Quality of Life in the Military

The five witnesses at the table represent the highest level of leadership for the enlisted leadership for their respective branches. This group's insight is absolutely critical. This hearing is a great opportunity to identify areas where we can be more helpful to both our service members and their families. Most importantly, this hearing happens during a time of major combat operations. It is this committee's solemn duty to serve the people who are putting their lives at risk in support of Operation Epic Fury. I want to express our deepest condolences to the families of the soldiers and airmen who have made the ultimate sacrifice in the name of our country. We hold this hearing to ensure the needs of their families and the needs of all service members' families will be heard and met. I'd like to recognize now my good friend, Ms. Wasserman Schultz, for opening remarks.

Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. I wholeheartedly agree with your condolences and really tragic that we've lost 13 service members and more than 200 injured. And thank you all for your service and everyone who is in the room with us today. My condolences go out to the families and to your colleagues and the lost friends and how terrible that has been. Since we held this hearing last year, events have really left me gravely concerned for the trajectory of the quality of life of our service members and where the prioritization of quality of life is for military leadership. We can't discuss the well-being of the men and women in uniform without touching on the ongoing war in Iran and that includes the loss of life, but also the strain that it will put on our budgets and the strain that it puts on service members and their families. Reports this week highlight additional troops being deployed to the region and that the administration is going to request an additional $200 million in funding for the war potentially. While I will reserve judgment once that request is submitted, we have to learn from the mistakes of the past and any requests for funding for another conflict in this region should not and cannot sideline long-term investments for our service members. If we defer these investments now, we will pay the price for years to come. We are still feeling the effects of years of underinvestment in infrastructure during the war on terror and our committee continues to receive reprogramming requests to this day to fund projects from which President Trump diverted funds in his first term for border wall construction. We are still getting reprogrammings to fix that mess. To that end, it is disappointing that we cannot discuss what investments the President's 2027 budget make in quality of life projects as the administration is once again incredibly late in submitting its budget request. It is extremely frustrating to do a hearing on the FY 27 budget when we don't even have the President's budget in the first place. When we eventually do see the budget, I hope that it will include robust investments in barracks, schools, medical centers, and other much-needed quality of life projects. Access to quality healthcare, childcare, and housing are fundamental building blocks of quality of life for our military families and there is more work to be done on all fronts. Privatized housing companies continue to make cost of doing business decisions, raking in profits and conducting stock buybacks while military families live in unacceptable conditions. I also remain very concerned about unnecessary roadblocks like the civilian hiring freeze, the deferred resignation program, fired probationary employees, and voluntary early retirement authority stalling progress in addressing issues like sexual assault, barracks maintenance, and ensuring there is a layer of responsive privatized military housing staff funded by the services, funding this subcommittee has made sure has been provided for the last three fiscal years to ensure timely repairs and prompt and reasonable response times. These DOD staffing cuts were made in the name of efficiency and I am all for efficiency in the Department of Defense, no one could suggest that there isn't room for savings and efficiency, but these cuts were conducted without a thoughtful plan. It is not efficient to pay experienced government employees to leave their jobs en masse and then right after pay new employees to fill those same positions. The Partnership for Public Service recently released survey results for government employee satisfaction and the results for the Department of Defense are alarming. To provide just a couple of examples, 61 percent of Department of Navy staff and 54 percent of Air Force staff feel less engaged with their work than they did a year ago. This is a troubling trend for the workforce that supports our service members and their families. It is also not saving taxpayers' money to have a constant focus on culture war issues. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that it may cost up to $125 million to implement the White House's executive order authorizing the Department of War as a secondary name for the Department of Defense. With our daunting backlog of needed service member investments, I can't imagine a rational justification for such wasteful spending. Every year this subcommittee makes hard choices with limited resources and $125 million could be new child development centers or dental clinics or mess halls for our service members. Instead, we're going to devote that money to signage changes and renaming something that is statutorily called the Department of Defense and we know that's not going to change. This subcommittee has a long history of fighting for quality of life projects for our service members and on a bipartisan basis. We're very proud of that. I think we likely all agree that this is the most bipartisan subcommittee of all 12 appropriations subs. And we did that in 2026 and we will do so again in 2027. I want to thank all the witnesses for being here today and for the essential work that you do every single day for our service members. I especially want to thank my friend, Judge Carter, who is an incredible partner in this work. I yield back the balance of my time.

Thank you, Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Very appreciate your comments. We'll now turn to our witness. Each witness will, without objection, your entire written testimony will be included in the record. I will now recognize each of you for an opening statement and then we'll begin to proceed with questions. Sergeant Major of the Army Michael Weimer, you're up.

Thank you. Thank you, Chairman. Thank you, Ranking Member, distinguished members of this subcommittee. Thank you for the opportunity to speak on behalf of nearly one million soldiers in our formations and the civilians and family members that make up the United States Army, the single most lethal fighting force in the history of the world. For 250 years, the American soldier has been the underwriter of the nation's defense and our motto, this will defend, is an unwavering promise we make to the American people. And today, I'm proud to report that the United States Army is growing stronger every day. Our strength begins with our people. On the recruiting front, we have a significant success story. In 2025, thanks to the incredible work of our recruiting professionals and the patriotism of America's youth, we not only met our ambitious recruiting goal of 61,000 new soldiers, but achieved it four months ahead of schedule. This success is not a signal to relax. We're committed to sustaining the momentum into the future and I'm also proud to say that we exceeded our retention goals, achieving 110 percent of our target last year. Americans join the Army to stay in our ranks to be soldiers. When their focus is diverted from the mission to fight battles against poor living conditions, we risk failing them. However, we are fighting uphill to decrease our facility maintenance backlogs with unpredictable funding and government shutdowns. We're striving to ensure our soldiers live in clean, comfortable, and safe barracks and we are executing a find and fix approach to immediately address substandard living conditions while simultaneously investing large scale FSRM projects, fully funding 100 percent of our barracks sustainment requirements. A deferred maintenance issue doesn't just impact morale. It incurs higher costs later and potentially exposes our warfighters to health and performance threats. A soldier's focus must be on their mission, not on a work order that can't be filled. And while housing is a top priority, we're also delivering other transformative changes. We're revolutionizing soldiers' dining, moving away from outdated cafeterias to flexible campus style facilities that feed our soldiers like the warrior athletes they are. We're also exploring avenues to solve high construction costs, including our first fully privatized apartments opening this year at Fort Irwin, California. Taking care of our people is the foundation for a lethal combat ready force. The lifeblood of that force is tough, realistic training. We've declared war on distractions, relentlessly eliminating burdensome administrative requirements to free up our leaders to do what they do best, build lethal teams. But tough training is not cheap. We're actively transforming our training to reflect the brutal realities of the modern battlefield, one saturated with drones, relentless electronic warfare, and contested logistics. We must train for the fight we face today, not the one we fought yesterday. Chairman, Ranking Member, our people are the heart of the Army. They are the engine of our combat power and our commitment is to provide them with the quality of life they need, the leadership they deserve, and the cutting edge training required to dominate any adversary. Our soldiers are our credentials. They are the living embodiment of our motto and they are the reason I can sit before you with absolute confidence and reaffirm our unbreakable promise, this will defend. To uphold this promise, we need your partnership and your continued support. Thank you and I look forward to your questions.

Thank you. We'll now hear from John Perryman, Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy.

Chairman Carter, Ranking Member Wasserman Schultz, and distinguished members of the subcommittee. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. It is a profound honor to serve as the 17th Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy and to represent more than 340,000 active duty sailors and nearly 60,000 Navy Reserve sailors as well as their families who serve alongside them. On any given day, approximately 100 Navy ships are deployed worldwide, drawn from a fleet of roughly 300 ships. We are sustaining a level of global naval presence comparable to the 1980s when the fleet numbered closer to 600 ships. The demand for naval forces has not diminished, rather the force meeting that demand has. The persistent forward presence is only possible because of the competence, resilience, and sacrifice of our sailors and their families. However, it is imperative that we approach this environment with clear awareness. The propensity to serve remains low and we are approaching demographic challenges that threaten to reduce the pool of young Americans eligible to serve. In this reality, recruiting matters, but retention becomes decisive. The sailors we bring in today must choose to remain in service tomorrow, encompassing both quality of life and quality of work. The decisions made by this subcommittee have a meaningful impact on both. Quality of life begins with safe, reliable housing, both for unaccompanied personnel and families. That is supported by adequate sustainment, ensuring that current solutions do not evolve into future crises. It also includes childcare facilities that enable parents to serve and spouses to pursue employment, thereby fostering family stability and promoting retention. Additionally, resilient installation infrastructure and facilities are vital for supporting families and maintaining mission readiness. Sailors and families do not view these components separately from the mission; they consider them integral to achieving operational readiness. Equally critical is quality of work. Our sailors seek engaging, challenging tasks; however, they require adequate tools and infrastructure to perform their duties effectively. Spare parts that arrive on time, modern maintenance facilities, sufficient pier capacity and shore services to allow ships to reset between deployments, and hangars that ensure safe and efficient aviation operations. When these enabling factors fall short, the burden shifts onto the deckplate, resulting in longer hours, deferred maintenance, and compressed training cycles. In a global Navy, such conditions are unsustainable and undermine long-term readiness. The strategic environment demands a Navy that is forward-deployed, lethal, and ready. We can meet these demands without compromising future capabilities, but only if we treat quality of service as an essential element of readiness and allocate resources accordingly. Chairman Carter, Ranking Member Wasserman Schultz, and members of the subcommittee, America's Navy is ready today because our dedicated people make it so. If we want that Navy tomorrow, we must make service sustainable for sailors and their families. Thank you for your continued support, and I look forward to your questions.

