WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama's nominee to be the next secretary of defense will take a stand for sweeping defense reforms in his opening remarks slated to be delivered at his Wednesday confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, while also hinting at some of the tensions that have roiled the tenure of his predecessor, a copy of his opening statement reveals.

"The taxpayer cannot comprehend, let alone support the defense budget, when they read of cost overruns, lack of accounting and accountability, needless overhead, and the like. This must stop," nominee Ash Carter writes in his opening statement, a copy of which was obtained by Defense News.

While affirming that he does "strongly support the President's request for relief from the sequester caps in FY 2016 and through the future year defense plan," Carter allows that some form of fiscal restraint for the department is in order. "Every company, state, and city in the country has had to lean itself out in recent years, and it should be no different for the Pentagon," he will say.

The president's 2016 budget calls for $35 billion more than spending caps allow at $534 billion, and his future year defense plan — the Pentagon's five5-year planning document — is slated to leap over the caps set in place from 2016 through 2020 by $155 billion, according to budget documents released on Monday.Feb. 2.

While he supports the cap-busting budget proposal, he adds, that "I very much hope that we can find a way together out of the wilderness of sequester. Sequester is risky to our defense, it introduces turbulence and uncertainty that are wasteful, and it conveys a misleadingly diminished picture of our power in the eyes of friends and foes alike."

In a statement that may hint at reports of outgoing Defense Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel having been kept at arms length from the Oval Office by Obama's "inner circle" of close advisers, and unable to fully gain a seat at the policy table, Carter will say in his opening statement that "the law also prescribes the chain of command, and if I am confirmed as Secretary of Defense I will be a stickler for the chain of command."

In another note that calls to mind reports that the White House has bristled at advice from the Pentagon that it does not like, and has a tendency to "micromanage" the department, Carter also says notes that he has "promised President Obama that if I am confirmed, I will furnish him my most candid strategic advice."

"I will also ensure that the President receives candid professional military advice. This is not only consonant with the law as written in this very Committee, but with good sense, since our military leaders possess wide and deep experience and expertise."

When it comes to acquisition reform, he says he will follow the lead of name check Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. John McCain, saying that he plans to follow his lead in championing "reform of acquisition and other parts of the defense enterprise."

Earlier in the week, the Associated Press obtained Carter's written answers to submitted questions from the committee, in which he said that he would be open to changing force structure decisions already taken for US troops in Afghanistan if the situation there changed. He also said that the US should expand its counterterrorism cooperation with Pakistan.

Carter already has Pentagon experience under two Democratic presidents, having served as the deputy secretary of defense under Obama from 2011 to 2013, and chief weapons buyer from 2009 to 2011. In the Clinton administration, he was the assistant secretary of defense for international security policy from 1993 to 1996.

Email: pmcleary@defensenews.com

Twitter: @paulmcleary

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