. So, did the, when the, when did it get

04:18better? Because you held people accountable? Roger that. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Senator.

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