Hoorah.

Good morning, Chairman Carter, Ranking Member Wasserman Schultz, and distinguished members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to testify on behalf of your Marines. It is my responsibility to manage the morale, welfare, and discipline of the force. I believe the scope of my position is not only the Marine serving today, but also those who will one day earn the title Marine. Every year, budgets are decided, funds are authorized and appropriated, and the business of the military is executed on the taxpayer's dollar. Tough decisions are made every step along the way by people who care deeply about the service members, but it is the Marine and their families at the lowest level that feel the weight of those decisions most heavily. The extra pay raise for junior enlisted members last year made a significant difference in the household budgets of thousands of Marines. It meant car repairs no longer put off, less stress buying school supplies at the start of the school year, and a healthier savings account for rainy day emergency funds. While a couple of hundred dollars in a bank account seems like nothing to a budget of billions, it has real effects on the lives of those who have volunteered to wear the cloth of the nation. We are grateful for your support in that initiative. Likewise, budget cuts and funding delays are also felt by the Marines. The Commandant is prioritizing Barracks 2030 with year-over-year commitment, but he needs steady, predictable funding to execute effectively. Over the past several years, we have been able to improve the barracks, mess halls, and gyms and more across the Corps. These have positively impacted the quality of thousands of Marines' lives, but there are still Marines living in housing that is not up to standard. Projects have been delayed and deferred when funding was not available on time or in full measure. After construction, facilities require ongoing maintenance, upkeep, and upgrades. When this work is left incomplete, it is felt most severely by Marines who rely on them for their basic needs. It is only natural to think of tally sheets as assets and expenses, additions and subtractions from the bottom line. The money appropriated for facilities and the people employed to operate them is not an expense; it is an investment. It is an investment into the future of the Marine Corps, building a force that will be stronger, smarter, and poised to win for the next 10, 20, 100 years. It is an investment into our nation. You see, at some point, Marines will take off their uniform for the last time and return to the communities from which they came. They will return as students, community leaders, trades workers, and professionals, and it is in our best interest to return them healthier, fitter, and better citizens than we received. I have seen many leaders, both military and civilian, speak about investments into platforms and weapons, emerging technologies, and advanced capabilities. They insist that these investments are necessary for the success and survival of the troops. I don't disagree, but we cannot forget to invest in the ones who pull the trigger, fix the aircraft, arm the munitions, analyze the intelligence, for without them, we are nothing. So thank you for the opportunity to be here this morning, and I look forward to your questions.

Thank you. We'll now hear from Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force, David R. Wolfe. David.

Thank you, Chairman Carter, Ranking Member Wasserman Schultz, and distinguished members of the subcommittee. Thank you for this opportunity. It's an honor to represent the airmen of the United States Air Force and their families, who are the bedrock of our ability to defend this nation. Right now, as we sit in this hearing, active, Guard, and Reserve airmen are in the fight. They are executing decisive combat operations, supporting Operation Epic Fury, and directly engaging our adversaries to protect our way of life. Airmen are showcasing their discipline and commitment on a global stage. Their bravery and unwavering adherence to the oath are what make our Air Force the most respected in the world. Our combat credibility depends on airmen keeping their focus on the mission, because in the profession of arms, distractions have devastating consequences. When a maintainer in Kuwait is worried about her son being able to receive specialized care for his autism spectrum diagnosis, or a cyber operator working a 12-hour shift is concerned about his faulty hot water heater in privatized housing, their focus is compromised. That's a risk we simply cannot afford. This is precisely why our leaders are prioritizing the well-being of our airmen and their families. Secretary of the Air Force Troy Mink has been clear: we cannot choose between people and platforms. A sixth-generation fighter is an impressive machine, but it is a static display on the runway without the highly trained and motivated human weapon system ready to fly, fix, and support it. We trust our airmen to operate and maintain the most advanced systems known to man. It's our duty to provide them with a quality of life worthy of that responsibility. The most critical system upgrade we can make is one which invests in the readiness and resilience of the human weapon system, our airmen. Our maintainers are working miracles to keep our aging fleet in the air, but miracles cannot be our primary sustainment strategy. We are demanding the most from our airmen, and the strain is showing. The talent we fight so hard to recruit must be matched with modern infrastructure and resources to provide a resilient network that multiplies rather than exhausts their potential. Taking care of our families and providing a safe, clean space for our airmen to live is not separate from our mission; it is a foundational responsibility. Your support for the largest investment in our dormitories in over a decade is making a real and tangible difference. We are deeply grateful for that partnership. Every dollar invested in our airmen and families is a direct investment in the lethality, readiness, and support systems that allow our airmen to focus on what matters most: their mission to fly, fix, and fight. We have competent airmen who are committed to our mission and are operating in a strained environment with an outstanding attitude. We remain committed to fostering a command climate built on core values, where every airman is treated with dignity and respect. It's our duty as leaders to ensure the environment in which our airmen serve is one that strengthens them, reinforces our high standards, and makes them proud to wear this uniform. A culture of commitment and trust is essential to our warfighting readiness. Chairman Carter, Ranking Member Wasserman Schultz, and distinguished members of the subcommittee, our airmen have answered our nation's call without hesitation. Now we must answer theirs. Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.

And now we'll hear from Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force, John Bentivegna. Is that close?

Yes, Judge, that's perfect. Thank you. Chairman Carter, Ranking Member Wasserman Schultz, and distinguished members of this subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to discuss the critical importance of investing in the welfare of our Guardians. First, I want to express my appreciation for the recent provisions from Congress, which enabled adjustments to both military pay and allowances for housing and subsistence. These changes are an acknowledgment of the vital work our Guardians perform. These NDAA efforts reflect your commitment, but it is essential that we continue to ensure our compensation packages stay aligned with the real-world economic conditions that Guardians face. Beyond direct compensation, investing in the overall quality of life of our Guardians and their families is a direct investment in our joint force lethality. Our Guardians are the invisible frontline, whether forward-deployed to contested environments or employed in place conducting 24/7 global space operations from their home station. Their professional focus is deeply connected to the stability of their family and community life. For example, as we speak, Specialist 3 Cheyenne Ellis, who is force-presented to a combatant command, is on her combat crew at Buckley Space Force Base in Colorado, where she's delivering rapid and life-saving missile warning notifications to forces downrange. After her shift, she must immediately transition into the realities of everyday life. With her husband deployed, Specialist Ellis must pick up her young son from daycare, get groceries, and manage the home alone. This repetitive shift between mission-critical operations and family responsibilities highlights the dynamic challenges Guardians face. It also underscores the importance of fulfilling our quality of life obligations to these members. By addressing barriers such as accessible childcare, spousal employment stability, and access to quality healthcare, we build a resilient force that can focus on the mission. This is why we are actively addressing Guardians' needs through initiatives like the program at Peterson Space Force Base, Colorado, which provides 150 off-base childcare spaces, offering our Guardians greater flexibility. Additionally, programs like the Military Spouse Employment Partnership and Career Accelerator are helping to address the military spouse unemployment and underemployment rate, which are higher than the national average. These initiatives represent our commitment to holistic military family readiness, which is needed now more than ever in today's evolving global security landscape. We all understand that our national interests are underpinned by space superiority. In response to this reality, the Space Force achieved substantial progress in 2025. We demonstrated our preparedness for complex, large-scale operations in a contested environment through exercise Resolute Space. Our Guardians enabled national security objectives during Operation Midnight Hammer, where they provided precision navigation and life-saving missile warning. More recently, the CENTCOM commander, Admiral Brad Cooper, said of the Guardians in his theater, quote, "Our space superiority has become a critical enabler to this fight. Unseen by the world, the Space Force is doing two things. First, they are degrading Iranian capabilities, and second, they are helping to protect American forces," end quote. To build on this success, your support is invaluable. So let me conclude with these points. First, to continue to meet the threats of today and tomorrow, the Space Force must double in size. To accomplish this, we need continued competitive and responsive compensation for service members as well as consistent quality of life. Second, we must elevate our Guardians' quality of service by modernizing and expanding our facilities. Our missions are evolving quickly, but much of our infrastructure remains rooted in the past. We must be able to keep up with the demands of a larger, more advanced force, enabling them to train for and execute in a contested and complex joint multi-domain environment. I look forward to our continuing and meaningful collaboration, and I look forward to your questions. Thank you.

Before we begin the question and answer portion of this hearing, and thank you all for your testimony, I ask the members to, and including myself, to adhere to a five-minute time allotment. We got a little generous last year with our clock, and I want to be respectful of everyone's time. I know there are several hearings going on, but I will provide a second round of questions should you have additional questions. All right. Turn the timer on. You know, I was elected to Congress in 2002, and I've proudly represented Fort Hood for the last 24 years, and I understand the immense burden placed upon our combat forces and their families during the conflict. Sergeant Major Weimer, you understand as well as anyone the sacrifice our warfighters and their families make. What is the Army doing now, and what investment should be made today to support our soldiers and their families if it becomes necessary to deploy and mobilize large numbers of ground forces to the Middle East?

