[Senate Hearing 118-680]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 118-680
EVOLVING WORKFORCE DYNAMICS AND THE
CHALLENGES FOR DEFENSE ACQUISITION AND
DEFENSE INDUSTRIAL BASE
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HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
FEBRUARY 28, 2024
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Armed Services
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Available via http: //www.govinfo.gov
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
60-821 PDF WASHINGTON : 2025
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COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
JACK REED, Rhode Island, Chairman
JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire ROGER F. WICKER, Mississippi
KIRSTEN E. GILLIBRAND, New York DEB FISCHER, Nebraska
RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Connecticut TOM COTTON, Arkansas
MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii MIKE ROUNDS, South Dakota
TIM KAINE, Virginia JONI ERNST, Iowa
ANGUS S. KING, Jr., Maine DAN SULLIVAN, Alaska
ELIZABETH WARREN, Massachusetts KEVIN CRAMER, North Dakota
GARY C. PETERS, Michigan RICK SCOTT, Florida
JOE MANCHIN III, West Virginia TOMMY TUBERVILLE, Alabama
TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois MARKWAYNE MULLIN, Oklahoma
JACKY ROSEN, Nevada TED BUDD, North Carolina
MARK KELLY, Arizona ERIC SCHMITT, Missouri
Elizabeth L. King, Staff Director
John P. Keast, Minority Staff Director
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
_________________________________________________________________
February 28, 2024
Page
Evolving Workforce Dynamics and the Challenges for Defense 1
Acquisition and Defense Industrial Base.
Member Statements
Statement of Senator Jack Reed................................... 1
Statement of Senator Roger Wicker................................ 2
Witness Statements
Taylor, Johnny C., Jr., President and Chief Executive Officer, 4
Society for Human Resource Management.
Johnson, Simon H., Ronald A. Kurtz 1954 Professor of 16
Entrepreneurship, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan
School of Management.
Lockwood, Julie A., Director of Business Modernization, Institute 37
for Defense Analyses.
(iii)
EVOLVING WORKFORCE DYNAMICS AND THE CHALLENGES FOR DEFENSE ACQUISITION
AND DEFENSE INDUSTRIAL BASE
----------
WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 28, 2024
United States Senate,
Committee on Armed Services,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:31 a.m., in
room 216, Hart Senate Office Building, Senator Jack Reed
(Chairman of the Committee) presiding.
Committee Members present: Senators Reed, Shaheen,
Blumenthal, Hirono, Kaine, King, Warren, Peters, Rosen, Kelly,
Wicker, Fischer, Ernst, Sullivan, Scott, Tuberville, Mullin,
Budd, and Schmitt.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR JACK REED
Chairman Reed. Good morning. The Committee meets today to
receive testimony on evolving workforce dynamics and challenges
for defense acquisition and defense industrial base personnel.
This Committee has spent several years examining the
various challenges for our defense acquisition system. We have
worked to identify supply chain problems, to pinpoint shortages
in critical materials, and to improve investments in long lead
items for our weapons systems.
However, there is nothing more important for our defense
acquisition strategy than our workforce, the men and women of
the Defense Acquisition Corps, and the personnel in the defense
industrial base whom they helped to guide and oversee. We
cannot solve our acquisition problems without an adequate
supply of skilled and trained workers.
This challenge is spread through many sectors of our
defense industrial base and in many geographic areas. From my
own Rhode Island perspective, I often see the workforce
challenges facing the submarine industrial base and the textile
industry.
These sectors each have their own unique hiring challenges,
but those are further exacerbated by widespread competition for
talent among Federal agencies, between the Federal Government
and the private sector, and even between the defense industrial
base and the rest of the commercial sector.
During today's hearings, we will take a step back to better
understand the broader dynamics at play and consider how the
Department of Defense (DOD) can or should adapt its hiring and
retention processes to try to address these challenges. Until
we thoroughly identify and understand the changes happening in
the broader workforce, we will not be able to properly meet
them.
Many of the defense workforce strains are related to
demographic changes as more Millennial and Generation Z workers
enter the workforce, and many of our baby boomers, who have
been the backbone of the defense workforce for decades, begin
to exit in greater numbers.
The younger generations have different demands and
expectations of their employers than previous generations,
especially in the post-COVID landscape. I am concerned that the
Department has not fully recognized this evolution and has not
fully adapted its talent management practices as a result.
The sources of these labor challenges are diverse. Two-
thirds of Americans who lost their full time job during the
pandemic say they are only somewhat active, or not very active
at all, in searching for a new job.
About half are not willing to take jobs that do not offer
the opportunity for remote work, and we know that younger
Americans are prioritizing their personal growth over searching
for a job, with many saying that they are more focused on
acquiring new skills, education, or training before reentering
the job market.
To discuss these issues and help us better understand how
the Department of Defense can adapt its hiring and retention
policies, I would like to welcome our distinguished panel of
witnesses. Mr. Johnny Taylor is the President and CEO of the
Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM).
Mr. Taylor's career spans more than 20 years as a lawyer,
human resources (HR) executive, and CEO in both the profit and
not for profit sector. He is a global leader on the future of
employment, workplace culture, and leadership. Dr. Simon
Johnson is the Ronald A. Kurtz Professor of Entrepreneurship at
the MIT Sloan School of Management.
He is the co-author of the book, Jumpstarting America, How
Breakthrough Science Can Revive Economic Growth and the
American Dream. Dr. Johnson was previously a senior fellow at
the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a member of
the Congressional Budget Office's Panel of Economic Advisers,
and a member of the Financial Research Advisory Committee of
the U.S. Treasury Office of Financial Research.
Dr. Julie Lockwood is the Director of Business
Modernization at the Institute for Defense Analysis, or IDA. An
economist with expertise in labor, health, and computational
economics, Dr. Lockwood built and led the Human Capital Group
within IDA, a team of researchers that used data analytics,
machine learning, and applied econometrics to address
Department of Defense personnel and readiness issues.
We are grateful to have such an accomplished panel of
experts with us to discuss this important issue. Thank you
again to our witnesses, and we certainly look forward to your
testimony. Let me now recognize Ranking Member Wicker.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR ROGER WICKER
Senator Wicker. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Department of
Defense employs more than 700,000 civilians who is sure that
our military personnel are capable of performing their mission.
Their mission is to deter and win wars to protect our national
security.
For this reason, the Armed Services Committee takes a
special interest in ensuring that the Department of Defense has
every tool necessary to build a civilian workforce that is
capable, innovative, and dedicated to keeping our country safe.
The basic principles of building an effective workforce are
simple.
The Department of Defense needs to be able to hire the best
people quickly and pay them what they are worth. But if an
employee does not meet expectations, the Department needs to be
able to dismiss that employee and find someone better.
Unfortunately, the laws and regulations governing the
Department of Defense workforce are anything but simple and
efficient.
Hiring takes too long even when Congress provides
accelerated direct hiring authority. Pay is often inadequate,
especially in trade provisions such as welders and electricians
who maintain the Navy's nuclear powered submarines and
carriers.
The Department also does not pay competitive salaries for
jobs that require extensive formal education, and everyone
knows how hard it is to terminate an underperforming employee.
Those who have spent any length of time in the Pentagon have a
story of an underperforming colleague who was shuffled around
to various offices to get him out of the way.
Similarly, most know a truly exceptional performer who left
the Department of Defense in search of better rewards for her
hard work. The status quo is unacceptable, and the evidence is
everywhere we look.
Our public shipyards struggle to attract skilled trade
workers. The Navy is hemorrhaging the civilian mariners, whose
work ensures the delivery of critical supplies around the world
to the rest of the fleet. We cannot hire or retain enough
doctors or nurses to staff our military hospitals.
Cyber professionals leave the Department of Defense in
droves to join other Government agencies or the private sector.
I could go on. The unique mission of the Department of Defense
demands that Congress provides it exceptional authorities to
allow the Department to build the civilian workforce needed to
support our warfighters.
The system that governs every other Federal agency is
inadequate for our national defense workforce. Numerous
bipartisan commissions and our military's senior leaders agree.
I hope we can use this year's National Defense Authorization
Act to provide legislative tools to achieve the basic
principles of an effective civilian workforce.
I would ask the witnesses to help us understand the
weaknesses of the Department's current human resource system.
But more importantly, I hope the witnesses can tell us what we
can do to make the Department of Defense a more competitive
employer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Reed. Thank you, Senator Wicker. Mr. Taylor,
please begin.
STATEMENT OF JOHNNY C. TAYLOR, JR., PRESIDENT AND CHIEF
EXECUTIVE OFFICER, SOCIETY FOR HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
[Technical problems.]
Mr. Wicker.--the state of the workforce. Thank you. SHRM
empowers people and workplaces by advancing human resources
practices and maximizing human potential. We are 75 years old
this year, and we have been the trusted authority on all things
work, workers, and the workplace.
Our nearly 340,000 H.R. professionals across the globe
represent nearly 362 million workers and their families in 180
countries. A few weeks ago, SHRM released its state of the
workplace report, which focused on the challenges employers
faced in 2023 and the critical issues we expect that they will
face in 2024 and beyond. The report looks at four key areas
which impact the workplace.
First, balancing inflation and talent challenges. Yes, we
want to pay our people more, but somehow the consumer is
pushing back increasingly on paying more for services and
goods. Trading and evolving workforce. Indeed, both Chairman
Reed and Ranking Member Wicker spoke to the challenges of for
the first time we have five generations in the workplace at
once and they have significantly different needs.
Third, we looked at realizing the full potential of
artificial intelligence (AI). Quite the debate these days, and
I will spend more time in my introductory comments addressing
that, and then we are struggling with engaging workers.
So, it is just not enough to have the bodies there, but to
engage them is yet a significant challenge. I would like to
talk for just a minute about key findings from our report. One
is inflation was the top concern for organizations in 2023, and
not just general inflation, but indeed wage inflation.
Seventy-three percent of H.R. professionals indicated that
this is their current number one concern. We want the talent,
we want to pay them, but we have got to figure out how to do
so. Second, labor shortages.
They were the number two issue in 2023. We have already
somewhere between 8, 9, 10, 11 million open jobs at any given
time, and that has created a major concern for organizations.
More than two-thirds of employers have said we simply can't
find enough people.
There are labor shortages, and then we do need to reduce
the cost and increase efficiencies. I will talk a little bit
more about how that has directly led to adoption of AI and
other technologies.
Nearly 9 in 10 workers believe fair compensation from
current employees, including the Government, the Department of
Defense, for example, should be the top priority for
organizations in 2024, yet only 27 percent of H.R. executives
say this is their top priority. So, a major disconnect.
A quarter of H.R. Departments are currently using
artificial intelligence applications for specific purposes,
such as recruiting talent, employee training, and development.
So, in 2024, we expect that number will significantly be
increased.
Finally, improving people managers, that is, the people
leaders understanding of their roles and developing more of
their what we call soft skills, their not so soft power skills
such as empathy.
Top organizational priorities for 2024 are all about not
just getting the talent but retaining the talent. What our data
tells us overwhelmingly is that 60 percent or more of employees
leave not the employer, but their manager, their people
manager, and thus the challenge for us.
So, let's talk about the labor shortages that we are all
seeing and are specifically impacting the Department of
Defense. H.R. Departments are being compelled to strategize to
solve for the labor shortages with a market that does not want
to respond in traditional ways. A key focus in the past was
increase salary and that will help you attract talent. Well,
what we know about the younger generation is that doesn't
necessarily work.
Our data will tell us that employees will say they will
actually leave an employer for less money, to go make less
money if they get to work for a more empathetic leader. This is
the reality of Generation Z and Millennials, and something we
have to take into consideration at the Department of Defense.
The Department of Defense can greatly benefit by retraining
and retaining officers and enlisted personnel who leave the
military and are having difficulty finding work in the private
sector. This is a significant conversation in the private
sector world, I can tell you, is how do we create
opportunities?
How do we translate the experiences of people who have come
from the military and from the Department of Defense into
private sector jobs? But that creates an opportunity for the
DOD, because, in fact, you might consider keeping those people.
But returning alone is not enough.
We need to train them and train these employees to be more
adaptable, because in today's rapidly changing world,
adaptability is paramount, and SHRM research indicates that
over 31 percent of organizations are modifying the recruitment
strategies, including enhancing social media presence,
advertising, and employee referrals.
So, in summary, got a lot more to tell you, but SHRM's
testimony today underscores several pivotal areas where
organizations can concentrate their efforts to attract, retain,
and empower the workforce.
