Defense Writers Group
16 August 2023
Moderator: Welcome to this Defense Writers Group session, really one of our more unusual and therefore important. We’re convening today to chat with Bob Hale, the Chair, and Ellen Lord, the Vice-Chair, of the Congressional Commission on Planning, Programming, Budgeting and Execution Reform. I hope the meaning of execution is not the one where I end up hanging --
Mr. Hale: I can tell you’re all excited already.
Moderator: It really is an important topic. I do a lot of public speaking and people say well what are the greatest threats to our national security? You can talk about China and climate and Russia and all that, but if our systems are broken, if we’re polarized, we’re not efficient in building the national security machine, then we are really, really in trouble.
As always, today’s session is on the record but there’s no rebroadcast of audio or video. I’ll ask the opening question and we’ll go around the table. Any of you who emailed in advance are on the list. We’ll get to as many as there is time, and then we’ll reserve the last few minutes for Mr. Hale and Ms. Lord for closing comments.
To get started, I did stay up late last night reading your -- [Laughter] -- report.
Mr. Hale: Glad to hear it.
Moderator: I didn’t read it thoroughly, but I did read it. But I did want to use this opening question to ask you to describe to us from the interim report and all that’s there, what do the two of you see as the major takeaways and the major priorities?
Mr. Hale: Let me start and then I’ll turn to Ellen, of course.