Chairman, thank you for that question. I'm going to move this a little bit here. Thank you for that question. First and foremost, thank you for your passion that you have for our soldiers and their families at Fort Hood, Texas writ large, all of them. It shows, and it has shown for years. We're tackling the stressors, Chairman. So for our troopers to be able to be prepared to deploy if asked, we've got to tackle things like stability. So we're focused on Army-wide PCS stability to try to give folks longer time on station. We know that does a couple of things. It adds stability for children, it adds stability for spouse employment, it adds stability for once they're in a CDC. It also adds cohesiveness. Units are better when they're together longer. And so that's things we're focusing on right now prior to the stressors that come once they're mobilized. Childcare, it's a big one. I mentioned CDCs. We're focused on trying to get to 90 percent staffing. Ninety percent staffing is proven across our other installations that our wait times are minimal when we get there. And so that's a primary focus for us also. And then at Fort Hood, we're focusing on trying to get more efficient with our dollars that come from this committee with our replace-by-repair pilot that's ongoing right now. Was delayed a little bit, but we're back in business with the money, and we're going to learn from that to try to cut down time and save potentially 40 percent. So that's a big one. And then campus-style dining, Bistro 42, which I hope I get a chance to talk a little bit more later, is another one that removes those stressors. That's for family members and our troopers to provide them consistent quality food on Fort Hood.

Thank you. Let me ask you one more question very quickly. I've got time, right? In fast-growing communities like we have surrounding Fort Hood, housing markets move very swiftly, and the rents seem to change overnight. How frequently does the Army reassess housing data to ensure BAH accurately reflects the real world of rental costs for the soldiers?

Chairman, thank you for that question. We work with the department, and the department does an annual review of rent rates locally at each location. Thankfully, though, we have a, it's called rate protection, so that if a rate actually goes down that following year in January, we don't actually take money from a trooper and their family that are now locked into a lease at a higher rate. So we're grateful for that from the department. But we don't actually, we participate in that with the department. We don't actually have any authorities and levers to pull. The Secretary does have a lever. It's usually been used, I think statutorily it's used for like natural disasters. And if I recall, I think Maui fires in '24 was the last time the Secretary used it. But right now, we participate in the department's. This came up in the quadrennial review at the end of the quadrennial review, potentially looking at a better equation to be faster to need as we're looking at those rates.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Master Chief Petty Officer Perryman, during last year's hearing, I asked the witnesses how they were planning to use the $10 million per service that this subcommittee has provided each year to bolster housing oversight. Your predecessor talked about 200 employees who had been hired and the third-party inspections which had been completed. I want to know several things. Can you provide an update on how the Navy plans to use the funds from FY '26 and in 2027 if we continue, if you continue to receive those funds? And specifically, how will the Navy utilize the funding this subcommittee has provided in areas like Key West specifically? As you know, I went down to Key West to talk with homeowners, tour all of the privatized military housing and the various versions and stages of disrepair that they are in. It was really deeply concerning, not just the conditions that the housing is in, but also the feedback that I got from far too many families about the really utter lack of responsiveness from Balfour Beatty specifically and just as much from the Navy. I'll ask you a sort of sub-question in a moment after you answer that.

Ranking Member, thank you for the question. The Navy's plan to utilize the money that this committee has earmarked for housing oversight remains the same as what my predecessor articulated at the last hearing. We have been challenged in the last year with hiring freezes and resignations of people in this area. We are aggressively trying to close those gaps because we know it's vitally important to have that oversight so our families get the level of service in housing that they deserve.

So are there any civilian positions that are related to housing oversight which are currently being affected by that hiring freeze or the retirements? And is there any additional layer of approval that's been required to hire those employees, and have you been given that approval?

Ranking Member, I am confident that there are these positions that have been impacted by the retirements and the hiring freeze. I'll have to take for the record where those positions are relative to getting approval to hire into them.

You're confident that they will be hired, you just don't know when? Is that a...

I'm sorry. I am confident that hiring those positions has been impacted by the hiring freeze and the retirements. I don't know where we are in the authorizing them to be hired and internal to Navy processes, so I'll take that for the record, ma'am.

So okay, and what's the roadblock that's preventing the Navy from increasing its oversight to ensure that reforms by companies like Balfour Beatty are truly improving the responsiveness to families? We're not talking about now the hiring and the layer of oversight that we've applied for you, which absolutely has to get unjammed. But how are you riding herd on Balfour Beatty to make sure that they are responsive? Because I get mixed reviews even on the so-called improvements that they say they've made recently.

It is a focus area for our Commander Navy Installations Command, Admiral Gray, who I believe you met on a tour down there to see Key West. The region commander, the base commander are laser-focused as they are around the Navy in improving the quality of our PPV housing with our partners.

Okay, but you know the track record's not good. So we've got to sharpen the laser. That's going to be important. Okay. I want to make sure I have some other questions, but I want to make sure that I focus on this one. A recurring topic at these hearings is the effort to reduce the number of sexual assaults in the military. According to the 2024 DOD annual report on sexual assault in the military, there was a 4 percent decrease across all of the services in reported sexual assaults in 2024. The Army received 3,050 reports, equaling a 13 percent decrease from 2023, which drove the overall decrease. Sergeant Major Weimer, for the Army, you've specifically talked about the importance of the Integrated Prevention Advisory Groups, IPAG. Can you provide IPAG staffing numbers for the last year? Is hiring still on track to reach 1,200 positions by FY '27? Can you describe the hiring process for these positions? Have you had changes to the approval process for hiring these individuals as compared to January of last year, like was just referred to by Chief Petty Officer? Please give specific examples of the types of reforms you've seen recommended by the IPAG at the installation level.

Ranking Member, thank you for that question. And we have seen impacts. And thank you for the office call also. We discussed a little bit. We have seen similar impacts across numerous portfolios, but this one included. We had people decide to take the option to go do something else, and then we did have the hiring freezes. So we're only at 60 percent hiring for a specific data point for you. And now we're re-evaluating where and how. We centralized the process to put some oversight on it, but we are currently struggling to fill a lot of those positions. It's a theme you'll probably hear across numerous portfolios to include our oversight in housing, oversight for privatized housing, and in a DPW. That's another space we're having similar issues.

Thank you. Mr. Chairman, thank you for the indulgence on the response as far as the time. But I mean, we're going to hear a theme all the way through the answers to these questions that the hiring freeze, the push for retirements is dramatically impacting their ability to be able to hire with the funding that we've provided to them for the positions that ensure that we can move forward on quality of life issues for our service members. And like, we need to collectively speak up about that. And I think when we craft our bill, make sure that we can urgently send a message to the administration and communicate as individual members how alarming it is that these challenges are getting in the way of trying to make sure that we can affect the quality of life of our service members for the better. So thank you. I yield back.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member Wasserman Schultz and our distinguished ranking member of the full committee, Ms. DeLauro. Good to see you. Thank you all for your service and for those of you who came by my office, thank you for doing that. We had some great conversations with the backlogs and complexities of various construction projects and various quality of life issues. It's incredibly important and I think that we are all working together to correct these mistakes. Sergeant Major Weimer, I want to start with you. Congratulations on the recruitment and retention numbers in the Army. To what do you attribute those?

Well, Congressman, thank you for that. Thank you for the question and the office call. Well, I think it's multifaceted. One of it was professionalizing our recruiting force. We made massive changes to our U.S. Army Recruiting Command. Some of that stemmed all the way from how we selected recruiters, how we trained them in our recruiting academy, all the way to the command structure for proper oversight of all the resources that we were putting into recruiting. But then also we made strides across all the services with our MEPS stations, which are joint and triaging all the medical data. We love data and we have lots of medical data now. And a lot of that data now requires exceptions for people to enter a contract to try to serve their country. And we were backlogged six, nine, sometimes longer months. And youngsters, young 18-year-old Mike Weimer gets a little bored when he has to wait six, nine months and he goes and finds another job. And so those are a few things that had direct impact to our success.

Thank you. I want to continue now with something very dear to my heart, Fort Leonard Wood, which we spoke of when you came to our office. We have buildings from the 1940s there still being used each and every day for our soldiers, not as museums, but as active depots. For years, Fort Leonard Wood has been issuing gear to trainees out of a series of eight buildings which were constructed back in the 1940s. This is the central issuing facility. Not only are there no amenities like heating or air conditioning, but the floors are warping under the ever-increasing burdens of the modern Army. We have a photo of one of the floors here. This is a condition of one of the walls in the central issuing facility. The floors are unsafe. They cannot handle the loads of modern forklifts which have to carry heavy pallets. My fear is that when we get into a force surge position, this central issue facility will not be able to meet the demands. We've got to do something. We need a new central issue facility at Fort Leonard Wood. What is the Army doing to fix issues like this in our DOW?