Very quickly, adopt skills based hiring, invest in
retention, leverage apprenticeship programs, modernize talent
management processes. This is, Mr. Wicker, Senator Wicker, a
real challenge for the Government, and we need to invest in
people managers, upskill and reskill the workforce, create a
culture of learning.
The employees want this. They don't want to take the job
and know the job for 30 years and then retire. Create AI
responsibly. It is not enough to just enable the technology,
but to do so responsibly, and then to focus on human and
machine collaboration. At SHRM, we speak a lot about AI plus HR
(human resources) will equal the new ROI.
So, it is not a sum zero game for employees. We have got to
embrace this technology and we think there are huge
opportunities for the Department of Defense. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Johnny C. Taylor follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Reed. Thank you, Mr. Taylor. Dr. Johnson, please.
STATEMENT OF SIMON H. JOHNSON, RONALD A. KURTZ 1954 PROFESSOR
OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
SLOAN SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT
Dr. Johnson. Thank you, Senator. I would like to make three
points. The first is about a term I fear you are going to hear
increasingly, which is stranded expertise. It is a term being
used in the tech sector to refer to the impact of AI in
particular.
But of course, it is not a new problem. We have been facing
issues with expert people, people who spent a lot of time
acquiring education and training, losing opportunities and
being left behind. These have been a problem since at least the
wave of automation. We have experienced that in the 1980s.
The shock of Chinese imports from the early 2000,
exacerbated this. In the age of AI, I think we are going to be
seeing much more of this, and of course, it is overlaid,
Senator Reed, with some of the issues we have talked about in
terms of the demographics. I would also highlight the shift of
innovation away from the historical dispersion of the United
States toward the East and West Coast.
Of course, from a broader social, economic point of view,
this is a problem. But my second point is that this is actually
an opportunity for the Department of Defense and a way to think
about responding to the problems both you, Senator Reed and
Senator Wicker already flagged. Because the key point is that
innovation and technology develops and is maintained in
particular geographies, around hubs, and we used to have a lot
of hubs that were very dynamic in the United States.
Now we have fewer, but that can be addressed. The analysis
we did suggests there is over 100 urban areas in 36 states
where 80 million Americans live that are ripe for stepping up
to become fantastic places for exactly the kind of problems
that you are trying to solve and address on this Committee.
So, there is potentially available labor. So, there are
already skills. There is no doubt some retraining needed and
some repositioning. Of course, one of the problems with
apprenticeship programs in the United States, one of the
reasons the private sector doesn't, frankly speaking, love them
is they are afraid that if once you train a worker, that worker
leaves and goes to work for a competitor.
But if the goal is to strengthen the defense industrial
base and if people are sticking, because we have all become
less mobile, modern Americans are much less mobile than our
predecessors. Then if you are training people in a particular
area to work on submarines, for example, or to acquire welding
skills and electrical skills that are relevant to the submarine
business, and they leave to a related enterprise in that area,
you have not weakened the defense industrial base. You have
actually strengthened and deepened its ties in that community.
You have also, of course, got a reserve workforce that can be
pulled in if you need to increase those activities. For broader
understanding, Rhode Island, Senator Reed, you got some
terrific hub based developments.
But as we are seeing this all around the country and the
CHIPS and Science Act, which was passed on a bipartisan basis,
I think included affirmation of the importance of this as a
general policy approach, but also something I would say that
the DOD can take on board.
Including, however, in that approach, Senator Reed would be
addressing one of the key points you made, which is labor force
participation. So, it is not enough to have the opportunities,
people have to want to come to work, and that is partly about
compensation. It is partly about can they access childcare? It
is partly about how long does it take to commute to work.
There is a package that should be looked at of this hub
level, and I commend that to this Committee into the DOD for
further investigation, the way it overlays with your existing
activities and priorities around the country.
The third issue is, I think, with stating out loud, which
is China, and I think that that is on the back of all our
minds, or maybe the front, Senator, when we think about the
potential threats here.
China is of course, not just threatening but actually
investing very heavily in further research and development,
trying to move innovation, trying to own the future of jobs
across a lot of civilian, but also, I think, military
activities. The best way to respond to that would be three
fold.
First of all, invest more in science for the United States.
Second, figure out how to commercialize and bring more of those
activities to market because if you have got a strong civilian
economy supporting innovation, that is going to help you on the
military side also. Obviously there is a huge amount of
spillovers and interaction there. Again, I would recommend a
hub based approach for that.
The third approach, the third piece would be to develop a
line of work for artificial intelligence that is pro-worker.
What do I mean by pro-worker? I mean within the framework Mr.
Taylor suggesting, AI is certainly arriving, but is this AI is
going to displace manual workers and displace workers with less
education, or does it enhance their productivity and enhance
their opportunities? I think it could actually go both ways.
There is a lot of opportunity, a lot of issues around
health care, a lot of issues around education, a lot of issues
around manufacturing that are not the top priority for AI
oriented investments in innovation in the private sector. There
more to more about social media and digital advertising, to be
frank.
So, focusing on those activities, and I think both Senator
Reed and Senator Wicker alluded to this, changing how we think
about manual work and thinking--changing the value we place on
manual skills--I think that is something we have lost in this
country over the past 40 or so years. It is something we were
very strong at during WWII.
That was the basis of being able to scale up that economy
and move it toward wartime production. To the extent we have
outsourced those jobs to other places and created fragile
supply chains, we should look at AI as an opportunity to
motivate people and to bring technology to bear that enhances
the effectiveness of that part of the workforce. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Simon H. Johnson follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Reed. Thank you very much, Dr. Johnson. Dr.
Lockwood, please.
STATEMENT OF JULIE A. LOCKWOOD, DIRECTOR OF BUSINESS
MODERNIZATION, INSTITUTE FOR DEFENSE ANALYSES
Dr. Lockwood. Chairman Reed, Ranking Member Wicker, and
fellow distinguished Members of the Senate Armed Services
Committee, good morning. I am honored to contribute to this
timely discussion on trends impacting the Nation's defense
civilian workforce.
My perspectives are informed by my own research, that of
fellow economists, and also the work of many talented
researchers at the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) and at
other federally funded research and development centers
supporting the Department of Defense.
I should State that the views that I expressed today are
mine, and not necessarily those of IDA, as a nonpartisan
institution. To succeed, the Department of Defense and its
partners in the defense industrial base must maintain skilled,
capable, and adequately staffed workforces.
Today's labor market is characterized by the convergence of
several important trends, some of which have been discussed
today already, which together produce intense competition for
talent. Increasing job market polarization driven by
technological advances has left many missed skilled workers
behind.
Young men's rates of college attendance, enrollment, and
completion are in decline. An aging workforce will bring waves
of retirements to DOD, threatening continuity and also
institutional memory. The gig economy, meanwhile, offers
workers low commitment alternatives and a very flexible
lifestyle, and remote work is here to stay in some form or
other.
In addition, affordable housing shortages add to existing
downward pressure on worker mobility, and rapid advances in AI
and other technologies are accelerating competition for STEM
[Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics] graduates.
One or two of these concurrent trends alone would be troubling,
but taken together, I believe they represent a sea change.
At present, there is excess demand for labor in the United
States, with 9.5 million open positions for only 6.5 million
workers. That is assuming every worker is well suited to the
open positions, which they are not. DOD and its industry
partners are not currently well positioned to compete
effectively for the high demand talent that our national
security requires.
These trends impact each segment of the labor force that
this Committee seeks to address, wage grade workers in our
shipyards and our arsenals, STEM professionals in our labs and
in the acquisition workforce, and critical supervisors and
middle managers on the GS schedule. A common set of
prescriptions can improve the health of each.
To compete for the skilled workers that DOD and its
partners in the industrial base need to accomplish their
critical missions, the Department should act aggressively to
hire faster, pay competitively, reward performance, manage
underperformance, and set the conditions needed for managers to
make effective workforce mix decisions.
Moreover, DOD has an excellent opportunity to engage with
this missing middle of mid skilled workers, a labor segment
traditionally heavily involved in national defense, by filling
critical shortfalls with a combination of trained workers and
enabling technologies--some of the AI that my colleagues here I
have spoken to already.
People need purpose and inspiration to get off the couch
and back in the workforce. If you take away only one idea from
my time with you today, please let that be that incentives
matter. By incentives, I do not only mean the pay and benefits
that employees might earn for an excellent performance.
I also mean the conditions under which DOD's many managers,
workers, and researchers invest their personal effort and make
day to day decisions that impact the Department's bottom line.
I believe that DOD's dedicated workers generally want to make
optimal choices but are often stymied in doing so.
You can set the conditions to align incentives within these
decision environments, to make it easier for everyone to choose
the sensible thing for the mission and for the taxpayer in
their daily work, whether that is shaping DOD's workforce mix
or when managing their teams. Incentive alignment will produce
more effective decisions and free resources for other mission
critical areas.
I personally think we could use a few more submarines.
Decisive action can help achieve this incentive alignment and
will reinvigorate DOD's civilian workforce by clearly signaling
that the Department values its wage grade, professional, and
defense industry personnel. That it will recognize and reward
their contributions.
These innovations will allow DOD to advance as a high
performing organization. Thank you for your time and I look
forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Lockwood follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Reed. Well, thank you all for excellent testimony.
Really superb, and this is, I think, the beginning of a dialog,
not a one stop and move on. I like submarines, but I share that
with Senator Wicker, and he----
Senator Wicker. Here, here. The only thing I take issue
with is she said a few. It would be quite a lot more submarine.
Chairman Reed. I agree. The only condition he puts on and
they all have to be named after a city in Mississippi, but that
is a small point. One of the issues that I see as I try to deal
with these issues is that we have a problem of bringing in new
workers. We also have a problem at the supervisory level.
Discussions with people in the industry say that is
probably one of the key things that is slowing them down. They
can get by with younger workers, but without the supervisors,
they can't leverage those workers. So, Mr. Taylor, and Dr.
Johnson, and Dr. Lockwood, your comments.
Mr. Taylor. Well, indeed--I alluded to that. Thank you,
Chairman Reed. We know that, and even in industries like the
Tech Valley and Silicon Valley, the tech industries, we can get
them employees to come in.
The difficulty is keeping those employees, and
increasingly, the new difficulty is keeping people in middle
management. In part because we have naively assumed that
because one is a great mechanic, that one will be a great
manager of mechanics.
So, we take that person. We don't invest in teaching them
how to be a great people manager. They hate the job and the
employees that work for them hate the job, and therefore no one
wins, and that has led to the retention problem.
One of the areas that we strongly recommend the Department
of Defense consider doing is investing in people management.
How do you--it is not enough for someone to have the
technical--the underlying technical skills.
We have got to teach them, you know, technically to do the
job, but teach them how to manage people. Because listen, at
the end of the day, we have all talked about compensation, and
compensation does matter, but all of the data tells us that
people will leave an employer if the only thing they are doing
is making a lot of money but being mistreated, and they don't
find that this is a good work environment.
So, people management work is a lot of the work that the
Department of Defense should consider investing in.
Chairman Reed. Thank you. Dr. Johnson, your comment.
Dr. Johnson. So, Senator, here is the good news, bad news
aspect of artificial intelligence, you know, in answer to your
question.
The good news is there is definitely potential, and we can
see it already in some parts of the private sector to develop
tools that will enhance the ability of supervisors to manage
more effectively and perhaps make it more easy to transition to
become a supervisor.
So, I don't think there is enough effort going into that. I
think it would be something very good for the DOD to focus on
also. But I think that the bad news part is there is also a
tendency, and not I am sure, in this room, but elsewhere, to
think about algorithms as replacing people and doing the work.
We can rely on them, and we can close our eyes and the car
will drive itself. That is a bad mistake. But what we are
looking at, as Taylor said, is different ways for people to
interact with machines at the supervisory level.
But I would emphasize making those manual jobs more
attractive, more interesting. Pulling younger people in with an
AI element, not thinking about replacing people because that
would be a mistake.
Chairman Reed. Dr. Lockwood, please.
Dr. Lockwood. Yes. I will just build on both of these
gentleman's remarks by noting I wholeheartedly support Mr.
Taylor's cry for additional training. I will note that among
our defense workforce, that our uniformed personnel are
frequently sent to special schools to learn managerial and
leadership skills.
However, very little investment is made in our civilian
managers, and this is a critical gap that you can fill. I will
note that some important changes have been made, some progress
has been made in the area of leadership training, for the
acquisition workforce in particular.
