When Chairman Randy Frelinghuysen of New Jersey open’s Thursday’s hearing of the Subcommittee on Defense of the House Committee on Appropriations, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping will very much be in the room.

The Russian president has invaded a neighboring country and seized a huge chunk of it –for the second time in six years.  The Chinese president is presiding over a massive arms build-up –a 12.2%  increase in the PRC’s already substantial public budget was announced las week– and the PRC is taking increasingly hostile actions in the South China Sea. (Robert Kaplan’s Asia’s Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific which arrived this week could not be more timely.) Continue Reading

CNN’s Jake Tapper joined me and today’s co-host Jamie Weinstein of the Daily Caller to discuss the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines 370, Senator Rob Portman’s and Joe Scarborough’s viability as 2016 candidates.

Audio:

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Transcript:

HH: If you’re just joining us, co-hosting with me today, Jamie Weinstein of the Daily Caller. Jamie will be filling in for me tomorrow when I go to see an advanced screening of Noah. And we are joined from Washington, D.C. by Jake Tapper, host of CNN’s The Lead. Hello, Jake.

JT: Hey, Hugh, how are you? Hey, Jamie.

JW: Hey, Jake, how are you?

HH: Now Jake as of tomorrow, you will be closer to 50 than you are to 40. How you feeling on your birthday eve?

JT: I was wondering if tonight was my last moment in the key demographic for television viewing. I think I have until 49, actually. But oh, I don’t know, after 40, it’s all creaks and moans. You know, I’m a pretty lucky guy.

HH: It’s your first time on the air when you are hosting The Lead on your birthday. Have you got a keen eye on your production staff, who I now know to be very sneaky about these things?

JT: They are sneaky. But I assume they won’t do anything on air. But one never knows. One never knows.

HH: All right, let’s get…

JT: They’re always up to no good, those meddling teenagers.

HH: I just proved to Jamie who’s out from D.C. under the classic of watch, do, teach, that you are my show prep. We were watching you earlier with your two experts on the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines 370, and on the Senate Intelligence Committee. I began my show talking to Portman about that. But okay, putting everything aside, Jake Tapper, do you think this is terrorism?

JT: No, I guess I don’t, just because nobody has claimed responsibility for it, yet. And generally, that would be the case, although I know it has happened that there have been dry runs. But it just feels like somebody would have announced that they had something to do with it. And in general, when it comes to life, when given the choice between something happening because of just bad luck or incompetence versus evil, generally, it’s incompetence or bad luck. Continue Reading

Ohio’s Rob Portman opened the show today, talking about the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines 370, the alleged spying by the CIA on the Senate, and 2016.  Portman, as my in studio co-host today, The Daily Caller’s Jamie Weintsein pointed out in the course of the conversation, gave us an answer that far from Shermanesque, was a ”maybe.”

Audio:

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Transcript:

HH: Sitting in with me as my co-host all day today, Jamie Weinstein of the Daily Caller. Jamie will be guest hosting for me tomorrow, so the old rule of watch, do, teach is in effect, Jamie with me throughout the show. And we open with United States Senator Rob Portman from my great state of Ohio. Hello, Senator, welcome, good to talk to you.

RP: Hugh, good to talk to you again, my friend. You’ve got to come see us in the Buckeye State.

HH: I’m going to be back there when the Browns get to the Super Bowl, Senator. That’s when I’m coming back. Actually, I’m there a lot, and I’ve got to run into you.

RP: I don’t think that’ll happen soon, but I don’t know.

HH: Oh, it’s going to happen this year. We just signed a great linebacker today for the Browns. But I want to begin with a…do you on Homeland Security know anything about Malaysian Air that we don’t know? Jamie and I have been talking about it.

RP: No, I really don’t. I’m on the committee as you know, and we’ve looked at this pretty carefully. But it appears as though the investigation is now leaning more toward a non-terrorism possibility. But we just don’t know enough, yet.

HH: All right, second question, your colleague, Ron Wyden, is on as we speak with Jake Tapper after your colleague, Dianne Feinstein, blasted the CIA today.

RP: Yeah.

HH: Are you concerned that the CIA has been snooping on the Senate? Continue Reading

On Thursday the Subcomittee on Defense Appropriations of the House Committee on Appropriations will meet for a hearing at which Secretary of Defense Hagel and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Dempsey will testify.  (A second closed oversight hearing follows Friday.)

Here is the background on the Department of Defense spending caps for 2014 and 2015.  These “caps” are destructive of our nation’s defenses and dangerous for the country.

They are also largely illusory, as Todd Harrison explains in this excellent op-ed for The Hill from today.  The budget for DOD is essentially in chaos, and this is terribly damaging on the ability of the Pentagon to plan and prepare.  Unlike every other part of the federal budget, the Pentagon’s budget truly does need to have long-range spending plans locked down and priorities and weapons systems selected and funded, and not weapons acquisition systems, but also for career military personnel who have to develop skills sets over the 20+ years of their service that equip them to be the leaders of the nation’s military in the 2030s and beyond.  One example of the complexity of the budgeting issue: The Navy has 18 Ohio class submarines, 14 of which carry ballistic missiles, 4 of which have been converted to carry a variety of weapons systems including cruise missiles, and these have to be refurbished or replaced over a 15 year time frame.  This force becomes more and more important as does our carrier fleet as the People’s republic of China surges out a blue water Navy, as does our fleet of submarines.  The Marine Corps –funded either at 175,000 or 182,000 depending on which page of the budget you look at– also needs a clear horizon and if the Army is being slashed, the USMC must at least be maintained at its levels of recent years to provide an expeditionary force

Not since the nadir of the Carter years has military spending fallen into such confusion and uncertainty.  The Subcommittee has to begin the process of turning that around by sending a serious budget to the full Committee and the Committee forwarding it on to the House.  The caps have to be set aside and the focus put back on the Congress’ first job of protecting the United States.  If the events in Ukraine have had any good effect, it will be the light shed on the fact that the world isn’t the way President Obama has long asserted it was.  There will be more terrible surprises ahead –from Iran, the PRC, the Norks.  The Congress needs to do its job even if the president won’t.  Send him a Department of Defense appropriations bill that is serious about national defense, and make 2014 a referendum not just on Obamacare but also on president’s radical plans for the nation’s military.