Congressman, thank you. Thank you for that and I appreciate the photos. That is real and you and I have spoken about that CIF before. The reality is it is a prioritization for us. That is the truth. We don't have the funding, we don't have the predictability with the funding, and we don't have the reliability with the funding to cover down all of our needs across all of our installations. That's a part Army problem, but there's other people that are part of that solution also. And so with our mission dependency index, that MDI you'll hear, that's how we're trying to prioritize that. Now, that CIF at Fort Leonard Wood is a priority. So I don't want you to think it's not a priority and we are working to figure out how to fix that. But we're going to have to get creative and we're going to have to get creative in some of our MILCON authorities, which I spoke about last year and this committee, this subcommittee heard us. And so things like the repair by replacement that we're piloting down at Fort Hood that has a 40 percent potentially a 40 percent cheaper cost, that would help us in a place like that with your CIF. Enhanced use lease agreements could potentially, they're not silver bullets, but the more tools we put in our toolbox to make our dollar in the infrastructure space actually equal a dollar, the better off we're going to be to tackle places like that CIF at Leonard Wood, but also unfortunately a long list of other facilities at other locations, Congressman.

Well, I look forward to working with you and General Beck at our Center of Excellence here to make sure we have a central issue facility that we can be proud of and is going to be functional in surge capacity. Thank you so much and I yield back, Chair.

Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman, and thanks to the ranking member. Let me focus in on the privatized housing for a moment and I've a question for Sergeant Major Weimer and Sergeant Major Ruiz. The subcommittee's watched privatized family housing fail service members and their families in serious ways. So let me move to the question. Given the documented failures in privatized family housing, why should this committee have confidence that privatized barracks or apartments will protect service members better than a properly funded government-owned and government-maintained model? What are the guardrails which you insist on so that cost saving does not come at the expense of service members, their health, safety, and trust? And Sergeant Major Ruiz, once again with regard to the privatized efforts here, privatized family housing, are they truly delivering safer, healthier homes better than well-resourced government-owned and government-managed model here? So yes, Sergeant Major Weimer.

Thank you for that question, Congresswoman. I, like many of you, have been very skeptical about privatized barracks, which I'm now trying to call privatized apartments. I do not think it will work in scale across the Army, but we have to try it in places like Fort Irwin. Fort Irwin may be the ideal location with the ideal unit to be successful. Now, the oversight. I, like you, I have questions. 50-year contract for privatized housing, what have we learned in 25 years? What, I mean, the lease agreement that we had to develop, the commander oversight that we had to develop, we're taking all those lessons learned and putting it into that pilot at Fort Irwin to see if we can't figure out how to make that work. That facility, we can't make soldiers move into that. They have to volunteer to sign a lease and volunteer to move into that facility. And so we're investing in our commanders to ensure we have, and when I say commander, I actually mean general officer commander of the installation to make sure they understand they're part of that oversight with that privatized company. So we have a lot to learn and we're going to try to use the Irwin pilot to do that learning, Congresswoman. We have a lot to learn and we're going to try to use the Irwin pilot to do that learning, Congresswoman.

Thank you, but we need to really watch this closely. And Sergeant Major Ruiz, would you support a move away from privatized housing?

I get, ma'am, that it has been decades now that we've tried, we continue to do the same thing over and over again with no real results.

That leads to insanity. That's what the thing is that you try something over and over again.

Yeah. And I don't know what the best solution is, ma'am. I just leave it up to us to work together to figure that out. But I'm in line with Sergeant Major Weimer and in small places around the Corps, it is doable to do privatized unaccompanied housing, but in big scale bases that we have, it's not real.

And we can't keep putting families at risk here. You know, or they bear the risk of a failure. So I think it's right that we need to watch this very, very carefully. With regard to the Navy, child care. And you mentioned, Sergeant Major Weimer, child care is a very big issue. So in your highest demand locations, Norfolk, San Diego, Kitsap, and others, how many of the child development center seats do you expect to deliver by the end of 2027 with the projects and authorities now in place? What are the main remaining obstacles to fully meeting sailors' child care needs?

Ranking Member, thank you for the question. I think by 2020, in the last year, we've reduced our child care wait time by 27 percent. It sits at about 1,500 spaces. It's largely we were able to do that through a combination of fee assistance for out-in-town child care. We've added about 2,000 seats to that that really helped us. We've improved the staffing of our CDCs from a low of 63 percent to nearly 90 percent now. And the MILCON projects that you talked about that will deliver by 27 will reduce that wait time again in our fleet concentration areas.

I would just say this is, I mean, this is a national issue. We've failed to understand that child care is an industry in the same way airlines, automotive, etc. Families are not going to, they're not going to join if their kids are not taken care of. They're not going to care about where we want to go in terms of our national security. Their first security issue is their kids and what we should do. I think nationally, I'm not just saying this to you, this country needs to understand at the highest levels that child care is an industry in this nation and that we need to fund it and support it in the way that we do any other industry in this nation. Thank you so much for your testimony. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Franklin.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you all, gentlemen, for joining us again today. During our hearing last year, I raised a concern about the growing use of waivers in meeting recruiting goals, including individuals with prior criminal convictions. Sergeant Major Weimer, that had just hit the press, I think, right before our hearing, so I asked you specifically about it and you were very gracious to get back to our office later about that. But I would, just for the benefit of the rest of the committee and just what you may have seen since then, could you talk to us a little bit about those types of waivers for criminal, past criminal behavior? I did also read today that I guess the Army now is going to allow one maybe prior like a minor marijuana conviction that's not going to require a waiver going forward, I guess. But could you just expand a little on that?

Absolutely, Congressman. Thank you for that and thank you for the follow-up conversation, probably even more important. So waivers are always a touchy subject. And we have a one-star that's in charge of our waivers. This kind of speaks a little bit to the previous restructure of U.S. Army Recruiting Command to have proper oversight. And I know her personally and she, those waivers weigh heavy on her and she denies more than she absolutely approves. But the waivers are complicated. I did not know this. I did not understand like state to state is a little bit different. Pull a fire alarm as a juvenile, that's labeled one thing. Shoot a BB gun in a park, that's labeled one thing in one state and different. And when you're 13, some of those things follow you for the rest of your life. Those are some of the waivers that we discussed. And some of them are a little more extreme than that. But the confidence that I shared with you was that the waivers that we're granting are the low waivers like that. These are not the waivers, there's no sexual predators, there's no domestic violence. Those waivers don't even get to the one-star that's in charge of the waiver process. But she still does waive, she still does waive minor ones to give troopers or potential troopers an opportunity to serve their country. But it's a whole person. It's not just the one incident. And so if you have to have a waiver for, let's say, pulling a fire alarm in a public school, schools are a little bit sensitive piece of terrain right now in high school, what's the rest of the person that's associated in this waiver process?

Glad to know y'all are looking at all of that. And I know you're all facing recruiting challenges and you've all underscored a lot of those. We have a shrinking demographic, there are just fewer 18 year olds out there today, fewer who have a connection to military history, know so many are in our ranks from having family experience with that. I did see too, Sergeant Major, that the Army has recently raised its maximum age from 35 to 42. That pretty much other than Marines, I'm not sure about what is y'all's oldest age you can enlist?

I'll come back to you, sir, but it's not 42.

But I guess it's 41 for the Navy, 42 for Army, Air Force, and Space Force. I thought it was interesting reading that you're seeing greater retention in some of these older folks coming in and that makes, I get that, that makes sense. Somebody at 18 may not know exactly what they want to do for the rest of their life. But they're also, the flip side of that coin is more challenges on the physical side with physical standards. How are y'all navigating that? Do you see this to be a growing trend that we're going to see an aging population in our serving in our military? And you know, I just think the physical challenges I had at 18 were a lot different than they were at 35 or 40. And if you're starting in your 40s, I would think healthcare is going to become a significantly different picture than it is when somebody can serve 20 years and be out by 38 years old. A few things in that. Also, I'm curious to know if someone comes in at 42, are they going to automatically be allowed to serve past age 60 so they can get their 20 year retirement or are we going to start having to do a lot of waivers for those folks? Anybody that wants to opine there, and I know we've got about a minute.

Sure, sir. I'll opine with you on that one. So we've had all those discussions to include the post 60, the age exception when you're post 60 if you're going to do 20. But some of those older candidates come in for very special technical MOSs, if you will. Not to be a machine gunner in an infantry squad. As a matter of fact, we would convince, the recruiter would try to convince them down a different path if their scores were higher. That's part of the conversation we're having with improving our actual recruiters at Recruiter College before they go out there. But we also have to remember we're not necessarily recruiting an older individual like that for a 20 year career. Some of them are a two or and a three year assignment and many of them are in our National Guard and Reserve. And so each one of those contracts, there's nuance to them associated with the age of the individual.

Anyone else on that?

Just as an example, sir, we brought in into the reserve component a former Air Force who did a career after the Air Force, cyber extraordinaire, and we brought him in. But in our culture, you used to have to go to boot camp, don't care how old you are. And but graduating boot camp, he didn't come in as a private first class. We brought him in as a gunnery sergeant in E7. The Marine Corps almost lost its mind, but we survived because of his expertise and we'll be fine.

That's good to know.