But leadership is different than management, so this is a
key opportunity for the Department. Thank you.
Chairman Reed. Thank you very much. In terms of addressing
our problems, one suggestion that I think everyone made
directly or indirectly is we have got this pool of workers,
military personnel that we can transition. Just very quickly
because my time is expiring. Mr. Taylor, how do we encourage
our military personnel who are leaving the service to go into
industries related?
Mr. Taylor. Yes, we know that there currently exist
transition programs, but we have got to double down on those.
If we know that an individual is within 6 months to 12
months away from either retiring or completing their military
service, we have got to give them the skills to make sure that
they can translate that either to role in the DIB, maybe not
necessarily in the military, or within the private sector.
So, training them on how to become recruitable in the
private sector would be the way to do it.
Chairman Reed. Thank you. My time has expired, and there is
one other question I want to--or comment I want to put on the
table. One is, Dr. Lockwood focused on the acquisition forces
in DOD and management training.
One of the areas I think, too, is in the civilian
companies, the contractors. My sense is they don't do that very
well. Dr. Lockwood or Dr. Johnson.
Dr. Lockwood. I would respectfully take a question on the
management within our contractual partners for the record.
Chairman Reed. Very good. Thank you. Dr. Johnson.
Dr. Johnson. I think you are pressing on exactly the right
issue here, Senator Reed. I think that we are under investing
in managerial capabilities across a large part of our economy.
Of course, there is a big sucking sound as talent gets
pulled toward the Silicon Valley type of sector, and the rest
of the economy is neglected and underinvested in by itself,
which is very counterproductive from an economic point of view
and from a national security point of view.
I think you are--absolutely top priority in line with
both--with certainly what Mr. Taylor said. I am sure with what
Ms. Lockwood will say later.
Chairman Reed. Last word very quickly, Mr. Taylor.
[No response.]
Chairman Reed. Thank you very much. Senator Wicker, please.
Senator Wicker. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In a 2023 Federal
employee viewpoint survey, workers were asked whether they
agree with this statement, in my work unit differences in
performance are recognized in a meaningful way. Only 45 percent
of respondents agreed with that.
The same survey asked if they agree with this statement,
there are no poor performers in my work unit. Only 19 percent
of employees said that. Dr. Lockwood, in your written
statement, you say DOD needs to accelerate reprimand or
separation in cases of underperformance that does not improve
with reasonable training investment. Tell us about that and
what can Congress do.
Dr. Lockwood. Thank you for the question. I think the
bottom line is that if high performers are compensated,
promoted, and otherwise treated the same as mediocre
performers, that those high performers will be discouraged and
take their talent somewhere else.
So, I think we can pretty clearly say that that is
suboptimal for the Department. I think there are a number of
things the Department could do to enable managers. One thing is
perhaps to limit employment terms. So, one might imagine a new
form of Federal employment, a limited term contract.
We see this in several other developed economies. This
would kind of split the difference, perhaps, between the use of
a very flexible contracted solution through one of our
industrial base partners or a typical Federal contractor, and
what we understand now as Federal employment to give both the
Department and the worker added flexibility.
Senator Wicker. Okay, so I asked what Congress could do and
do you think it would take statutory changes to implement
something like that?
Dr. Lockwood. I do. In particular, because oftentimes both
civilian and uniformed managers have concern of reprisal or
other forms of unfortunate action should they do the hard work
of trying to separate a nonproductive member of the staff. So,
Congress clearly signaling that this is your intent and desired
outcome, I believe would be helpful to the Department.
Senator Wicker. Let me ask all of you about the Federal
wage system. It has not been reformed since 1972. It is going
to be a long time. It has weaknesses, such as the system in
determining the wage is hyper local. It is incredibly
bureaucratic and complicated, and by law, public unions, public
employee unions are heavily involved.
Dr. Lockwood let's start with you. In my opening statement,
I mentioned welders and electricians. The Navy's public
shipyards are struggling to hire and retain these critical
workers. Does the FWS [Federal Wage Systems] have something to
do with this, and what can Congress do to help?
Dr. Lockwood. I believe it does. So currently, wages are
set in pretty hidebound grades where we are taking a number of
perhaps currently unrelated occupations, binding them together,
and setting wages within a few steps for that grade.
Those grades were established back in the 1970s based on
the prevailing wages at that time, and currently bend together
occupations that don't resemble one another at all. I believe a
far more effective approach would be to compensate on the
occupational level, both with a view toward the local wage, but
also understanding that should we need to draw workers into a
labor market that is relatively undersupplied, it will take a
higher wage to do so.
We need to set wages cognizant of not only occupation
locally, but also nationally.
Senator Wicker. It seems to me we are just going to
basically have to give the Department flexibility beyond
specific instructions.
Dr. Lockwood. I believe that is the case.
Senator Wicker. Dr. Johnson and Mr. Taylor.
Dr. Johnson. I would just add, Senator, there is a very big
issue coming to you soon with regard to workplace surveillance,
because the tools for surveilling workers are already greatly
enhanced.
In that conversation, there will be, and I think this is
something that OSHA [Occupational Safety and Health
Administration] will be looking to Congress for guidance on--I
think you have to consider, to what extent that surveillance
makes workers safer, more productive, and lines up with
reasonable incentive systems, as Dr. Lockwood was saying, and
to what extent it becomes oppressive and discourages workers
from coming in to work for the defense industrial base. This is
going to be a very hot issue very quickly.
Including that, Senator Wicker, in a discussion of the
Federal wage system, could be quite a good idea. I would also
emphasize the need for more housing. So, one reason wages have
to be higher in some areas is because the community decided not
to build housing. Now, that is the decision of the community.
It is not usually up to Congress, but I think deciding to
spend your submarine dollars in places where housing is
affordable suggests to me you will be able to build more
submarines for the same wage bill.
Mr. Taylor. I would add, from the private sector side, we
use the term pay for performance. If Congress can do anything
to give the flexibility to the Government worker, the
Department of Defense, you could actually help there.
Ultimately people--that doesn't surprise me, that 19
percent, say only 19 percent think they have no poor
performers. The Government has for quite a while recruited
people, and what part of the sell has been job security. Well,
that is the downside. If you know that you have job security,
then there is no incentive necessarily to do anything to not
have your job.
But more importantly, why would you differentiate if there
is no pay for performance? If I am going to make, give or take
1 percent more than the colleague who does barely enough to get
past, then there is no incentive for people to work harder and
for you to attract the best talent.
Senator Wicker. Thank you sir.
Chairman Reed. Thank you very much. Senator Kaine, please.
Senator Kaine. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks to our
witnesses. A couple of topics I want to get into. First, Mr.
Taylor, I appreciate that the Society for Human Resource
Managers has supported a bill that I have been promoting for
many years. I talk about it a lot in the HELP Committee, and
they are tired of me talking about it, but I don't talk about
it a lot at Armed Services, the Jobs Act.
We do not allow Pell Grants to be used for high quality
career and technical education. It has got to be a college. An
awful lot of really high quality job training programs are not
college semester in length. Instead of a 15 week course that
you meet three times a week for an hour and a half, a lot of
high quality job training is an 8-week course where you are 5
days a week, 8 hours a day, many more classroom hours than a
semester.
We allow Pell Grants to be used for full time students, for
part time students, for people who are incarcerated, if they
are getting college credits that they can use to get employed
when they are back in society, but we have never allowed Pell
Grants to be used for high quality career in tech.
I think if we could pass the Jobs Act, and it is wildly
bipartisan. I think I have got about 65 of my colleagues who
are sponsoring it, particularly at a moment when we have just
done a big infrastructure bill. Who is going to build it? We
have just done a big manufacturing bill and who is going to
make it?
We have just made a commitment to build subs with the
Australians, but both the United States and Australia have some
similar workforce challenges. So, I very much appreciate SHRM
supporting the Jobs Act, and I would look forward to working
with my colleagues to figure out some way to finally get
movement on it at a time when the unemployment rate is low. To
another topic that I would like to ask your opinion on.
There is a wonderful program that I have been involved with
called the Accelerated Training for Defense Manufacturing
Program that is done in Danville, Virginia, at the Institute
for Advanced Learning and Research, and its investment to build
the submarine industrial base.
In that program, we bring people from all over the United
States who are working with suppliers in the industrial base--
some of the main shipyards, but also some suppliers. They train
side by side.
There is Aussies there now. Part of the AUKUS [Australia,
United Kingdom, United States] arrangement. But also, I noticed
the last time I went, there is a lot of Afghans, Afghans who
served patriotically with the United States in Afghanistan.
They moved to United States, and they are like, I will be a
shipbuilder. Strikes me that one of the answers to this issue
on workforce shortages is immigration.
An immigration reform system that prioritizes workforce is
something that is really important. Oftentimes when we talk
about immigration here, it is all about the border. We ought to
talk about the border, but we also need to talk about the
workforce.
An unemployment rate that is as low as ours right now.
There is not going to be a solution to some of these problems
that does not involve a work based immigration reform, and I
was hoping that you might just each offer your perspectives on
that.
Mr. Taylor. Senator Kaine, you mentioned something that is
at the core of most of the conversations in human resource
circles. The fact of the matter is that Americans have been
having fewer and fewer children over the last 2 decades. So, we
have a birthrate problem. We have a replenishment problem.
We at SHRM are very careful not to get into the political
issues of immigration other than to say we need these 8, or 9,
or 10 million jobs to be filled. It is just nonsensical that we
would in many instances have people who we have allowed to come
to the U.S., we have educated them in our schools, and then we
send them back when we have open jobs for them to fill.
Again, staying away from the political parts of it, the
reality is employers are saying we need this talent. We don't
have the luxury of saying, great, we are going to have a bias
against people who are not born and trained here in the U.S. In
fact, we need all the talent. So, SHRM is quite supportive of
this immigration. Now, how we get to that is a different issue.
We need to ensure that we protect our border and our
Homeland, and we need to know who is in our country, is our
opinion. At that point, getting them to the talent, matching
them up with organizations is something that we all are pushing
for and frankly demanding at this point, with 3.7 percent
unemployment.
Senator Kaine. Dr. Johnson and Lockwood.
Dr. Johnson. So, Senator Kaine, I see your two proposals as
very tightly connected. My understanding is that the current
Pell Grant system had its origins in the 1958 National Defense
Education Act. Which is itself a response to Sputnik and a
realization by Congress that we needed more engineers and
scientists.
So, there is a big push at the higher end of education for
math and science, but not so much for this--in this middle--the
middle skill area that we are talking about. So that is a gap
we have had for a long time.
I think your idea is absolutely brilliant and spot on. But
then when it comes to immigration, I think the question is, are
we providing sufficient opportunities to all the people born in
the United States, including in that middle area? If we are and
they are not taking them, or if we still have gaps, then I
think the case for immigration on a work based or skills basis,
immigration reform is very compelling.
MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology]--I am an
immigrant, Senator, as you may have guessed, and I went to--I
got a Ph.D. from MIT, and there is many other people in MIT
currently who would love to spend their careers building the
economy and strengthen the national security of the United
States.
Many of them will be able to come in because we have not
easy, but various points of entry, if you have a master's
degree or higher, into the United States. But we don't do that
for skilled labor, because in part of the insecurity and
concerns about opportunities for native born Americans in that
part of labor force.
But I think both your ideas together, Senator, I would make
a package, because I think that is a compelling--joint in two
fold attack on the same problem.
Senator Kaine. Thank you. Dr. Lockwood, I am over time, but
you could be as succinct as Mr. Taylor was earlier when he
closed over time.
Dr. Lockwood. Yes. We absolutely need to invest in skills
based education and we need to stop enshrining the 4-year
degree as the only valuable and worthwhile thing that a young
person can do. We have overinvested in bachelor's degree
education and underinvested in core skills training.
So that is something Congress can do now. I will just also
note that our immigrant base is wildly productive in terms of
new business starts and general entrepreneurship, and skills
based immigration is definitely something that has been an
incredible net benefit to the American economy and it ought to
continue.
Senator Kaine. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Chairman Reed. Thank you, Senator Kaine. Senator
Tuberville, please.
Senator Tuberville. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would also
like to add on to Senator Kaine's thoughts on Pell grants,
Government grants, loans. I spent 40 years in the education
business. It is out of control.
We need to use it for the right reasons. It needs to be
redrawn. I have seen people take Pell Grants, go buy cars with
them, drop out of school immediately after they get Pell
Grants. I have seen the same thing with loans.
