Kathryn Prael, 202-226-8613

(c) 202-641-1387

***Media Advisory***

NATIONAL SECURITY SUBCOMMITTEE HEARING: “Rethinking our Defense Budget: Achieving National Security through Sustainable Spending”

Washington, DC - On Tuesday, July 20, 2010, at 10 a.m. in 2154 Rayburn House Office Building, Congressman John Tierney’s Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs will continue its oversight of defense spending by examining recent scholarship and policy research on defense budget reform, including the conclusions and recommendations made in a recent report by the Sustainable Defense Task Force, Debt, Deficits, & Defense: A Way Forward. This report presents a series of recommendations to reduce the budget of the Department of Defense (DOD) by $960 billion by 2020. Witnesses will offer perspectives on options to cut military spending in the context of national security priorities and the current economic environment.

U.S. military spending needs to be included in any deficit reduction calculus. The Fiscal Year 2011 budget of the DOD is at historically high levels – even when the additional costs of our operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are deducted. In such challenging national economic times as these, it is vital that all categories of federal spending be subject to careful scrutiny and close examination – especially if comprehensive efforts to reduce the federal deficit, like those of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, are to be productive and effective.

The Subcommittee hearing will be streamed live on the website of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform (www.oversight.house.gov).

WITNESS LIST:  The hearing features a single, five-witness panel including:

· Carl Conetta, Ph.D., Co-Director, Project on Defense Alternatives

· Benjamin Friedman, Research Fellow, Cato Institute

· Todd Harrison, Senior Fellow, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments

· Gary Schmitt, Ph.D., Resident Scholar and Director, Advanced Strategic Studies, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research

· Gordon Adams, Ph.D., Distinguished Fellow, Stimson Center

WHERE:                2154 Rayburn House Office Building

WHEN:                 10:00 a.m. on Tuesday, July 20, 2010