Yes, sir. I would just say from the Space Force perspective, on some of the older recruits that are coming into the Space Force, older Guardians, the physical standards to come into the service all remain the same. But what I find interesting, you know, if you're 35, 36 years old, you have some life experience and you're still in the physical condition where you can meet those standards, it's because you've adopted a lifestyle of healthy living and approach. So to your point, yeah, an 18 year old could probably grunt through some stuff, but when you're in your 30s, that's because you've been dedicated and disciplined about how you live your life. So we have seen some older individuals, but very much dedicated to a holistic health approach and they're doing fine within the Space Force as they meet the standards are the same if you're 18 or 36, doesn't make a difference.

That's a great point. Thank you. And Chairman, I yield back.

Thank you. Mr. Bishop.

Congressman, it's very much the same as my teammates. It is still very part of the command team, taking their feedback of what's happening inside the formations of those Marines who walk into their office space to whatever they may have and bring it forth and getting after the investigation and the process. So far, so good.

Thank you very much, Chairman Carter, Ranking Member Wasserman Schultz. Thank you for the opportunity to participate in today's hearing and a warm welcome to each of the witnesses. And I thank you all for your service to our nation and for your testimony and for taking the time to communicate with us prior to the hearing. I also want to express gratitude for the service and the sacrifice of our men and women, particularly those in Iran and their families. With respect to quality of life, I hope that we can identify where services are making real progress, where families still feel the strain and what this subcommittee can do to strengthen support for our service members and their families. I'd like to ask each of the panel members to briefly respond to this. As the department reviews the equal opportunity programs and moves away from some of the DEI branded efforts, Congress still needs confidence that the underlying complaint and protection mechanisms remain credible, timely, and trusted by troops and their families. The formal structures are still there, including the military equal opportunity complaint channels and DOD whistleblower reprisal protections, but the real question is whether service members believe that those systems still work in practice without retaliation. So if each of you could briefly respond, as the department has scaled back the DEI efforts, what specific safeguards remain in place to ensure that service members and their families still have effective ways to report discrimination, retaliation, or exclusion that harms daily quality of life and have those complaints investigated and adjudicated? And have you seen any impact from anti-DEI efforts on unit climate, spouse confidence, and installation support systems or a family's willingness to stay in military life for another tour? Briefly.

Congressman, great to see you. I'll try to be brief. And this is, there's some similarities to your question on equal opportunity to SHARP data that I know Ranking Member Wasserman Schultz and I have had some quality conversations on, reporting rates versus prevalence rates. And so we're leaning into the department-wide workplace experience survey to kind of get to that difference between prevalence versus reporting rates to kind of see if there's a correlation because our data has shown that it's gone down a little bit, but why? Is it because people aren't reporting it anymore? That's how we're going to look at trying to tackle these two because right now I do not get a sense that there's a lack of safe reporting, a sense of being able to safely report. We don't get that. And we're absolutely tackling investigations as fast as possible. It's a priority for the Secretary and the Chief. As a matter of fact, within our Inspector General side of the house, they've been teaching commanders how to properly do investigations so that we actually address them quickly instead of lingering for months and months in an investigation OODA loop.

Thank you, Congressman, for that question and thank you for all your work and what you do for our airmen that are stationed in your state in Georgia. They love living there. Like my partners on the panel here, we haven't seen anything negative from any of these shifts in philosophy or policy change. The bottom line for us in the United States Air Force and really for all the services, I think I can speak on behalf of everybody, is we want a climate and a culture that encourages everybody being treated with dignity and respect. And when an unfortunate incident might happen that is outside of the line of what those standards are that we set for our people, we want our commanders and our senior enlisted leaders out there to take swift and decisive action to make sure that everybody in the unit understands that that kind of behavior isn't acceptable. And I haven't seen any changes to that philosophy or the execution of that philosophy across the Air Force.

Congressman, sailors in the Navy know these programs still exist, they still utilize them. We have seen no impact on retention. In fact, currently our retention across all zones is above 100 percent. And the underlying programs, whether it's DEOCS, equal opportunity, the Navy has made no change to those instructions.

Congressman, good to see you again. I want to echo what my teammates said. I haven't seen anything in the Space Force specifically that shows that there's been a degradation in trust and faith in the ability of individuals to express any kind of harassment or any kind of equal opportunity EEO concerns that they have. I will say that for the workplace experience survey, you know, the first one we did for the Space Force was in 2023 and we had some promising results. We're looking forward to the results of the 2025 and we think that's going to show another positive trend that the prevalence of those types of activities and that climate is not tolerated and individuals understand that they are in a safe place and they have trust in leadership that they can report if they do experience it.

Thank you. I think my time has expired.

Thank you. Mr. Zinke.

Thank you. I think my time has expired.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank all the witnesses today for being here and thank you for your service.

Congresswoman, we have. You know, in the Navy our last several deployments of our strike groups and ESGs have been extended and the expanded authority to take it past one year out to two years has been very helpful for our families.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank all the witnesses today for being here and thank you for your testimony. And thank you particularly to those that were able to make time to come by the office and have those conversations that you really can't cover in a five minute time frame. So thank you all very much and thanks for your service. Master Chief Petty Officer Perryman, I visited NAS JAX this past summer and toured a variety of MILCON needs, including their gymnasium and training center, which includes a water tank. I always pause to call it a pool. But they use this for search and rescue training. That facility is incredibly old, it's degraded, and I even fear that it's actually hazardous. I mean, there are chunks of concrete falling from the ceiling. The NAS JAX team is doing what they can to sustain operations in that facility, but clearly a new facility is needed to support NAS JAX's mission and our sailors' quality of life. Because you talked about quality of life and how that, and I love the way you do this, talk about quality of life and how that's impacted by quality of work. And so I think that's very important, I agree with you completely. Do you have any updates on the Navy's plan to replace this training facility at NAS JAX?

Congressman, I'm aware that there is a MILCON project that has entered the, you know, the big funnel every year. And what comes out the bottom of that funnel, that project has not risen much like the Sergeant Major of the Army was talking about. It hasn't risen to the level that it beats out other projects. Ranking Member in her opening statement talked about the massive underinvestments we've done in this area for out like my entire time in the Navy. And the backlog is so big and what we're able to squeeze in under our TOA just makes us make very hard decisions like SMA was talking about. So there is a MILCON project, it just hasn't got above the cut line yet, sir.

Okay, well, you know, going back to the photograph that we showed earlier of Fort Leonard, that looks good compared to what I see when I go in the basement of this facility with the pool above it. So would I would love to get with your team going forward and figure out exactly where that's at, you know, getting racked and stacked and I want to know what we can do to help potentially move that up because I think it's a disaster waiting to happen and I literally fear for people's safety over that situation. The other question that I have for you, Master Chief Petty Officer, is during our conversation, you mentioned the importance of quality of service for the sailors and quality of service being both quality of life like housing, food, healthcare, and all that, and then that quality of work as you mentioned. Can you speak about the importance of improving both the quality of life and that's why this project that I just talked about I think is so important because it really is a quality of work. Can you talk about how does that investment in military construction help support the efforts toward quality of life and quality of work when it comes to improving, you know, their workplace?

Congressman, I mean, much like my companions up here have said, quality of life, that's obvious, you know, sailors and their families need to not worry about those things when we're asking them to potentially make the ultimate sacrifice. So that's obviously a necessary thing. But the other thing is necessary is, you know, we're the richest country in the world with the strongest military in the world. All right. But when we go on a lot of our bases, the fact that those two statements are true are not obvious, right? Sailors need to understand, you know, they need to show up in facilities where they can do their job effectively and not be bogged down by workarounds or worry about pieces falling out of the ceiling because that also signals to them how much we think about them and how much we value their work.

I really appreciate the way you state that. My time's up, Mr. Chairman, I'll yield back.

Ms. Escobar.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Madam Ranking Member. And gentlemen, thank you so much for your service and your leadership, your testimony today, and the time that you took to visit with me and my team. Very grateful for that. I'd like to begin, though, by expressing my sincere and heartfelt condolences to the loved ones of our 13 service members who lost their lives in this war, but also to the service members, the hundreds of them who have sustained injuries. And the injuries that I am most concerned about are the traumatic brain injuries. Those families and those service members have a long road before them and we have to do everything possible to be there for them and provide them with the care that they are going to need on an ongoing basis. But we're here to talk about quality of life and during my tenure on the House Armed Services Committee, I was so privileged to participate in a bipartisan quality of life task force. Our recommendations were foundational to the National Defense Authorization Act that year, but really it is up to us on appropriations to ensure that we adequately fund many of these very worthy goals. And that is challenging with our current MILCON process and our current MILCON budget. And actually, Chief Master Sergeant Bentivegna, your description of our infrastructure as being rooted in the past is a very accurate one. And Sergeant Major Weimer, when you said that our goal should be that a dollar actually equals a dollar, obviously speaks to me and the work that my team and I are trying to do. We have to be more innovative and we have to be more thoughtful as members of Congress, especially on this subcommittee, but also our military leadership about how we meet the goals and the needs of our military and those construction needs. Sergeant Major Weimer, you and I have had great conversations about the innovation happening at the military installation that I am so privileged to represent, Fort Bliss, particularly the 3D printed barracks. Can you very quickly tell us why it's so important to lean in on innovation like that?