There is not enough oversight on it, but we need to put
more emphasis on what we are doing, and what he's calling the
Jobs Act. We can get more out of it if we would just
concentrate on it and put some authority behind it, and let
people know that you have got to do it the right way.
I am all for jobs training because I have seen a lot of
these kids that go to 4 year universities and waste their time
and get degrees, and they can't get jobs when they get out.
Their job has got to be at Walmart or somewhere else like that.
It is not that Walmart's a bad job, it just if you spend 4
years of your money or the Government's money in going to
school, you need to have some kind of opportunity to achieve
something more successful.
You know, I come from Alabama, and we have an industrial
base of about $50 billion annually, 300,000 jobs that work in
our military industrial base. We have Alabama Shipyard and
Austal USA. We build ships, submarines, you name it. It is an
amazing place. I enjoy going into these buildings and watching
these people work.
What is amazing to me, the stories I get are from some of
these major corporations, is they take their own initiative.
They are going to fast food places and recruiting, and watching
people work. One shipbuilder told me that their best welders
have come from fast food joints because they are willing to
work. Dr. Lockwood, be careful, you are telling people, get up
off the couch and go to work.
You don't need to say that around here. But they do, we
have got to get people back to work. So, Dr. Johnson, you
brought up a few minutes ago that our workforce has dropped
since WWII. Well, we all know that.
You know, I mean, that is the problem. What is the cause
and what is the solution to that? I mean, we got to have--what
is the cause for--we all know we have to have the cause of that
since WWII and the solution. Is it NAFTA [North American Free
Trade Agreement], that we send our manufacturing overseas?
Because China has five to one manufacturing plants compared to
us here in the United States. Is that part of it?
Dr. Johnson. Well, Senator, when I think of Alabama, I
think of Huntsville and the remarkable success there, the
rocket program, which was basically built from scratch in a
place that had tremendous, no doubt potential, but had not
previously established itself in that area of technology.
We used to do that a lot, Senator. That was a big lesson
out of WWII. We used to do it all around the country, and the
private sector did it as well as the public sector. But
unfortunately, what has happened due to market forces, and so I
am not blaming any single individual, is we have shifted much
more of that innovative activity toward the East Coast and the
West Coast.
These are cities that don't like to build more housing
prices. Housing is very high. It is hard to move there. A lot
of the expertise in the middle, the middle skills part of
manufacturing, for example, in the Midwest of the United
States, is stranded there because the opportunity is in other
places, but they can't afford to move because of the housing
market, and we are not making a best use of our talent.
So, I think more investments in more communities, including
Alabama, which is features very highly in our book, by the way,
that is the right geographic approach in general to bolstering
science and technology. When it comes to national defense,
Senator, I think it lines up even better because we want to
build communities with these skills. People don't move that
much.
Great, so their skills will stay in this community that is
focused on producing submarines or rockets or whatever that
community is. That that is going to be a very strong local
regional defense base. So, we will use a little bit of our
disadvantages in our favor in this case, and I think we will
get a better economy and more national security as a result.
Senator Tuberville. I think still in our country, we still
have a lot of patriotism out there. Sometimes we don't see
that, but people want to work for our military industry. They
make very good money, I mean, but you got to pay a price.
You got to sacrifice, and we can't overlook our education
in this country. Our education is going south. Take it from
somebody who has been in high schools all over this country as
my former job. The things that we are teaching are not
conducive to push these young men and women in making better
for themselves.
I mean, they just say, if I get a degree or if I get a
diploma in high school, that is good enough, and that is really
not good enough. They have got to be incentivized in how to do
it. Mr. Taylor was talking earlier about that. We have got the
incentivize. But again, it all goes back to our military
industry.
As you said, Huntsville. It is growing. I just bought a new
house up there and watched it go up, okay. There wasn't--in the
entire time that that house was built, there wasn't one white
American, one black American, or one Asian American that worked
on that house. It was people from other countries, okay.
I don't know whether they were legal or not. They said they
were. I asked them, I said, make sure there is not--I happen to
be a Senator. Make sure there is people that are Americans that
are working on this house.
But we can't build anything, we can't build anything unless
we have immigration in this country. I truly believe that. I
truly believe that. But we got to do it the right way. Thank
you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Reed. Thank you, Senator Tuberville. Senator
Rosen, please.
Senator Rosen. Well, thank you, Chairman Reed, for holding
this hearing. I would also like to thank each of the witnesses,
of course, for testifying today.
I worked in my former career in STEM and so I am going to
talk a little bit about the STEM workforce shortage. As
mentioned in the National Defense Industrial Strategy, we have
to find creative solutions to upskill our manufacturing
workforce so that we can meet our Nation's strategic production
targets and our goals.
Mr. Taylor, can you speak to the labor shortages in STEM
fields, the impact on our defense industrial base, and if there
are specific sectors impacted by the skilled workforce shortage
more than others?
Mr. Taylor. Right. As you can imagine--thank you, Senator
Rosen. You know, one of the problems is we wait too long to
talk about what the talent problem is.
We look to employers and say, you have not hired enough
engineers this year, for example. The reality is this is a PK
[pre kindergarten] through 12 problem, and we are not looking
at it--we want to solve for it immediately. We have a
pipelining problem from the diversity, for example, of the
types of Americans who come through the systems K through 12
educations, we know disproportionately underperform in
communities--underrepresented minorities.
Then you wake up and say, well, we don't have enough
diverse talent in STEM. Well, it is because that started 13, 14
years ago. It didn't start immediately, and so, employers are
committed to the idea of increasing and solving for their STEM
worker talent shortages, but we know when we say at SHRM, it is
the two Es. It is education and employers.
We have got to start a lot earlier in the process. The
other thing that the Senator just spoke to is that increasingly
companies are going straight to high schools and saying--in
fact, some new instances of going to middle schools and saying,
I am going to identify your kids now and ensure that they are
obtaining the skills that we need to--the STEM skills, you
know, the basic math, the sciences, et cetera, and we
essentially are going to pull them through and mentor them so
that we have potentially employable people 10, 12 years later.
As opposed to hoping that the K through 12 system will provide
the pipeline.
Senator Rosen. I am glad you brought that up because my
very first bill is called Building Blocks of STEM, and it does
exactly that, and allows to build that STEM pipeline, K through
12 schools all across America to invest in STEM education.
I have seen the greatest programs in kindergarten and
elementary school, how they kind of use little robotics and fun
things that kids don't even realize they are learning STEM, but
they are learning all of these great things of logic. So, thank
you for bringing that up and I was glad to have a bill pass to
do that.
I am going to move on to Dr. Johnson. As DOD, we are going
to focus on partnering with the private sector. We know that is
really important to increase our workforce preparedness. How
can the Department expand its outreach to encourage more of the
private sector in the advanced manufacturing process?
Dr. Johnson. I think that is a great question, Senator, and
I think focusing on hubs areas, geographies where the private
sector has the potential, where you can--you have the labor
force, you have the potential labor force, including with your
admirable STEM initiative.
Thinking about where housing can also be built, Senator
Rosen. I think too often there is great opportunities in places
where the communities don't want to build housing, so the
housing just becomes super expensive.
Then you have to pay a very high wage, or nobody is going
to move there. So, I think looking for those geographic
partnerships is something that has not previously been
sufficiently emphasized, Senator.
Senator Rosen. Well, this isn't for defense, but we are
becoming a new tech hub in Reno, and this is the kind of thing
that we are talking about happening in Nevada. But I am going
to move on to Dr. Lockwood quickly because I want to talk about
the impact of budget delays.
I know the impact of failure to pass a full year funding
deal, including for the DOD, it constrains are long term
strategic plans. It has negative impacts for all of our prime
contractors, for our subcontractors. They can't prepare and
plan, and when you can't plan, you can't have the workforce.
If you lose the talent workforce and they go somewhere else
for a job, they may not come back, and it takes a long time to
build a qualified welder for a submarine and all of those kinds
of things.
So, if we are going to build those resilient supply chains
for our defense industrial base, Congress must pass regular
appropriations in a timely manner. So, Dr. Lockwood, can you
talk to us about the impact of the Federal funding, the
uncertainty all across our defense industrial base, what that
really means for our safety and security across the world?
Dr. Lockwood. Absolutely. I do view uncertainty in the
timing of Federal budgets to have a very negative impact on our
total readiness posture.
In addition, I would say that further dampens interest in
Federal employment by creating the perception of turmoil or an
unnecessary politicization of these critical roles that we need
filled.
I will also add that particularly for young people who are
just entering their careers, extremely long delays in time to
hire often become untenable. They have loans looming. They need
to start work immediately.
They can't afford to wait 6, 12 months to be certain of
having a job. So, this is something that we can address. Thank
you.
Senator Rosen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Chairman Reed. Thank you very much, Senator Rosen. Senator
Sullivan, please.
Senator Sullivan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I appreciate
the witnesses today on a really, really important topic.
By the way, I agree 100 percent with Senator Kaine on his
Jobs Act. I think it is something--and Senator Tuberville, on
what we need to do, but I think it is a really good opportunity
and we should keep moving forward on that.
As you know, when we are looking at our strategic
competition, one of the things that the dictators in Beijing,
Xi Jinping and others, are really scared about is our submarine
force. It is an asymmetric advantage that is still very
significant, and they are terrified by it, which is why we
should be building a lot more submarines.
I met with the CNO [Chief Naval Officer] of the Navy
yesterday and just talked about how there is so much bipartisan
interest here in the Congress to increase our capacity to build
ships and subs. My staff have done some research for me.
We have the capacity. We have done it before. A lot of
people don't know, our country had a 2-year head start before
Pearl Harbor on increasing our ship capacity. So, in 1937, we
had 335 ships in our fleet.
By Pearl Harbor, December 7th, 1941, we had 790, okay. So,
we doubled the size of the fleet before we got into a war, and
it is a dangerous time right now. Very analogous to the 1930s,
in my view, and a lot of what happened was Congress acted. Four
laws in particular, the Vision Trammel Act, the Second Vision
Trammel Act, the Naval Expansion Act of 1940, and the Two Ocean
Navy Act of 1940.
I want to start with you, Dr. Lockwood. What are the big
ideas, big ideas--we have done this before, right. We don't
want to start building our industrial base out once the bullets
start flying. The time to do it is now, and we have done this
before. We have the capacity to do it as a nation before.
What are the big ideas that you think we need, particularly
as it relates to subs. The estimates are we need over 100,000
new trained workers. But I think the bipartisan nature of what
is needed--we would be open to anything, even a new shipyard.
What are the big ideas? I want to hear from you very briefly,
and then the others, if you can actually respond in a request
for the record.
Dr. Johnson, I have a quick question for you on what is
happening in Silicon Valley. But Dr. Lockwood, the biggest
thought pieces you can do here, quickly.
Dr. Lockwood. Thank you. Let me quickly say that the
submarine force is near and dear to my heart, as the wife of a
current serving commander of a fast attack boat for--deployed
in Guam, the USS Asheville.
Senator Sullivan. Well, Xi Jinping is scared to death of
what your husband has----
Dr. Lockwood. Indeed. I believe that to be a true fact,
sir.
Senator Sullivan. We need a lot more of them.
Dr. Lockwood. Yes. I do believe--the analysis I have seen
has indicated there is simply no way that this country can meet
its own needs and also support its AUKUS commitments without an
additional shipyard.
Senator Sullivan. So, you agree with the idea of an
additional shipyard?
Dr. Lockwood. I do.
Senator Sullivan. A public shipyard?
Dr. Lockwood. I think we need all available options, sir.
Senator Sullivan. Okay.
Dr. Lockwood. I would be open to performing additional
analysis to try and determine exactly what format would be most
effective. I will note that in WWII, tanks rolled off the floor
of the Ford plant, and they are damn proud of it, and they
should be.
Senator Sullivan. Good. Well, if you can get back to us
with more details on that idea and other big think ideas on
this. The way the Congress acted prior to WWII, very
impressive. Dr. Johnson, real quick, I agree with Senator
Tuberville that there is still very much patriotism in our
country that wants to help.
One of the ironic areas that I have kept a close eye on
over the last several years is the return of patriotism in
Silicon Valley. Ten years ago, they didn't have it, right. They
were much more interested working with the goddamn Chinese
communist than American military industrial capabilities.
