At today's Senate Appropriations Committee hearing, Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) questioned U.S. Army Secretary Daniel P. Driscoll and U.S. Army Chief of Staff Randy A. George.
00:16I want to know, I want to tell you briefly how I see the world and invite you to tell me if I'm wrong.
00:23I think President Xi and President Putin and the ITO and Iran are working together.
00:36I think that President Xi is the quarterback.
00:42I think their goal is to have Russia dominate Central and Eastern Europe,
00:50to have Iran dominate the Middle East,
00:53and to have China dominate the Indo-Pacific
00:57while being free to roam in Sub-Saharan Africa and South America and space.
01:07I do not want America to be the world's policeman,
01:10but I don't want President Xi or President Putin or Iran to be the world's policeman either.
01:21Do I see the world in the right way?
01:31I would tell you, Senator, that we are seeing them.
01:34I don't know specifically what their ambitions are,
01:38but we do see them working together and doing some of those things against our interest.
01:43General, I need you to, both of you, fine gentlemen, look us in the eye and tell us what you think.
01:49I understand you've got to choose your words carefully.
01:51You don't want to get put on double secret probation.
01:54But we've got some hard decisions to make here.
01:58And there's a consensus, I think, in the Congress to give you more money.
02:03Because I think we need to spend more money on defense.
02:07But you're going to have to give us straight answers and tell us what you think.
02:10Mr. Secretary, am I right or wrong?
02:12Senator, your question of, one of your colleagues said it earlier, $185 billion is a lot of money.
02:20If we are given more money than is in the budget that you've seen,
02:25we will be good stewards of that and innovate even faster.
02:29I think what we are saying to this committee is we believe we can transform the Army with those amount of dollars
02:34as long as we are able to use them the way that we want to and we are not jammed.
02:38Tell me again the amount of money you need for the Army transformation.
02:41We can use our current budget and transform the Army as long as we're able to spend it the way that we believe is right.
02:47How much money do you think we need to spend as a country to maintain or either, depending on your perspective,
02:54reach parity with China?
02:56I think the president has mentioned between the two bills, a trillion dollars for the DOD.
03:02Okay.
03:02Do you trust Europe to spend more money?
03:05I'm sorry, Europe?
03:07Do you trust Germany to spend more money?
03:10They've talked a good game.
03:12When I was out, I was out with NATO with Ambassador Whitaker and talked to a lot of our colleagues in the NATO countries.
03:19And as far as I could tell qualitatively,
03:21they believed it seemed to be that they were going to start to spend significantly more.
03:26General, do you trust the United Kingdom to follow through and spend more money?
03:31I mean, all I've gotten, Senator, is what they said that they were going to do with their new defense review that they said that they were going to raise their spending on defense.
03:44So it remains to be seen.
03:45Do you believe them?
03:46I mean, I think we're big believers and, you know, we'll see, I think action is what counts in some of this.
03:57There's certainly been a whole bunch of our allies that have done that when they've called for Poland.
04:01Tell me, General, tell me, General, how you think the war in Ukraine relates to our struggle with China.
04:12Are the two inextricably linked or do the two have nothing to do with each other?
04:19Well, I think, Senator, everybody is watching that fight right now, taking lessons from it.
04:23I think everybody's doing that.
04:25I think everybody is looking.
04:27I get a lot of comments.
04:28General, I know everybody's watching.
04:29I got that part.
04:30We're all watching.
04:31Do you think what we do in Ukraine impacts our struggle with China or not?
04:36Give me a straight answer.
04:37I do think our partners and allies are watching what we're doing and how that turns out.
04:41Yes, Senator, I agree with that.
04:43All right.
04:44How's the last question?
04:45Because I'm going to land this plane.
04:48How's our recruiting coming?
04:50We're dominating recruiting and retention.
04:53Why is it better?
04:53We made some structural changes and the return to a focus on lethality among our leadership.
05:01What structural changes did you make?
05:03We created a future soldiers prep program that gets soldiers or future soldiers who are right on the edge and helps get them a little bit more training before they join.
05:11And then there were problems with when we transitioned over to digital medical records.
05:16We were catching things when kids were younger and we didn't have in place the mechanisms to get those waivers.