Thank you for that, Congresswoman. I always appreciate the time, I really appreciate the passion to try to get innovative to figure this out. The traditional MILCON, and I fully acknowledge it's U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, so these are teammates, but the traditional model and methods are they're failing us right now. They just are. It's just the truth. And so we've got to get innovative, we have to change our thinking on how to work on all the infrastructure that we've been discussing this morning. So 3D printing is another potential tool. It's a two-year and some change experiment that finally passed seismic testing by the Corps of Engineers and so we are getting ready to 3D print, that doesn't sound right coming out, but we're getting ready to 3D print some new facilities at Fort Hood. But those facilities are very limited though and I think that's important for this committee to understand and the capability for the 3D printing is still very limited right now. But there's potential for it in the future through continued investment, but for temporary unaccompanied housing or mobilization in regional locations or regional training centers for two-week training, they're pretty good, Congresswoman, as you and I both know. But that's just another example of how we're going to have to get creative. We have to figure that out.

Thank you so much, Sergeant Major. And I'm so proud of the leadership at Fort Bliss that has been very open to this innovation. There are so many needs that we have at Fort Bliss alone, our Sergeants Major Academy, and in fact, I've spoken to you about the priority that we have there and my team and I sent a letter to the Secretary of the Army yesterday urging him to prioritize the Sergeants Major Academy. But we have to stretch that dollar and we are looking for innovative for tools in the toolbox like enhanced use leases, IGSAs, and there are a number of other tools in the toolbox and we would love your input, your collaboration as we try to expand that toolbox and make the dollar go a longer way. Mr. Chairman, thank you for your patience. I know I've exceeded my time, I yield back.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member. And I also want to thank the witnesses for being here today and for grappling with some of the very challenging problems that our service members are facing. We are eternally grateful for your service and those in the audience that wear the uniform today. I want to start, Sergeant Major Weimer, I want to take a moment to highlight you directly. I sincerely appreciate the recognition that you and Secretary Driscoll extended to the Old Dominion University ROTC candidates through the awarding of two Purple Hearts and eight Meritorious Service Medals. The heroic actions demonstrated by those cadets fill me with deep gratitude for the missions our military is trained and certainly prepared to execute and it was proven on that day. We can't thank you enough for the readiness, professionalism, and dedication that you instill in our service members, so a heartfelt thank you there. The focus of today's hearing is quality of life and our military personnel are critical for our military's readiness and they deserve our full attention. I want to start, over the last couple of weeks as well as in your written testimony, you all have highlighted the benefits and the shortcomings that privatized housing has brought to your formations. If you could change one thing about the relationship you have with privatized housing, what would it be? Who wants to go first?

Congresswoman, thank you so much for the question and the investment, especially when we talk about privatized housing where our service members and their families live, you know, every day. I would say one of the challenges is the amount of oversight and control that we have over it. You know, when the contracts and the agreement was made, you know, I remember back when I was an installation command chief at the time I was in the Air Force, felt like very much there was hands off, there wasn't a lot we could do, it was a private company that were managing that. And then we know what happened, the alarming wake-up call that said there was an obligation we had as a command team to make sure that we understood our responsibility to those members and their families in there. But I still think there's probably better opportunities for greater oversight and control and to hold them accountable for the services they're providing to members and their families to make sure that when there are back orders, work orders that are delayed, we have an absolute control to do that. Now, we've come a long way. We have the Bill of Rights for tenants across all Department of the Air Force installations. We have placed advocates, resident advocates at all the installations and that has helped that relationship. But I still if we did this and expand privatization, the way the contracts are written and how that's structured is going to be extremely important of what we've learned over the last 25 years.

Maybe not doing a 50-year contract?

That could be one of them. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else want to chime in there? Chief Master Sergeant.

Yeah, thank you, Congresswoman. This is definitely something that we all struggle with and this has been a topic at every level of command that I've served over the last decade plus. I think the one thing that I would do is be really careful to enter into not only the long-term agreements, but anytime you try to centralize in partnership, you enter a danger space where as the negotiation plays out, you have both sides trying to make sure that they get the most from the negotiation and you end up filtering out a lot of the things that you really kind of need to make sure that the agreement is good for the government on and certainly for the airmen and their families. So I would get us out of the 50-year agreement. I know that's probably not possible right now because the agreement's been made and we're only halfway through in most of these projects, but that oversight and accountability is the levers that we have to pull and we need to max perform those levers that we have in order to make sure that our people are getting a safe and secure place to live.

And it might not be a one-size-fits-all approach as well, it seems.

I think that's absolutely correct. I don't think you can peanut butter spread one type of policy over all of our different communities with variable levels of capability for the communities to build homes. There's a bunch of factors that go into this that need to be considered before we do centralization and consolidation efforts to try to address a problem.

Thank you. Anyone else want to chime in there? Okay. And those were great. The last thing I would just want to maybe quickly ask, I championed parental leave in the military and one of the challenges that we found was that it was difficult for service members to take leave within one year depending on deployments and situations. So we were able to extend that to two years in the FY26 NDAA. Have you all seen any impact on that within your branches specifically? I know it's only been a short amount of time, but any anecdotal?

Congresswoman, we have. You know, in the Navy our last several deployments of our strike groups and ESGs have been extended and the expanded authority to take it past one year out to two years has been very helpful for our families.

Fantastic.

Yes, Congresswoman, thank you for that question. You know, most people are able to execute it within a year, right? It's a pretty executable policy. But there are certain cases where people have tragedy that strikes. We had a specific example where we had a family who had twins, one of the twins unfortunately didn't survive at birth and then later on the other had a lot of health complications. That drove a need for that family and the policy being in place now, without the policy would we have figured out how to take care of this family? Absolutely we would have, but having those authorities in place is always helpful when you've got the lever to pull, so we thank you for that help.

Thank you very much. And Mr. Chairman, I've exceeded my time, I yield back.

Anybody else want to comment?

Chairman, I would just say that as I said in my opening statement, you know, the national the nation demands that we got to double the size of the Space Force. And that's not just personnel, that's infrastructure as well. So I mean, like I said, I think we

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank the Ranking Member as well. Thank you all so much. I'm the proud representative for Camp Pendleton and I want to begin just by extending my prayers and that of my family to our Marines and sailors who are over there in the Middle East right now, left from our community recently. They're the most capable and professional people anywhere and they represent the finest tradition of American service. And part of I think why this is timely is wanting to make sure that they have a clean and decent place to live, something that I've been passionate about since getting to Congress number of years ago. I don't love the term quality of life because it's all readiness. I think it's all readiness. And I really appreciate the hard work that's being done by all five of you. But I want to pick on my friend Sergeant Major Ruiz since we're talking the Marine Corps. The Barracks 2030 initiative, so as I understand it, the bottom line is the request is around $11 billion between now and 2037. And we're young enough where maybe we'll be able to be doing this until 2037, and hopefully we'll see that initiative through and we'll get it done on time and on or under budget. What I'm trying to understand is how much of that—first of all, is the $11 billion still the right number? How much of it is MILCON, so the larger projects, the new construction and so forth? How much of it is FSRM for the renovation? I'm trying to just get a basic breakdown of really the roadmap, where we need to go over the next decade or so. So I would appreciate if you could begin there, just for a basic breakdown.

I'm going to make a lot of people nervous, probably. And I'll let the experts come back to you with more details. But what I will say is if I have 650 barracks today, which is pretty close to that number, and we've done 23 in the last couple of years thanks to your help, we have eight MILCON projects going on now all over the Marine Corps. There's still a long way to get to the rest of the barracks. So the Commandant knew this coming in, and he changed and reprogrammed with your help a lot of funding, a lot of money to put money up front from the Corps in hopes that we would return to you and say, if we put in half and reprogram some things, can you help us with the other half? And this is a multi-FYDP, as you know, sir. Camp Pendleton's going to take a long time to get that right. If we get going this year, we have 30 projects from brand new barracks to refurbished to fixing roofs to air conditioning.

Thirty total projects on Camp Pendleton?

Yes, sir. So that is hopeful that Marines see that. We spoke about the brand new mess hall at the 62 area, beautiful, next to the 1940s buildings where Marines live.

Can I—I don't mean to cut you off. I want to make sure I get through and Judge doesn't get mad at me. Do you know—so the last number we saw from GAO was around 17,000 Marines lived in substandard barracks. That was 2023. I saw public reporting that just on Camp Pendleton around 9,000 rooms didn't meet the Commandant's standard. Do you have updated numbers on roughly how many rooms we're talking about, how many Marines are living in substandard conditions?

Yes, sir. What the Commandant has set a goal is that we will score between a 90 and a 100 on the BCI, the index, the scorecard. And that's a high end. So he has set us on the path to get there. So that means that today there still exist, if I remember right, there's three. There are three barracks, two in Yuma and one in Lejeune, that are under 60, which is what we would consider by the letter of the law, don't live there. And we have one in Yuma that Task Force Forge, the Marines, instead of putting them outside, we blocked off the rooms and put some Marines in those barracks to live and go back and forth to the border mission. But in springtime, those Marines will be out and they'll be in a better place. So that will kill any Marine living in the barracks that's under 60.