That is changing. It is a great opportunity for us as a
country. It is a strategic advantage the Chinese and Russians
don't have. But the Pentagon's culture in rules don't allow us
to take advantage of it. You have heard this phrase, the valley
of death, right.
You have a--high tech companies got great capacity, can't
break into the Pentagon system, and then the company goes out
of business because it takes 5 years to get the Pentagon
interested.
What is your thoughts on what we can do to enhance the
ability of our industrial capacity to take advantage of this
new interest with some of our high tech companies who want to
help us, want to help America be strong, and not fund the
Chinese, like so many of them used to do, which was very
pathetic and un-American in my view.
Dr. Johnson. Yes, Senator. I think you are spot on with
that overall characterization. I think you need some carrots.
It could be prizes. It could be prestige. Things that pull
those tech companies toward the problems that you want them to
solve.
Because if you leave them to their own devices, we know
what they are going to do. It is more social media, or it is
more digital ads. I don't think that particularly helps
national defense at all.
So, I think defining--using DARPA [Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency] type approach and defining, this is
the problem to be solved, which could be a direct military
problem, or it could be health care related to the military. It
could be transitioning military personnel to civilian. It could
be education more broadly.
There is a lot of really important goals that matter a lot
to you on this Committee, and Silicon Valley pays zero, almost
zero attention to them. I will also, by the way, Senator, send
you some enhanced--some reinforced--reinforcement for your
talking points on the role of submarines in WWII, the role of
U.S. innovation on naval aircraft prior to WWII, which was
actually huge.
The fact that this country was producing roughly one
aircraft carrier per month at its peak in WWII because we were
able to move so much of our production when it was needed but
not prematurely. So, you are right about the base that was
built. Anyway, Senator, I will followup with you directly on
that.
Senator Sullivan. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Reed. Thank you, Senator Sullivan. Senator Warren,
please.
Senator Warren. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for
holding this hearing on workforce dynamics. You know, the
strong economic recovery under President Biden is a win for the
United States.
We have 14.8 million jobs created. Fastest growth in real
inflation adjusted wages of any recovery in more than half a
century. But there is still work to do. We need to invest in
our defense manufacturing workforce and make sure that we have
the workers that are needed to meet our national security
needs.
One tool that I would like us to talk about, for making
sure that the labor supply keeps up with the labor demand, is
providing the quality, affordable childcare that workers need
so they can actually go to work. You know, we do this to some
degree already, including with the DOD's excellent childcare
program.
But while we could invest a whole lot more for our military
and our civilian families, over half of Americans right now
live in childcare deserts. That means children outnumber the
childcare slots by three to one.
That means millions of families across the country that
need childcare and either can't find it, or if they can find
it, they can't afford it. Professor Johnson, you are an
economist at MIT, former Chief Economist at the IMF
[International Monetary Fund].
So, let's do some econ 101 and drill down on the root of
this problem. How does insufficient supply of childcare affect
labor supply, including the defense workforce?
Senator Warren. The lack of adequate childcare obviously
limits the ability of women to participate in the workforce. Of
course, many of those aircraft carriers and submarines that
were built in WWII were built by women.
Senator Warren. Yes. So not enough childcare means not
enough workers to power our economy in the defense industry and
basically everywhere else. But let's go down one more level on
this. Professor Johnson, help us understand the bottleneck in
childcare. If we want to increase the supply of childcare, what
is the key input that we need more of?
Dr. Johnson. You need more people willing to work in the
childcare, private sector.
Senator Warren. Okay, so we need more childcare workers to
help unlock this labor supply across the board. How can we do
that? Why don't we just pay childcare workers more money?
Dr. Johnson. Well, that is the best idea, and that is what
would work. But just emphasize, these childcare centers, for
the most part, operate on razor thin margins. So, there's not
much else to squeeze.
The money that's paid by parents goes to the childcare
workers. But the parents can't afford to pay the childcare
workers enough to pull people into that childcare work. So, the
market, I am afraid Senator Warren, is failing us here.
Senator Warren. Okay, so the market fails, but DOD has
stepped up. DOD child development centers capped fees at 7
percent of family income.
Then the Federal Government picks up the rest of the cost.
It is a worthwhile investment in military readiness. But DOD
has not updated its pay scale for childcare workers for 30
years now, and unsurprisingly, DOD is struggling to attract the
workers it needs. Meanwhile, Federal investments in civilian
childcare fell off a cliff last year when the pandemic funding
ended, and that exacerbated childcare shortages.
So, Professor Johnson, if the Federal Government stepped up
its investments in childcare, particularly to increase
childcare worker pay, what impact would that have on the
defense workforce?
Dr. Johnson. I think it would strengthen the defense
workforce. More women would be able to go to work. You would
also have more opportunity for women to build the skills that
we have all been talking about, emphasizing across all range of
skills earlier in their careers.
So instead of having to take some years out of the labor
force, they would continue to be engaged, and that is really
important for having supervisory talent, for example, when you
reach a certain age.
Senator Warren. I take it, Mr. Taylor, do you agree with
this?
Mr. Taylor. Not only do I agree, it is an issue that you
are increasingly seeing on the private sector side.
Corporations are underwriting it, and we don't have a 50 year
old lag in terms of compensation. So many, increasingly
organizations are building their own childcare facilities and
fully subsidizing them to draw talent in and to retain that
talent.
The other thing, though, Senator Warren that I think is
really important is increasingly we speak about, and we are
seeing this in all of our data, it is dependent care. So more
than just childcare.
Many of us find ourselves in the middle of this sandwich
generation, where you have to decide not to go take a job
because no one is there to provide for your elderly parents or
grandparents. So, we are seeing a big theme in all of our data
that says not only childcare, but broadly dependent care.
Senator Warren. So, I think this is terrific. You know, I
am all for building a strong defense manufacturing workforce,
the topic we are here today to discuss.
But let's treat it like the supply chain issue that it is,
and address root causes like underinvestment in childcare and
dependent care, and childcare workers.
I am glad to be working with Members of this Committee to
invest in the DOD's childcare program. I want to call out my
partner in this, Senator Scott. We are working on this in our
subcommittee, and we are going to keep fighting for affordable
childcare for our defense workforce and for all Americans.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Reed. Thank you, Senator Warren. Senator Scott,
please.
Senator Scott. I want to thank Senator Warren. We have had
a good subcommittee on Personnel, and we are we are having one
this afternoon. It is going to talk about injuries from, I
guess, more noise--yes, it is going to be--it will be
interesting because we have got to deal with this. So here is
what I don't understand.
Do you know how many full time jobs have been added in the
country in the last 9 months or last 3 months? Anybody know? We
have lost 1.5 million. We are adding part time jobs. So, you
are trying to figure out, why is this happening? I became
Governor at the end of a big downturn. I became Governor in
January 2011, and I went to a National Guard. They were coming
back from overseas, and they had 30 percent unemployment. Then
I ran my whole campaign on getting people jobs. I said, I would
get 700,000 jobs. So, I tried to figure out how to get that
done.
So, we just tried to figure out. I had to go recruit
companies every day to try to get them to come to Florida,
because people were moving out of Florida back in 2010 when I
got elected. So, we did a variety of things. First off, we--as
the Federal Government, we give a lot of money to our states
to--for workforce boards.
You know how many people and they were filling jobs for?
Nobody had any idea. There was no measurement. So, the first
thing is we required them to give us a daily report. It was
over--I think it was over $250 million a year that we were
spending of Federal money. That is number one.
Number two is we--I am a veteran, and I think it is
ridiculous that people come back from overseas and don't have a
job. I remember I was getting out of the--I didn't go to
Vietnam, but I served during Vietnam era, and when Vietnam
ended, it was impossible to get a job in this country.
All my friends here now couldn't find a job. So, we sort
of--we started getting monthly reports on that and it took
about a year. We did a variety of programs. We did a lot of
workforce meetings and things like that. It took about a year,
but actually our unemployment went--was lower for our veterans
than it was for nonveterans. It was way higher for veterans
when I started. I think it was almost 15 percent or something
like that when I started. Unemployment for the state was over
10.
Then what we started doing is we, when I became Governor,
all they wanted to do is say, oh, if you don't go to college,
you know, man, you know, you must not be very smart. You are
not going to have any opportunity, which is complete BS.
Most of my family didn't go to college. I am the exception
of my brothers and sisters, my nieces and nephews, and they are
never unemployed. They always have a job. The other thing we
did is we waved a whole bunch of things for our veterans. So,
there will be--here is my first questions.
So, we have all these rules for schools, and we have state
schools, we have not for profits, we have for profits--we have
all this stuff. Should there be different standards for
everybody? I mean, when you guys hire somebody, you say, man, I
think they ought to be a different standard for how they get
Federal money or Pell Grants or any of this stuff. Should there
be? Should it be treated differently just because of their--how
they are organized?
Does anybody have a view on that? Because I mean, I could
give you an example, if you are a university, you have no
obligation to help people get a job. I changed the formula in
Florida, and we became number one in higher education because I
said, I remember I am a kid that had no money, went to school
and did junior college that cost only $200 bucks a semester.
University was expensive at $255.
They said, we are going to give our universities money
based on three things, do you get a job? How much money you
make? What is the cost to get a degree? It is actually how
people got degrees and we kept tuition low. So, by the time I
left, we were number one in higher education.
Now, University of Florida, according to a lot of studies
like Wall Street Journal, is the number one public university
in the country because we paid for our result. So, what do you
guys think about having the same standards for--if we have
standards for proprietary schools that they have to help people
get a job or they don't get money. Same standards for all
schools.
Dr. Johnson. So, Senator, I work for an engineering school
that spends a lot of time trying to get its graduates jobs, and
I fully agree that is a very important emphasis. I also point
to Orlando. It is, to emphasize, I believe it is one of the
leading examples of public private partnerships generating
skills related to defense industrial base, and also generating
huge amount of jobs.
Do I think that one size--we should have one size fits all
for even higher education, even the university sector? I think
some diversity and competition is good. I think at MIT does
very well in that competition. I think encouraging others to do
exactly what you are saying is a good idea. Would I require it?
I think in this country, such requirements are hard to make
work and often get a backlash.
But I think where you are pushing, Senator, that education
of all kinds should be linked to finding jobs, and keeping
people in jobs, and measuring outcomes and making that data
available to everyone, I think that is tremendously important,
Senator.
Senator Scott. Can I ask one question real quick? So, the
other thing I did was if you came down, if you were Harris, and
you were going to expand or let's say Northrop Grumman, they
said they are going to add--they were removing the stealth
bomber, so I tried to get them to do more of in Florida.
So, they said we are going to need x number of jobs. So, we
guaranteed--I guaranteed, because I paid for it as state
budget, I said, we are going to graduate these peoples with
these degrees. Some of them were university, some more
technical schools and stuff like that. So, do you think that
that is what we ought to be doing with our education dollars?
Dr. Johnson. I think workforce planning, Senator, of
exactly the kind you are talking about is very good. I think we
you need to be careful about over subsidizing the private
sector with things they would otherwise have done.
But if it is a net increase to the defense industrial base
and on a Federal, State partnership basis, I absolutely agree
that making sure people have the skills and are incentivized to
stay in Florida, which is also what obviously happened, I think
that is really important for the development of the defense
industrial base.
Senator Scott. Thanks.
Chairman Reed. Thank you, Senator Scott. Senator Hirono,
please.
Senator Hirono. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We know that there
is a workforce shortage in just about every business, every
industry, from restaurants to the defense industry--this is for
Mr. Taylor.
The DOD has established the Defense Civilian Training Corps
(DCTC) to attract top talent into the defense ecosystem and
specifically relating to acquisitions. So how is this Training
Corp doing in terms of attracting the kind of people that the
defense industry needs?
Mr. Taylor. Thank you for the question. I think Dr.
Lockwood would be more familiar with that particular DCTC
program.
Dr. Lockwood. Thank you. I will note that there are
actually currently several STEM employment, workforce
coordination programs going on in the Department of Defense,
and certainly that one is among them.
I believe that these programs would be far more effective
if there was a greater degree of coordination among them. For
example, sharing of hiring objectives and even of candidates.
Likewise, to the other Senator's point earlier, providing
metrics for such programs would be very important.
Senator Hirono. Well, why isn't there coordination? Why
aren't there metrics to measure the effectiveness of these
programs? Whose responsibility is it to ensure those aspects
are addressed?
