releases: https://www.mccain.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/floor-statements?ContentRecord_id=270d6350-6087-405f-b58b-2b605cfb3c7c
Data license: MIT · Data source: dwillis/congress-press
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| https://www.mccain.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/floor-statements?ContentRecord_id=270d6350-6087-405f-b58b-2b605cfb3c7c | OPENING STATEMENT BY SASC CHAIRMAN JOHN McCAIN AT HEARING ON DOD PERSONNEL REFORM & STRENGTHENING ALL-VOLUNTEER FORCE | 2015-12-02 | 2015 | 2015-12 | Republican | House | AZ | John McCain | M000303 | www.mccain.senate.gov | legacy | Washington, D.C. U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ), Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, delivered the following opening statement today at a hearing on Department of Defense personnel reform and strengthening the all-volunteer force: The Committee meets this morning to continue our series of hearings focused on defense reform. Today we will focus on military and civilian personnel reform and how to strengthen the All-Volunteer Force in the 21st Century. We are fortunate to have a distinguished group of witnesses joining us today: The Honorable David Chu, President and CEO of the Institute for Defense Analyses and former Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness; The Honorable Bernard Rostker, Rand Corporation Senior Fellow and also a former Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness; The Honorable Robert Hale, Booz Allen Hamilton Fellow and former Under Secretary of Department of Defense (Comptroller); and Admiral Gary Roughead, USN (Retired), Annenberg Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution and former Chief of Naval Operations. Put simply, our All-Volunteer Force is the greatest fighting force in human history. Any consideration of personnel reform must begin from that basis. And all of usthe Congress and the Department of Defensemust take great care as we consider what changes are needed to ensure that our force can respond to the needs of a new generation of warfighters and meet our future challenges. Our efforts must proceed from rigorous fact-finding and analysis. We must always ask what problems we are trying to solve. We must always measure any reform against the militarys unique mission of combat effectiveness. And we must always remember that what works for the private sector or society at large may not always work best for our military. We have all heard the stories of the many excellent service-members who are choosing, or being forced, to leave the military for ridiculous personnel reasons. This is a real problem, but it is made more complicated by the fact that so many talented officers and enlisted continue to fill the ranks of our force. All of us meet them every day across the country and around the world. The question is whether our military is able to recruit and retain so many excellent Americans because of its personnel system, or in spite of it. I am concerned that, all too often, it is the latter, as in the acquisition system and other parts of our defense organization. Too often, our military is losing and misusing talent because of an archaic military personnel system. Promotions are handed out according to predictable schedules with only secondary consideration of merit. Thats why even after more than a decade of service, there is essentially no difference in rank among officers of the same age. Is it really because they all perform the same or deserve the same rank? Jobs in the military are assigned rather than chosen. To some extent, that is necessary. After all, the mission must always come first. But we should ask whether we can better support this mission by giving service-members more of a say in their assignments. At the Reagan Defense Forum last month, for example, the Chief of Staff of the Army, General Milley, described how he had met a soldier who spoke six languages but had been assigned as a truck driver. We need truck drivers, of course, but we also need first-rate linguists and intelligence analysts, and we need a personnel system that can manage our peoples talent accordingly We should ask whether we should give commanders greater discretion to build a staff with the specialists and experts they need in the right positions. Commanders are likely better able to assess their needs than bureaucrats in the personnel system. Our military has always had an entrepreneurial culture that encourages individuals to innovate. But the military personnel system undermines that spirit when it mistakes upholding professionalism with enforcing conformity and when high standards give way to a zero-defect mentality in performance evaluations. This discourages risk-taking, truth-telling, and the cultivation of entrepreneurial leaders. To strengthen the all-volunteer force, we must also review the promotion system, especially the requirements of the Defense Officers Personnel Management Act and the Goldwater-Nichols reforms. Previous witnesses have expressed concern that the joint duty requirements that a military officer must meet have contributed to the growth in headquarters staffs that we have seen in recent decades, as the personnel system seeks to check a series of boxes that may be of little value for actual career development. We need to review whether this requirement is meaningfully enhancing the joint capabilities of the force, and how it can be better tailored for our 21st-century force. The personnel system cannot be an end in itself. Similarly, we must ensure that our civilian personnel system is equally capable of recruiting and retaining the best leaders. Unfortunately, there is much work to do. The USA Jobs System, for example, is an abysmal failure. We are repeatedly told by managers that they cannot hire the employees they need to fill mission-critical roles because they cannot hire qualified individuals through the USA Jobs system or because they cannot make job offers in a reasonable timeframe. The Department of Defense needs to devote more energy to resolving these hiring stalemates, not developing more mini-bureaucracies that have so often failed before. Finally, a key pillar of personnel reform will continue to pertain to compensation. This Committee has made great strides this year with the most sweeping reform of our military retirement system in seven decades. We must bring the same rigorous, bipartisan approach to the task of reforming the military health system next year. If we do nothing, the Congressional Budget Office projects that defense healthcare costs will devour about 11 percent of the defense budget in 2028. This is staggering. Every dollar that the Department of Defense spends on healthcare is a dollar that cannot be spent on training and equipping our warfighters. While we need to slow the growth of defense health spending, the primary focus of our reform efforts must be creating a better healthcare system for service-members, military families, and retirees by improving access to care, quality of care, and health outcomes. We must identify and eliminate waste in the military healthcare system, and evaluate the organizational structures of the services medical departments, with an eye towards making them flatter, more efficient, and more responsive. In some cases, we may need to eliminate some organizations or infrastructure while ensuring that we maintain and improve medical readiness. With these and other reforms, we can make the military health system perform better for beneficiaries and more sustainable for the Department of Defense. It is often said that Americas greatest military advantage is its people. That is not a talking point. It is a reality. We will consider input from all sides throughout this process, starting with our witnesses today. I thank you for your willingness to appear before the Committee today, and I look forward to your testimony. ### | 1 | 2026-03-30T12:14:52Z | 2026-03-30T12:14:52Z |