So I'm a big believer, you know, if you aim at nothing, you'll hit it. And so I'm trying to put some meat on the bones with regard to this $11 billion figure in the next 10 years. Just, you know, and I'm going to follow up with you on this, and as I said, we'll be at it for a while. But getting as specific as we can about what the real needs are, and then we can work backwards from there. Because it's very tough when you have a big number and you have a lot of rooms that are going to need to be renovated, and then others just don't meet the criteria at all, you're going to have to knock down and start from scratch. Last question for you today, and we'll follow up, but what can we expect this coming year in the Barracks 2030 initiative?

You'll see eight new barracks, some in the Pacific, some in Lejeune, some in Quantico. You'll see one here at the barracks being built for those Marines. You'll see mess halls being refurbished as well, and you see the air conditioning specifically in your area allowing the Marines to have the ability to control their rooms. That's what you'll see a lot of this year, sir.

Thanks, Sergeant Major. That was a very fast five minutes. I'll just say it's an honor to advocate for every dollar that we can to help.

You make me nervous. You know more about Camp Pendleton than I do.

No. Thank you. We'll follow up. I yield back. Thanks.

Thank you, Chairman. I appreciate you convening this awesome panel. Nearly 150 years of awesome military experience helping advise us on how we should conform priorities within our bill. It's precious taxpayer dollars that we are charged with protecting, but hearing directly from you about how that affects our service members helps us do that tough job. Thank you, Chairman, for getting us all together. Master Chief, how you doing?

I am doing great.

Always good to see you, MCPON. Good that we talked in my office a week or two ago. I want to follow up a little bit about some of the conversations we had about off-base or at least off-ship housing for our junior single enlisted sailors. We've made strides here in the last couple of ten years. When I was stationed in 32nd Street, we didn't have the options that we have right now. Most of my junior enlisted folks, single folks especially, were living on the ship. That's not good for quality of life or readiness or how those two things are related to each other. Fortunately, we've made strides in that. I want to follow up a little bit about what we talked about, Pacific Beacon. How's that working out? Is it replicable? What's the good? What's the bad? How does it affect morale? How does that morale affect readiness?

Congressman, thank you for the question. To your point on moving sailors off the ship, the Chief of Naval Operations, when he came into office, decreed that no sailor will live aboard a ship that doesn't want to. When he made that edict, there were about 7,000 enlisted sailors living onboard ships. We're well past half of those have moved off into barracks. And I think that's a significant quality of life and quality of service improvement for those sailors because surface sailors were the only ones we made sleep where they worked, right? Nobody else had to do that.

The surface sailor fleet's pretty tough.

Yes, sir. But to your point on Pacific Beacon, you know, I think it's worked for us as a PPV because it was purpose-built as an apartment building, right? So there was for very little kind of initial Navy investment, we found somebody who actually knows what they're doing in building apartments. They built us a very modern apartment complex with all the modern accoutrements, pools, the hangout spaces. And the satisfaction of the residents who live in there is above 95 percent year over year generally. In fact, they like it so much, I'm having a hard time moving them out so I can make room for sailors who are on ships so they can move in there. And I think so that's why it's appealing to me. It proves that if you build a purpose-built facility with the right amenities, you know, it goes back to Field of Dreams, if you build it, they will come and they'll stay if you maintain it, and our partner there has. I think the problem is generally with barracks, at least in the Navy, we have demonstrated throughout my career that left to our own devices, we will not take care of this stuff. You know, we will not take care of the UH, we will not take care of the family housing because when budgets get constrained, it's the first thing that goes. And so whether or not it's this model, something like what the Army is piloting, but I think that's kind of the future because left to our own devices, I do not think we will take care of it.

Great. Thank you, Master Chief. Sergeant Major, how you doing? Sergeant Major Ruiz, how you doing? We've talked before about the Marines themselves. How the Marines doing?

Awesome. Ooh-rah. Motivated.

Love the Marines.

They have no choice.

[Laughter.] Also true. You've stated before the individual, the Marine, him or herself, is the Marine Corps' biggest asset. Is that still the case today?

It still is, sir.

Good. As a brother to a Marine sniper, I appreciate that, and I have to agree with you. And as Congress is making significant investments in hardware—this morning I was at an aircraft carrier developers' conference, I'll attend other things about submarines and aircraft and other big fancy expensive stuff. Do you think the Marines themselves, the man or that woman, are getting the investment they need?

Yes, sir. I think we can do so much better. You know, there are big companies that make those big platforms. I just want them to make me an air conditioner that doesn't collapse the grid in the barracks and that is cheap. Like maybe if we focus in that, that will be helpful. Individual combat equipment continues to be ever-evolving for what's happening in today and future fights, and that must continue to evolve and we must invest in that too. What will the individual Marine wear that does not give their position away to a $5 drone because of their signature? Like we have that technology today, we should start investing in that. And so I think we look at it in that the Marine can do anything with less, and that's we've been doing that for a long time. And I think we've turned a corner now and we've come forward with we can do and we can be this Marine Corps in 20 years if we invest here and we're not afraid to ask for it anymore.

And I think there's a larger appreciation, Sergeant Major, for the Congress and that concept now. I think it took us quite some years to get to the point where we knew we need to pay our folks the right amount, make sure they got the right healthcare, childcare, housing, things like that. Fortunately, I think that we've changed the culture significantly from an appropriator's perspective on that, from a Congress's perspective on that. But I want to continue to partner with you to ensure that we're investing in our individual Marines and all of our service members individually along that. And that means gear, that means the air conditioner, that means the best new rifle or whatever we need to ensure that Marine or service member can do their job effectively, come home safely. I look forward to continuing to partner with you on that endeavor, Sergeant Major.

I appreciate that, sir.

Thanks. I yield.

Congress has provided the department additional authority in the recent NDAA to help address military construction backlog, including flexibility to use alternative construction in the agents and execute projects in promoting the use of alternative construction methods such as additive manufacturing. How are the services using these authorities to accelerate construction and reduce MILCON backlog? We had a little discussion earlier about 3D printing, but I'd like to know if you've looked at that because that's where we get extra money.

Chairman, the Navy has looked at it. There have been some projects where we've used the new authorities that have been granted to us. You know, one of the things we've realized in the Navy is about 25 percent of kind of my MILCON must-do stuff is the national building code, there's about another 25 percent in NDAA language, and the other 50 percent that makes it really expensive is all self-inflicted kind of Navy requirement. And so the authorities given by Congress have helped the people who do this stuff for us realize, you know, I don't have to like gold-plate everything and there are alternate means to deliver a viable product that gets the mission done. So we have started to use those authorities. We are seeing some success in reducing the cost, but we have a long way to go just internal to our own requirements to, you know, as I said, quote, make a dollar buy a dollar's worth of stuff.

You know, I was on—went out to Kwajalein, and man, they had some barracks that were two years old that they moved everybody out of. That sea is terrible. It's just terrible what it does to buildings. And so we're going to have to build more and more and more with other ideas. But thanks for your comment. Any other comment?

Chairman, I'd definitely love to add on that. So the repair by replace, that's a great example. We're trying to prove that out. That's currently focused on a barracks down at Fort Hood, but if that's successful, that could absolutely be applicable to other things, motor pools. You and I have had quite a few conversations on motor pools, hangars. Hangars is another big one for us. Yeah, but also the new program design-build contracts that we're trying to work. That was a new one that we were granted that we're trying to figure out how to be more efficient from our design planning all the way to completion. So kind of compressing that to where it's not the traditional MILCON planning style. That's another big one. But some of the things we still need help with, Chairman, are labor costs. We're 60-plus percent more expensive inside the fence than we are outside the fence. That's a big one. And then our subcontracting is almost another 10 percent that's mandatory for us. And so we still have some work to do in this space and that's why the relationship here is incredibly important. And I do acknowledge these are bipartisan pieces and we couldn't be more grateful for the committee's support.

Anybody else want to comment?

Chairman, I would just say that as I said in my opening statement, the nation demands that we got to double the size of the Space Force and that's not just personnel, that's infrastructure as well. So I mean, like I said, I think we are about 10,500 Guardians today, so when I say double the size, right, so about 24,000 the next five to seven years. But the infrastructure required to support that, we are absolutely very excited about the flexibility and options whether, you know, how we approach MILCON, enhanced-use leases, intergovernmental service agreements, but we have got to be able to move at speed to build the infrastructure, the brick and mortar that's going to be needed to train and allow these Guardians to execute the missions that are coming to us. So all the authorities and flexibilities and there's no one size fits all depending on where we are and we are equally looking at that in our plan and how we're going to execute. So we thank you for those authorities.

Chairman, I'd be remiss, I forgot to even add, I mean the same conversation we're having right now about places like Fort Hood and Fort Bliss and others, it's the same situation for our organic industrial base that we're responsible for. Majority of that infrastructure is from the '40s and we don't always get to spend a lot of time there because I do focus where our troopers and their families live, but the same solutions in the infrastructure building authority space we're talking about right now are relevant for those key and essential locations also.