Dr. Lockwood. Thank you for the question. As to the
particular statutory authority, I will take that for the
record. I will note that a mandate to coordinate among
programs, to share best practices, to ensure that these
programs are appropriately targeted to market and are
adequately innovating would be very effective, and I believe
that is something that the Congress, and the Senate in
particular, can draw greater attention to.
Senator Hirono. Okay. You can help us, my staff to better
focus on some of those kinds of changes that we need to change.
Mr. Taylor, I was particularly gratified that you mentioned
that if we want people to have STEM experiences in education,
that it is really something that we should look at from pre-K
to 12, and that, we also should pay attention to diversity. So,
yes, Senator Rosen has a bill that would encourage, I think,
more emphasis on these kinds of programs.
I have a bill that would focus on women and minorities in
STEM education. What ideas do you have that would focus us on
the need for paying attention to K-12 and onward if we want
more people to--being STEM educated?
Mr. Taylor. Thank you for that question. I had the good
fortune of once running what was called the Thurgood Marshall
College Fund, which represents the country's publicly supported
historically black colleges and universities, 47 of them. In
fact, Mr. Gates here was my colleague.
We specifically created a program where we went into three
markets that were largely populated with historically
underrepresented people. We took kids who were between the ages
of, and I want to get the numbers right, 9 and 13, with a
specific focus on taking those kids in afterschool programs
that were STEM oriented to expose those children and their
families to STEM careers, but more importantly, the importance
of taking certain types of curriculum early on so that by the
time--if you wanted to go to college to be an engineer, there
are things you needed to do in high school, courses you had to
take, et cetera.
So, we mapped them. We gave them--oftentimes their families
did not have--they didn't have parents who were college
graduates, or if they were college graduates, they weren't STEM
college graduates.
We literally took those kids, and we followed them through
10th grade, preparing them up to and including taking the SAT,
ACT, et cetera. So those sorts of programs helped us yield a
significantly higher number of future STEM workers from those
communities than we would have without them.
Senator Hirono. So, you are saying that we have to be very
intentional about how we are going about it, and that you have
some longitudinal data that shows that when you are this focus,
that you will have people going into the STEM areas. Because,
for example, women and minority people drop out of the STEM
pipeline at every step of the way because especially for women,
for example, there are not very many models for women in STEM.
In terms of workforce training, we are building a drydock
at Pearl Harbor Shipyard. It is the biggest infrastructure
project that the DOD is engaged in. It is $3.5 billion. I hope
that it will come in at that price.
But they had a hard time finding workers for this project.
Some 2,000 plus workers will be needed to build this drydock
over the next 2 years or so, and in the meantime, we have an
apprenticeship program for Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard, one of
four public shipyards that we have.
They had 2,500 applicants for 152 positions. So obviously,
there are a lot of people who want to get this kind of training
so they can be in the pipeline to work in our shipyards, but we
are not creating enough spaces for them. Do any of you have any
ideas of what we can do to accommodate these young people who
want to be trained in our workforce? Anyone?
Dr. Lockwood. Yes. It has already been mentioned by a few
of my colleagues here, but school to work training pipelines
and close public, private partnerships with educational
institutions are very effective at establishing firm pipelines
for workers.
We have demonstrated this many times in the private sector,
particularly in the auto industry, in some of the states
represented here, reinforcing the training at community
colleges and trade schools, and linking those skilled
professions directly into where the jobs are needed.
Dr. Johnson. Senator, apprenticeships powered by AI, I
think that is where the future is, and that is what the private
sector is not going to do enough, without your prompting.
Senator Hirono. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Reed. Thank you very much, Senate Hirono. Senator
Mullin, please.
Senator Mullin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for
the witnesses who are here. I just find it, the irony of us
talking about what we need to do to get a workforce going and,
you know, from a guy that is owned multiple trade companies--I
mean, we incentivize in Congress.
We incentivize people to stay home. They can work the
system. I mean, here we are legalizing drugs, marijuana for
medical purposes, and we are incentivizing kids to get a
medical card to smoke marijuana in high school at 18 years old,
and they can't pass a drug test to get hired by DOD to begin
with. I mean, we do it to ourselves here in Congress. If we
want to really get our workforce going, then we need to
incentivize people to work, not have an excuse to stay home.
If we have a program that gives people a helping hand, we
won't give them a helping hand to push them into the workforce
either. Like get a helping hand, stay on a platform, and then
you disincentivize them to build a step up. I have had hundreds
of employees that refused a raise over the years that I have
been self-employed because they can't afford to take the raise,
because if they take this raise to $18 an hour, they lose these
benefits.
If you can't take a raise $18 an hour and do that job, you
are never going to get the job that can do $30 an hour because
the ladder stops at that point. It is our fault, and so, if we
in Congress want to get serious about the workforce, then we
need to figure out how we incentivize people to get into the
workforce.
That means we need to push them into the workforce, not
allow them to become dependents of the State. That is exactly
what we have. We have three generations now of people that are
dependent on the State. But that is me ranting. I will stop and
I will move on to ask you my questions.
Dr. Lockwood, I would like to start with you. As the
largest maintenance repair and overhaul facility in the world,
which is at Tinker Air Force Base, we have a huge number of
civilian employees, around 16,000.
Most of these employees are wage grade maintainers and many
have decades of experience. We have received reports from--or
reports that the DLA, which is the Defense Logistics Agency, is
increasingly relying on contractors to do these kinds of jobs
at other sites. Are you familiar with this?
Dr. Lockwood. Yes.
Senator Mullin. Okay. With a followup question on that,
then, when using contractors instead of Government employees,
what are the vetting requirements for bringing them in on our
bases?
Dr. Lockwood. It is my understanding that like other
workers on military facilities, that they must pass a
background investigation.
Senator Mullin. Or are we concerned about moving that
direction with contractors instead of having actual--our own
contractors or our own employees working for the Department of
Defense in a civilian capacity, relying more on that?
Dr. Lockwood. I will note that the use of contractors in
general is very costly to the Department. In many cases, the
Department is paying a heavy premium rate for the use of
contractors.
So, rather than necessarily take the expedient route of
simply contracting out for that additional labor support, I
would encourage instead the Department to correctly align
incentives for the management of its own civilian personnel.
Senator Mullin. Because we are paying a much higher price
to have outside contractors, and so, if we can pay that wage
for outside contractors. What is it that is keeping our
Government, us, from upping the wages of individuals?
Because we have--we are literally losing employee
contractors at Tinker because they are getting picked off by
outside industries. Just give them a $10,000 sign on bonus, and
then we are turning back around and hiring them as contractors
to come back in and work on the base for an exuberant amount
more.
Dr. Lockwood. You are absolutely correct.
Senator Mullin. So, what do we need to do to change that
here in Congress?
Dr. Lockwood. Right. I will note that currently the
Department of Defense does not have the salary flexibilities
that it needs in order to pay workers a going wage.
It is bound to the Federal wage schedule, which has been
superseded several times by statute, creating great distortions
in that wage that is actually offered to workers on the ground.
Furthermore, the structures that surround civilian hiring are
cumbersome, and it is very difficult for civilian employees of
the Department, civilian managers to actually manage that
workforce effectively.
Dealing with contractors is far simpler. If you need to
dismiss someone for underperformance, you can do that
immediately. You don't need to justify it. You don't need to go
through a year's worth of write ups and large paper trail, and
your job will not be in any way threatened by spurious
complaints to the Inspector General.
So, as a result of this, the use of contractors is very
expedient, but incredibly costly to the taxpayer.
Senator Mullin. But--I agree with that. We also need to
talk about direct hiring, which we have done this in McAllister
Ammunition Plant, which Mr. Taylor, I was going to ask you
about that because onboarding also takes forever to bring them
on.
People aren't going to wait 6 months for a job to on board
on going through the process, so direct hiring is important.
But going back to this, and I will wrap it up real quick, Mr.
Chairman, if we are--we are not saving us a dollar by keeping
our wages down, it is costing us because we are all we are
doing is gaming a system by going out and hiring contractors
who come in and do the same job because it is faster, but
actually it is because we need the workforce.
So, we, here in Congress, really need to start looking at
the wages that we are paying and get on a scale to what it is
today. I mean, look at how much wages have increased in the
last 4 years.
I mean, it is astronomically, right? We haven't actually
adjusted our pay wage at a serious look to keep up with
inflation, especially with inflation being at 17 percent. We
haven't actually adjust that in over 2 decades almost. Is that
correct?
Dr. Lockwood. That is absolutely correct. The Federal wage
system is an antiquated relic of the 1970s, where we set wages
in specific bends, binding occupations together that no longer
bear any relation to one another.
Furthermore, we apply this antiquated methodology to an
unrepresentative set of data that is currently collected by the
Department of Defense. Completely redundant, in my personal
opinion, to that already collected by the Bureau of Labor
Statistics, which conducts a much larger and comprehensive
survey of all American professions.
Senator Mullin. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and
sorry about going over time.
Chairman Reed. Thank you very much, Senator Mullin. Senator
Shaheen, please.
Senator Shaheen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to
each of our witnesses for being here today. I think most of us
would agree that the Federal wage system is broken. It gets
hung up on political ideology differences and trying to fix it,
and that is the problem.
But I don't know, I think maybe it was you, Mr. Taylor, who
said that we have, my recollection was 9 million job openings,
but only 6.5 million workers was--isn't one of the challenges
that we are facing, the demographics of this country?
That we are not producing--because of our birthright, we
don't have the number of people that we need to fill the jobs
that are being created?
Mr. Taylor. Undoubtedly, and I mentioned that, that we have
a birthrate problem. We have had so for the last 2 decades.
What comes as a surprise to people is you are talking about a
post-COVID impact.
During 2020 and 2021, the birth rate dropped 4 percent. We
saw a significant--so it was already on its way down and then
it dropped, and for good reason. No one wanted to go to a
hospital during that period of time.
Senator Shaheen. On top of that, we have had the most
restrictive immigration, legal immigration rates, in my
lifetime in the last 6 years or so. So, that also exacerbates
the problem. If we can fix our broken immigration system, we
would do much better in terms of having the workforce that we
need.
But can you--one of the things, and I understand Senator
Warren talked about how we were able to out produce our
adversaries during WWII, and one of the ways was by getting
women into the workforce. How can the defense industrial base
better leverage women's participation? I don't know who might
like to answer that.
Dr. Johnson. Well, the discussion with Senator Warren,
which I think is exactly on this target, Senator Shaheen, was
about childcare, and women not being able to participate in the
workforce. Both keeping the numbers down, but also meaning that
at an important developmental part of their career, they are
not in the workforce and not acquiring the skills, and
therefore they can't move up later, including to supervisory
positions.
So, you are missing people in a static sense, but also in a
dynamic sense.
Senator Shaheen. Childcare is clearly an issue. It is
something that I appreciate having had three children and
having a challenge with childcare for the 30 years that they
were at home.
But I think we have got a bigger problem in that, as I have
visited schools, that young girls are not as engaged in the
STEM subjects as young boys are. So, for robotics competitions,
for example, girls are much--less likely to participate than
young boys. Are there ways that we can encourage girls to think
about those subjects that we are not already doing? Dr.
Lockwood.
Dr. Lockwood. Thank you for the question. I have a young
daughter at home, and she told me when she was 3 that when she
grows up, she wants to be a doctor and a mommy and a scientist,
and I want that to be possible for her, so I determined I
certainly was not going to quit.
To double down on the childcare issue, I do believe this is
a critical thing, but to your point, it is really important
that the child can envision herself doing the job. Children are
not going to study.
They are not going to invest in things that they think are
for other people. So, the broader we can make opportunities to
engage in after school activities, to put the robot--to put the
drone remote in the hands of all the children is a good thing.
I will also note that among the developed economies, the
United States has among the shortest school day. This creates
an incredible burden for all working families. There are in
many areas good before and after school----
Senator Shaheen. Yes, you don't have to explain that to me.
Dr. Lockwood. Okay.
[Laughter.]
Senator Shaheen. I understand that.
Dr. Lockwood. So, yes.
Senator Shaheen. To follow on Senator Hirono's question
about the submarine industrial base, excuse me, over the next
10 years, the submarine industrial base is going to need to
hire nearly 100,000 trained workers at both primary
construction yards and 17,000 people at vendors to support the
supply chain.
You talked a little bit about ways that we could encourage
apprenticeships and other ways we could encourage workers to
join in the submarine industry. Are there ways that suppliers
can also improve the labor environment for skilled workers?
Dr. Johnson. Well, I think it is going to take all of them.
That is really interesting. This is about a human capital
strategy.
We can decide that we are going to opening a number of
shipyards or whatever we do, but ultimately, your point, well-
crafted H.R. strategy, where you say we need 100,000 people at
this period of time means we will get some percentage of people
from this sector, the supplier community, the Government, et
cetera.
This requires a comprehensive strategic overview and plan.
What we have seen is there are no shortage of programs within
the Federal Government, but they are not orchestrated, and they
are not specifically identified, time limited, budget limited,
et cetera, to get the results.
In the private sector, if I said I was going to need
100,000 employees, as has often been in the companies where I
have been, fortune 500 companies, CHRO, you are told 5 years
from now we are going to need this many of these types of
employees in these geographic locales, and we build a strategy
around it.
That is HR at its best and it can be done, but very
intentionally.
Senator Shaheen. The Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, which is
one of those four public shipyards which shares the border
between New Hampshire and Maine, has taken an approach that
integrates its workforce into decisionmaking, and that has
really kept the workers there. It is really focused on working
with management on good labor practices. So, I would agree,
that is a great way to better keep people in the workforce.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Reed. Thank you, Senator Shahee. Senator Budd,
please.
Senator Budd. Thank you, Chairman. I thank the witnesses
for being here today. As Senator Kaine mentioned a few moments
ago, expanding the Pell Grant for short term skills based
education, it is one of the quickest in the best ways to combat
these labor shortages that we are talking about today and the
ones we have seen around the country.
I think that my proposal, the Pell Act, which the House is
actually taking up this week, is one of the best ways to
approach expanding this program. So, my bill allows a variety
of educational institutions to participate in the grant program
with guardrails that empower institutions to produce high
demand workers for high paying jobs. That is exactly what we
need to buildup our defense industrial base.
Dr. Lockwood, the need for a strong pipeline, switching
gears here to cyber--cyber workers. That need has grown
exponentially, given the current threat environment that we are
in. So, a two part question, what can the DOD learn from the
private sector on recruiting and also retaining cyber talent,
and simultaneously, how can the DOD better compete against the
private sector for that talent pool?
Dr. Lockwood. Thank you for the question. I think one of
the key lessons of the private sector is that a 4-year degree
is not necessary. We need to enable our young people to become
productive workers as soon as possible.
Dr. Johnson has earlier mentioned AI enabled training. I
will just offer that DOD already has experience with AI enabled
training, and particularly in the IT field, where the Navy some
years ago piloted a program to train its shipboard computer
technicians using an AI assisted digital tutor.
This was an incredibly effective training methodology and
quickly was brought to bear to skill up, in this case, an
enlisted force, individuals entering without a college
education, and quickly make them wildly productive.
Not only were they very quickly trained, but the quality of
their training was significantly superior to those who had gone
through the traditional schooling. Sir, I am sorry, could you
remind me of your second question?
Senator Budd. How can the DOD better compete against the
private sector for that talent pool? Because they are going to
be using some of these same things that you are mentioning. So
how can we differentiate DOD?
Dr. Lockwood. Yes. Thank you. I think one thing that the
Department can offer that the private sector cannot is purpose
that is driven by something other than a profit motivation. To
some extent, the Department will not always be able to compete
on wages. It can compete on purpose.
I would encourage you to develop a revolving door mindset
to make it easy for workers to flow in and out of public
service and private employment. Right now, it is more of a one
way exit than a revolving door, so making it easy to recapture
that talent, to give reentering either servicemembers or
civilian workers time to recover their career track within the
DOD apparatus would be, I believe, very effective. Thank you.
Senator Budd. Thank you. So, you know, every high school or
college here with a STEM major, they are aware of all these
opportunities with Google, Amazon, and other big tech firms.
Do you think the Pentagon can improve its advertising or
public education on severe--excuse me, on civilian career
opportunities, and what recommendations, if any, would you have
that would allow us to further increase the visibility of DOD
opportunities?
Dr. Lockwood. Thank you for the question. During the time
of COVID, DOD and even its industrial partners' footprint in
public schools was significantly curtailed and it has not
recovered. I think face time is very important with our young
people and the public schools provide an important avenue for
that.
Senator Budd. Critical to the defense industrial base and
the DOD civilian workforce is not only hiring talent, but
retaining talent, as you know. Are you aware of any barriers in
OPM's [Office of Personnel Management] promotion process which
could inhibit retention within the DOD civilian workforce? Dr.
Lockwood.
Dr. Lockwood. Yes. Thank you for the question. I will note
that the OPM process for nearly all personnel actions is quite
bureaucratic, and it takes very long time. In many cases also
the position descriptions are outdated and perhaps not well
honed for the actual work that needs to be done. This would
inhibit timely promotion and advancement if candidates are
being screened by OPM against outmoded job descriptions.
Senator Budd. One of the things of my colleagues have
mentioned is the shipbuilding challenges, undersea submarine
building challenges coming up.
You know, as the Navy works to expand the size of its
fleet, so what incentives are particular to that would you
suggest for the Department of Defense and the manufacturing
workforce in this particular area related to shipbuilding and
undersea capabilities? Any of you.
Dr. Lockwood. We need to draw more workers into this field.
So, in terms of incentive programs, I think we need to fix the
broken Federal wage grade system and, compensate for these high
demand skills.
There needs to be a very visible public campaign to
advertise these availabilities and to really put ourselves out
there and say this is critical for the national defense, and
let's all get after it.
Senator Budd. Thank you.
Mr. Taylor. Senator Budd, just very quickly to that point,
we actually went to the civilian workforce and asked the
question. This is broadly. Only 46 percent of working American,
civilians have even considered the Department of Defense as
employer.
When we asked them specifically why, the primary reason
that was cited was a lack of knowledge about the DOD's culture
and their employer brand. So, in addition to raising salaries
and providing all sorts of benefits and talking about it, we
need to sell that this is an actual opportunity. People just
don't think of doing it. They think about, go to the military
or not.
Senator Budd. Very helpful. Thank you all.
Chairman Reed. Thank you, Senator Budd. Senator Kelly,
please.
Senator Kelly. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to
our witnesses for being here today. Dr. Johnson, I appreciated
the focus of your testimony on the CHIPS and Science Act, which
I helped negotiate, and I particularly appreciated your focus
on the science and economic development investment in the
science portion of that bill.
As you noted, while we were able to provide advanced
appropriations for the Critical CHIPS Act programs, there are
many other new programs created that are going to rely on an
annual appropriations.
Now, I come from 15 years at the space program where we see
this firsthand, but Dr. Johnson, can you expand upon your
testimony and explain how investments in basic science and
innovation can yield economic growth, even if we can't always
foresee exactly how those investments will pay off?
Dr. Johnson. Yes, Senator. So, as you know, this was a big
revelation to us actually from the 1940s. It came out of the
war effort accelerated by Sputnik and then the creation of the
space program.
What we have come to understand, and now there is a lot of
data on this, which is summarized in my testimony. We have a
whole book on this topic. Is that when you put money into basic
science, you generate a whole range of ideas, many of which you
don't expect to see.
Then you if you have a process of channeling that into
specific applications--the space program would be one public
purpose program, but there is many other commercialization,
including everything that is brought through digital computers
and the internet, for example, and mobile telephone
communications.
That machinery that we have in the United States is
actually pretty strong, the private sector piece. But the
private sector does not invest enough in basic science because
it is all about the spillover effects. It is all about all
those unexpected effects. It is all about being able to
suddenly invent a vaccine because you have got a new disease
you would never heard of before, but you have that capability
and so on.
The Federal commitment to science is fundamental to our
economic prosperity but also, Mr. Chairman, to our national
security because this is what we have been very good at, this
is what has propelled us forward in many ways, and this is what
China has learned from us and what they are doubling down on
now. So, we have to invest more just to stay up with them. I
think we can do even better than that.
Senator Kelly. Is it true--I was always of the
understanding that the private sector is not going to invest in
something that has a return on investment that goes beyond 5
years. I don't know if that number is the number you go by, and
that is why it is up to the Federal Government to be making
these basic science investments because private sector just
can't do it if they are not going to see a return on the money.
Dr. Johnson. It can be about time horizon. I think much
more, it is about spill--spillover effect. So, the Human Genome
Project, for example, shopped around some private venture
capitalists in the 1980s. They turned it down because they
said, look, great project. You are going to create a lot of
knowledge, but we won't be able to capture the value of that
in--ourselves. It will be general knowledge.
So, the Human Genome Project was funded, as you know, by
the Federal Government. Massive success. 300,000 jobs created,
tremendously strong industry. A big part of our economy, and
produces drugs, therapies, and vaccines that are essential to
everybody in this country. But it needed that public impetus.
This, of course, is what the National Institutes of Health
does really well. But we need more of that. We need more of
that across more sectors.
Senator Kelly. Well, as somebody who is always trying to
sell our space program, I would--you know, stress it, it wasn't
about like a product like Velcro, it was about creating
industries, industries that no longer existed. I mean, our
aerospace industry here in the United States has become a big
part of our economy. That didn't exist before the 1960s really.
So, from a national security perspective, what
opportunities--I want to connect us to the CHIPS and Science
Act. So, what opportunities are we missing by not fully funding
the CHIPS and Science Act? Because this could be really a long
overdue and historic investment in American research and
innovation.
Dr. Johnson. Oh, it is a breakthrough piece of legislation,
absolutely, Senator. That taps into what was done previously in
the 1940s and with the space program but it goes much further.
It is a little bit painful that the appropriation is not
followed through.
So, the Congress recognized the opportunity and I think
agreed on a very broad bipartisan basis. But you have got to
put some money into it. Then, Senator, I think the question
becomes, what next?
What are the next sectors where we want the breakthroughs?
What is the next equivalent of satellites, next equivalent of
the internet, next equipment of mobile communications? There is
a lot of opportunities in biomanufacturing. There is a lot of
opportunities in other parts of semiconductors.
There is opportunities in critical minerals, for example.
There is a long list and I think Congress needs to engage with
that. I think you should be thinking about CHIPS and Science
Act 2.0, after, of course, you fund the first version.
Senator Kelly. Yes. I had other, you know, some questions
that led to STEM education. But I look at basic science and
STEM education as being sort of like kind of in the same
bucket. You know, this is like the seed corn for--you know, it
is the catalyst for what grows the economy, both education and
investment in science. So, thank you.
Dr. Johnson. The National Defense Education Act of 1958 and
NASA, the two big reactions to Sputnik, they were both
brilliant moves by Congress, Senator. So, I am sure we can do
it again.
Senator Kelly. Well, thank you, and, Mr. Chairman, I have a
couple of questions for the record.
Chairman Reed. We will accept those, Senator. Thank you
very much.
Senator Kelly. Thank you.
Chairman Reed. Senator Schmitt, please.
Senator Schmitt. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Johnson, I
wanted to kind of explore your idea of these tech hubs. I am
from St. Louis area, and St. Louis has been identified, and
there is a lot of assets there.
So, you have got NGA, you have got the Taylor Institute
there. There is a lot of alignment that can be a draw. One of
the challenges, I think, as we talk about workforce is there is
a bit of a--there is a misalignment in higher education, right?
You have got a lot of 4 years that chase degrees for
enrollment. You have got community colleges trying to figure
out where they fit in. The you have got these apprenticeship
programs that, as you mentioned in your opening comments, maybe
sometimes are limited to what that particular company might
need. So, with that is sort of the backdrop, how does this
actually work?
Because am intrigued by this and I think it is an
encouraging idea. We do need to have, I think, an industrial
base that is more widely dispersed. We have talked about the
dangers in our supply chain.
Let's just take St. Louis as an example. It could be
anywhere. It could be in Rhode Island or somewhere else. How
does this actually work? How do we get into, you know, 5 to 10
years in a place where somebody who wants to work on nuclear
submarines, so not necessarily just the engineer that has got
the 4-year degree--how does this work--how does alignment work
in a tech hub?
Dr. Johnson. St. Louis is a fascinating example, Senator,
in part because you were one of the country's leading tech
hubs, 100, 120 years ago, right. One very unfortunate thing
that happened, and I don't have any particular person to blame
on this, is that as innovation moved East and West Coast, you
got less innovation, less corporate headquarters in St. Louis,
but not for any particular good reason, right.
I mean, people have got strange reasons like the way where
airline routes went and so on, but it is not--you have got a
lot of talent. The talent can't move, doesn't want to move,
shouldn't need to move.