Anybody else? Ms. Wasserman Schultz.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I just want to note that I think one of the challenges that our subcommittee faces every fiscal year is that, and it doesn't matter what party affiliation the president has, they don't send us a budget with adequate investment in MILCON. I mean, for as long as you and I have been switching back and forth and even back to when Mr. Dent was the chairman and I was the ranking member, the stat that you say that 30 percent of our MILCON is in fair or poor condition is still the case. It might be more than that now. And so we have the list that we're able to fund, we have the UFR list that we're able to move up, but I wonder whether that model makes sense anymore. I wonder whether, I get you need a process, but the five-year plan, how it gets decided, the inability for the services to actually impact the decisions that are made at the top. I know you send up the requests and they come back with, you know, doughnut holes. And it's just not right and it's not fair and I feel like we're just on a treadmill every year in this subcommittee. So I would love to just find some creative ways of how we can break the logjam because it badly needs to be broken. Okay, step off soapbox, ask question. Sergeant Major, and we did talk more, we've talked about barracks throughout this hearing. One of the things that, you know, and we've had hearings about this with the privatized military housing companies and when I have had, when we've all had extreme frustration over the cost of doing business decisions that they make and the fact that they are not very responsive and other factors that affect the ability to really improve this significantly. You know, in the business world, if there are violations of contracts, there are provisions in them to terminate the contract. I mean, there's an ability of the contractee to hold the contractor accountable. But these 50-year contracts are so complicated and as we've said, as we've heard repeatedly when we've asked, they're impossible to unwind. So there is no accountability except a lawsuit and these are multi-billion dollar companies and, you know, the fines and fees that they pay are rounding errors to these companies. And so I have asked previously, I want to see where the progress is, not knowing exactly where we are in how many barracks are potentially heading towards privatized housing contracts. Are we, and I've said this out loud before, are we, and I hope the answer is yes, are we writing these contracts to the degree that we're moving forward on privatization of barracks in a way that they can be unwound and that the housing companies can be held accountable?

Ranking Member, thank you for that and I truly do feel your passion for not ending up in another dilemma that we spoke about hypothetically with Congresswoman Bice. I do have concerns and we are in a 50-year agreement at the Fort Irwin contract. It is and it is with one of our companies that we've had other agreements with. And I am skeptical because to my teammate's comments prior, we get busy, we get distracted, there's world priorities that take precedence and we have a tendency to let our, take our eye off the ball in the oversight space. And so I do think the key is in the writing of the contract. I owe you more details on the cost of breaking an agreement in that new contract at Fort Irwin and I will get those for you.

Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I really feel like we have to put our heads together on some language that we could consider that would require the services to draft contracts that allow the military the ability to hold these companies accountable and not sign these complex, you know, internecine contracts that, you know, they're 50 years. I mean, a lot of us are not going to be here by the end of that contract and I mean not just here in Congress, but on this earth. And I mean, look, I'd love to see that, but we have the ability to actually at the front end of this make sure that we can do something about it. So that's just a suggestion and that with my minute and 26 seconds left I want to ask a question about PFAS. Because the health and safety of our service members and their families is a cross-cutting issue across many of the topics that are important to the quality of life from quality housing to adequate access to mental health resources and one issue that this subcommittee as well as the defense subcommittee has provided significant appropriations for over the years is the identification and remediation of PFAS, also known as forever chemicals. But I continue to hear concerns about the pace of remediation efforts and removing forever chemicals is very complicated, particularly from the groundwater, but if current efforts are proving to be insufficient, then the services need to reflect that in your budget requests. So Chief Master Sergeant Wolfe, the Air Force has historically had a large burden in PFAS remediation because of the widespread use and presence of PFAS in aviation firefighting foam, the AFFF foam. Are you aware of any shift in the anticipated date for remediation at any active or closed Air Force installation? And if so, why have the dates been shifted?

Thanks, Congresswoman, for that question. We are absolutely concerned about this as well and we do recognize that our large aviation operations everywhere over the years have resulted in some undesirable effects. I'm not aware currently of any significant delays in the plans that we have laid out as we execute the guidance that's been given to us from the EPA and all of the regulatory agencies that advise us on how to do these things and lay down the requirements that we have to execute.

Could you check for me because the background material that I have read prepping for this hearing say otherwise.

Yes, I will get back to you and make any corrections to that if needed.

Thank you. I mean, and if that's the case, I mean there are times most fiscal years we have to add more money in to address this issue than is requested because the problem is so significant and I mean the harm that PFAS chemicals cause with long-term really deleterious negative effects on human beings' bodies is it's immoral for us not to deal with this and to keep kicking the can down the dirt. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.

Mr. Rutherford.

Thank you, Chairman. Chief Master Sergeant Bentivegna, I'm interested in the progress of bringing the Space Training and Readiness Command, also known as STARCOM, to Florida at Patrick Air Force Base. And in light of all the discussion that we're having about infrastructure, you know, knowing that Patrick goes back to when it was the NAS Banana River in 1940. That's how long this base has been around. It became an Air Force base in 1948. So 80-something years. They didn't give you the best infrastructure, I'm sure. Can you talk a little bit about what your plan is moving forward? I really liked the Sergeant Major's comments about repair by replace because I think there's a lot of wisdom in that. And then also not just the housing portion of it, which is quality of life, but I'm also equally concerned about as the Master Chief is about quality of work at their facilities as well. What are we doing moving forward on that with Space Force with the idea that you still have to grow STARCOM and you're talking about doubling the as we talked in the office, you're talking about doubling Space Force.

Yes. So thank you very much for the question and support of STARCOM's movement down there. You know, when you look at Patrick and Cape Canaveral, the buildings might be old, but the views are amazing when you go down there.

That's true. That's true.

So you know, earlier this month, sir, as you know, excited that they had a ribbon-cutting ceremony for one of the annexes where the STARCOM headquarters moved into. And that was just a first phase. In May, the second phase of that annex will open. It will double the capacity of the amount of the STARCOM staff that will be there. And as we talked about doubling the size of the service, you know, the scouting of that talent that's becoming into the service, the technical training, the professional military education, all of that will be the responsibility of Space Training and Readiness Command, STARCOM, that's headquartered down there. So there will be a growth as we go through that. That's one of the reasons that we're doing it in a phased approach. You know, we're hoping to have several hundred more people there this summer, with the full move from Colorado executed and completed by the end of 2027. That allows us to phase it in and also so we don't interrupt the good work they're doing to grow and train the force, but also working with the local community in the Space Coast has been a phenomenal partner to the Space Force as we're looking to make the investments that's, what's the childcare look like, what's the housing situation look like there, working with the community and building the infrastructure that we need from the military perspective, for example, making sure that the Guardian resiliency teams that go along with the Guardians to make sure that there's assistance there for their holistic health are being in place and ready to go. But also when I talked about, you know, having the flexibility that Congress has provided, that when we have to build infrastructure to make sure they're in clean, safe, and healthy conditions and their quality of life and quality of service is such that we can retain the talent, having just not MILCON as the only answer, because we know MILCON is a challenge, but having other authorities has really been helpful as we're building out what that plan looks like. But we're excited because STARCOM is foundational to all of this.

So Chief Master Sergeant, can you provide me that kind of outline of, not too in-depth, but I just want to know that we can follow the progression and make sure that if you hit any roadblocks, we can help.

Yeah, I will absolutely, we'll get with your office, sir, and I'll kind of have the detailed POAM that we have for the transition down there. And I know that our relationship in the office has been extremely helpful. So anything that we need help, I'll send up the signal, but I'll make sure I get you the plan.

Thank you very much, and thanks for coming by. I yield back.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just want to thank each of you for your remarkable service and the opportunity, I know, to represent your enlisted ranks is the most significant one that you can hold and how proud you are. And it's been such a privilege over many years to meet with your predecessors and continue to meet with you. It is really, I think, one of the most important criteria and requirements and mandates that this subcommittee has is to look out for the quality of life of our service members. It can get easily lost in the underbrush and particularly when our military is engaged in war. And I think when we don't prepare adequately and we don't ensure the quality of life measurements are robust when we're at war, the impact is disproportionately negative on our service members. I think one of the most important things that was said today, I can't remember which one of you said it, if a service member is worried about their heater being broken while they are deployed, that is a distraction that is, I think that was you, that's an unacceptable distraction that takes their eye off the ball and frankly could get them killed. I mean, we all know when we're thinking about what's going on at home, I mean, we all have important jobs and you know, I have something that's in the back of my mind related to my house right now this week, that's a distraction. It's fine, not the end of the world, but I'm also not, you know, protecting the national security interests of our country and my life isn't on the line like the people that you represent is. So I just want you to know that it really is a bipartisan priority and that we will continue to fiercely advocate and protect our service members and their quality of life. So thank you, Judge.

And I agree with everything she said. I want to thank you for being here today. I always greatly appreciate this particular hearing because we're getting past all the egos of stars and things like that and we're down to where the soldier is, the sailor is, the airman is, every Guardian is, in the Navy, and the Marines, especially the Marines. Okay, first off, I told every one of you came into my office, my door's always open. I'm serious about that. I used to be a judge, they used to call me at home for warrants. I didn't like it, but I got out of bed and issued the warrant. Okay, so if you have issues that are really tragic and important for me to know, pick up the phone, call me. I'll be glad to give all of you my cell phone number. And we want to make sure we're doing the right thing for those people you represent. And I know you all try to do that. So thank you for trying to do that. Keep doing it, and we'll see you next year. I guess that's it. We're recessed. Adjourned, I mean.

As a beat cop, I always appreciated judges like you.