I think tying it to--with the mindset of Senator Kelly, if
we have, if Congress has and if the relevant agencies have
priority sectors to pursue and places that are available,
including with State and local support, which would be making
sure the workforce develops, Senator Scott made very good
points about that--also available housing, I would say,
Senator.
So, you are not adding 10,000 workers, but they have no way
to live. So, the price of housing goes up and that means you
have got to pay a higher wage, or they just won't come. So, I
think that looking for that combination, and I think St. Louis
scores very highly in our metrics, because it seems to us that
you have exactly that kind of combination of circumstances. But
we found 102 places in 36 states that have potential.
Honestly, a country this size, with science being so
important to our economy and to our national defense, we should
be running a massive portfolio of these deep science
investments. Looking for ways to commercialize them, getting
those public, private partnerships with State and local
support.
But the Federal Government is the catalyst. Without the
Federal Government, you are not going to be able to move the
needle. We have done it before, and you agreed to do it again
in the CHIPS and Science Act.
Senator Schmitt. So that is--from your answer there, it
seems like that is the research investment side. But on the
workforce because I am genuinely curious.
So, let's say I am a 17 year old in high school, and I want
to pursue this path where, you know, like there is some
immediate opportunities. What does that look like, or what
should it look like for that individual to try to navigate to
get to a place where we want to be, within that tech hub?
Dr. Johnson. So, Senator Scott talked about workforce
planning at the state level. I think that is better on a State
and local than at the Federal level, where he was matching up
incoming investment or defense contractors to say, we are going
to need this kind of jobs over this many years.
He was a match up with people coming out of the high
schools, I think in particular high schools, in the technical
colleges. I think that is exactly the right thing to do,
Senator. I think that apprenticeships are undervalued by the
private sector because you lose the--if you train the
apprentice, the apprentice leaves, so the private companies
don't want to do it.
But from a public policy point of view and from a St. Louis
point of view, more people who have completed apprenticeships
is good for the local economy. Particularly if they don't want
to move or are not inclined to move to the East and West Coast.
Then you have got this very strong, trained labor force,
including with the middle skills that we have all been
emphasizing, agreeing on.
I think this is a completely bipartisan consensus across
the country as I--when I talk to people. It is not politicized
at all. Everybody wants something in this direction. The
Federal Government, though, is the critical catalyst.
Then deciding which sectors and lining it up with the
defense industrial base, that is a brilliant piece to add.
Because if we know that submarines are important or if we know
that aircraft are kind of important then--and you know there is
going to be a 20 year commitment to that from a national
security point of view. Then you can plan a lot more activities
around that, including the location for those innovations.
Senator Schmitt. If you guys have anything to add to----
Mr. Taylor. Yes, Senator. The reality is, if I am going to
use the example of that 17 year old, first of all, he or she
needs to know what the opportunities are. So, I am sitting out
in Florida, St. Louis, or wherever I am, and I just don't even
know what the possibilities are by virtue of my background.
Then we have got to specifically articulate a pathway that
may not and oftentimes doesn't require a 4-year college degree.
It could be that young man, if you do this for 6 months, this
could prepare you for an apprenticeship that could get you this
job, et cetera.
So, we literally--the biggest problem that we are hearing
from young people is they understand what the Government says
it needs or what our country says it needs, they just don't
know the pathway to get there.
So, educating old school guidance counselors. Like right,
everyone is not going to college and maybe go into the
workforce. This is how you prepare yourselves for that. Those
are the two most important things as we are hearing from
younger, potential workers.
We talk to high school students a lot and they are like,
listen, I know what I think I want to do. That sounds
interesting, and if you can pay me $35 bucks an hour, 20 years
old, why not, without debt from college, et cetera. I just
don't know how that works. So, articulating to the future
workforce how it all works will go a long way toward solving
for these talent challenges.
Dr. Lockwood. Bring back shop class. Let them work with
their hands. Let them build things. Let them tinker. Let them
print things with the 3D printer. Let them be creative. They
can see then, that there is a path for me to do these mid skill
jobs, that there is dignity in that, that the country needs
that. It is valued, and in that shop class you can make the
pitch.
Senator Schmitt. Bring back civics and shop class. Let's do
it. All right, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Reed. Thank you, Senator Schmitt. Senator
Blumenthal, please.
Senator Blumenthal. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Shop class is
good. I don't know about in the era of AI, artificial
intelligence, how many shop class enlistees there will be, but
maybe the nature of shop class should be changed. I want to
engage in kind of a thought experiment. I am the CEO of
Electric Boat.
As you know, Electric Boat in Connecticut makes the most
capable and reliable submarines in the world. If you look at
employment patterns at Electric Boat, they have mountains and
troughs. The reason they have mountains and troughs is that the
Pentagon often changes procurement requirements.
We want two submarines a year, no Virginia-class. We want
one sub, maybe one plus the Columbia-class, plus--you know, if
you are a manufacturer, pretty hard to engage in recruiting,
hiring, training that involves investment when those
procurement commitments are changing. Just to mention the
elephant in the room, right now we have no budget for this
fiscal year.
So, the Pentagon is kind of scratching its head and saying,
okay, we think we know what the budget is going to be. Chairman
Reed has done extraordinarily skilled and excellent work in
passing the National Defense Authorization Act, which provides
a basic contour for what procurement should be, but the money
has to be approved.
To what extent does this indecision by the Congress and by
the Pentagon, indecision and reversal of decisions affect the
ability to recruit, train, and hire a workforce like Electric
Boat?
Dr. Lockwood. The workers will go somewhere else. They are
not going to sit around and wait for us to get our act
together. They have families to feed. So, unless we can really
maintain the continuity of that production pipeline, which I
agree we desperately need, we will struggle to retain.
Mr. Taylor. The prospect of that, even the prospect of
potentially not knowing, so the idea of not knowing--employers,
employees or voting with their feet. So even if you have the
employee, they are currently working in these industries, this
level of indecision gives them an anxiety that will often lead
them to come to the private sector because they are like, at
least to there, I kind of know what I know.
Dr. Johnson. Senator, I completely agree with where you are
going and what my colleagues just said, but I would also remind
everyone that the V12 Merlin engine that powered the Spitfire
and the Hurricane in WWII and was decisive for keeping Germany
out of Britain, started to develop in 1929 before there was any
public procurement guidelines for that engine. There was a
private sector innovation, Senator.
What you really need in this country is not just better
organized procurement exactly as you are wanting. You need
people who are pushing on the innovative frontier for the new
stuff the Pentagon is not--doesn't even though they want yet,
right. How do we incentivize that?
How do we encourage that? How do we build the skills? I
think the shop class has never been more important, Senator,
because I think losing those manual skills, losing our thinking
with our hands is a huge disadvantage when we think about the
world. Because the engineers who built the Merlin, who built
the Spitfire, who built the American effort in WWII were very
hands on people, once they understood how to bend metal.
That is the key to a lot of these innovations that we are
talking about.
Senator Blumenthal. You know, I think what you are saying
about shop class, which is not just what happens in the
classroom, but the manual skills and the instinctive approach
to how to put things together and make them work, that is what
Electric Boat is trying to hire, the welders, the electricians,
the pipefitters.
People who are skilled at the trades. Not only in shop
class, but frankly, in high school. I think we need to do a
better job of selling people, future workers, on the idea, you
know, you can have not just a job, but a career, a real career.
Making a lot more money than let's say my four children. They
were all educated in liberal arts institutions. Three of them
are lawyers like me.
But there are a lot more lawyers per person maybe than
there need to be. We need more of the folks who can do the work
at Electric Boat, with the careers that really provide not just
financial gratification, but real dignity, the dignity of work.
You are nodding, so I assume you agree.
Dr. Johnson. Dr. Lockwood said it already--sorry, Dr.
Lockwood said. I totally agree. Dignity and status and purpose,
but you have got to also pay people good money, right? Because
people have to live, and that is a question of how much you pay
them relative to what it cost to live in the areas that you are
trying to develop.
But if you get that right, which we have done in this
country before, Senator Blumenthal, and you have got very
strong, obviously, places in Rhode Island and in Connecticut
that also get this right, then we can do incredible things.
Mr. Taylor. Senator, there is----
Senator Blumenthal. Go ahead. Mr. Taylor.
Mr. Taylor. Yes. I would just submit to you that we
oftentimes talk about and believe that our talent pool must
come from the K through 12 system. We increasingly have that
middle group, that middle 45 to 55 year old who is now
displaced, wants to work. You want to talk about dignity of
work, and so many of our training programs disproportionately
focus on young people.
That is good, but we are ignoring that there is a
significant swath of the population that is available, wants
that dignity of work, needs to do it, and we don't provide
reskilling and upskilling programs from the Government,
frankly, to them.
We will give you a Pell Grant all day for the kid, but what
happens to that 45 year old whose job has been significantly
changed on the account of technology and they could become a
welder, but themselves don't know how to do that and don't
think there is a pathway to that.
So, I would not ignore that significant portion of our
population that wants to work but doesn't know how to reskill.
Senator Blumenthal. I thank you all for your insights,and
by the way, Chairman Reed and I have just come back from a trip
to Ukraine, and the Ukrainians are taking what seem to be often
very low tech drones, and because they have those manual
skills, they are able to reconfigure them, I don't know what
the technical term would be, and make them lethal.
Now, they still need arms. They need support. They need the
resources. They are sadly lacking, and we need to give it to
them in the supplemental that is now before the House that we
passed here in the Senate. But they have been extraordinarily
innovative and creative because they have many of those manual
skills. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Reed. Thank you, Senator Blumenthal, and thank you
for your not just participation today, but for your willingness
to travel to Ukraine and to do so many other things.
But this has been a very, very helpful and useful panel. I
would like to touch on, again, on something that was mentioned,
but that is the perception of working for either the Department
of Defense or a defense company seems to be very negative. That
is an issue we have to deal with, and let me just quickly, Mr.
Taylor, Dr. Johnson, Dr. Lockwood.
Mr. Taylor. Yes, we actually--I don't--at the end of the
day, it is far more attractive to most employers. They know of
the brand name. You know, it is like Lockheed Martin, Boeing,
et cetera, that is a far more attractive opportunity to them
than--and they don't even think about the opportunities.
As I know, half of the American civilian workforce has said
they don't think about the Department of Defense proper. So, to
the extent that we could create--this is what the job is, it
doesn't matter if it is at the Department of Defense or the
rest of the industrial base, I think we could solve for some of
the problems. Private sector has a one up on the Government in
those roles.
Dr. Johnson. It is a very interesting problem that you are
articulating Senator because I do think serving the Armed
Forces is still prestigious and sought after. I served in the
military when I was young, not in this country unfortunately. I
did register for Selective Service when I was eligible. I got
turned down because I was slightly too old, which was
disappointing.
But I think the reason for that--and those were regarded as
good things and those were great experiences. I think that is
because we have this perception and correct understanding that
you build skills in those military roles and somehow--and
perhaps it is about the wage classification system, as was
articulated.
I am not saying that there isn't--there aren't deep
structural problems, but somehow that same prestige, that same
conviction that you are building, leadership--we have great
students in our MBA classes who are former military, for
example, and who are terrific leaders, and everybody
automatically assumes that is what you get if you are bringing
a lieutenant or captain into an MBA program.
Somehow that is not coming across in the defense industrial
base. I think Dr. Lockwood has got some very good ideas, and as
do you Senator, about how to fix that. But I think the way you
articulate just in those terms is exactly right.
Chairman Reed. Thank you. Dr. Lockwood, please.
Dr. Lockwood. Yes, I think it is to some extent about
prestige. It is also about what people know about. I will note
that there has been a great consolidation in the military
footprint. When you ask young people, do you know a veteran,
fewer than ever say yes. So, we just need to be out there in
the community.
We need to say that this is not someone else's duty. This
is not something I can outsource. This is our responsibility as
all Americans, to participate in some way in making sure that
our country and, you know, that of our allies is safe.
So, I think if we couch it as a community responsibility,
and if we put ourselves out there in new ways, that both our
partners in the industrial base and our defense civilian
workforce can get more of the attention that it rightly
deserves. Thank you.
Chairman Reed. Well, thank you all for excellent testimony.
As I said initially, this is not a one stop. We look forward to
your collaboration and your input too. If there are issues that
we are not dealing with, or we should be dealing with, or if
there is advise you can give us, don't hesitate, please.
Thank you very much. With that, I will adjourn the hearing.
[Whereupon, at 11:32 a.m., the Committee adjourned.]
[all]