Chairing Hearing, Warren Highlights Priorities for Military Personnel for Year Ahead, Urges More Investment in Housing, Child Care
Warren: “If we can be smarter with our resources, we could save billions of dollars that could be used to support service members and their families.”
Washington, D.C. — Today, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), chair of the Armed Services Subcommittee on Personnel, questioned officials from the Department of Defense (DoD) and the military services on their personnel priorities for the coming year. Senator Warren, in her opening statement, applauded the military services for making progress in addressing recruiting challenges discussed at last year’s posture hearing, and reiterated her call for fiscal reforms for DoD that would lower costs and free up room for investments in other priorities, like military housing and child care.
Senator Warren called for more available, high quality housing for the nation’s active duty members, noting that the Defense Community Infrastructure Program could be used to achieve this goal. Senator Warren concluded her opening remarks by highlighting the thousands of vacancies for care workers across DoD daycare centers and how progress filling these roles and bolstering child care capacities could help recruitment and retention.
The full text of Senator Warren’s opening remarks are available below:
Opening Statement
U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services Subcommittee on Personnel
Wednesday, May 8, 2024
As Prepared for Delivery
This hearing will come to order.
Good afternoon, and welcome to the Personnel subcommittee’s hearing to receive testimony on the military and civilian personnel programs in the Department of Defense and the military services.
Our annual posture hearing provides the Department and the military services the opportunity to discuss their personnel priorities for the coming year. It is also a chance for the members of this subcommittee to continue to address the major challenges confronting our all volunteer force. I am pleased to see the military services are making progress in addressing their recruiting challenges since our last posture hearing. Nice work. It is critical we welcome and support anyone who wants to serve their country.
There are several topics I want to focus on with our witnesses today. First, if we want to continue to have the most powerful military in the world we need to be smarter about our resources. Last July this subcommittee held a hearing looking at opportunities to better manage the DoD workforce and, at the same time, reduce costs.
While most people think DoD’s workforce is made up of only military and civilian employees, there’s also a huge band of contractors providing consulting, legal, and accounting services. Witnesses from the Congressional Budget Office and the Government Accountability Office told us that we don’t know how many are on the payroll or how much we’re paying. In September, the GAO released a report describing how we are missing out on billions of dollars-worth of opportunities to be smarter about how we manage this contractor workforce.
If we can be smarter with our resources, we could save billions of dollars that could be used to support service members and their families.
There are two areas in particular I would like to focus on.
First, military housing. I have worked with my colleagues on this committee to address significant shortfalls in the quality of housing we provide to service members—and we’ll keep working on that. But we also have another huge housing problem: there is simply not enough housing for our active duty military.
By some estimates, we’re short at least 7 million housing units nationwide—and that shortage has a big impact on military families. Every few years, we ask military families to pack their bags and move, often to communities where there aren’t nearly enough affordable homes. These housing shortages force military families to strain their budgets and pay prices they can’t afford or undergo long commutes. Those higher housing and commuting costs should be covered by the Basic Housing Allowance DoD provided to military families, but the most recent Blue Star Families survey found nearly three quarters of military families living in civilian housing are paying more than $200 a month out of pocket.
Congress acknowledged this problem. In fiscal year 2019, it created the Defense Community Infrastructure Program to help communities address community infrastructure shortfalls near military installations. DoD made clear from this program’s inception its top priority was “military quality of life, military resilience, and military value (in that order).” I look forward to hearing from our witnesses about how this program could be used to help address our military’s housing crisis.
Another area we should be investing in our military personnel is child care. Accessing child care remains a problem for all families – military and civilian. Two-thirds of active duty military families have children living at home. We must modernize and improve the way DoD ensures that service members and their families have access to affordable, high-quality child care.
I know this is a top priority for many of the members of the committee, and I’ve appreciated Ranking Member Scott’s partnership and commitment on this issue. Right now there are thousands of vacancies for care workers across DoD child care development centers, which means fewer available child care spots for military families. The Department has put together a plan to finally update the pay scale for child care workers. I am particularly interested in hearing from our witnesses from the military services about how increasing child care capacity could help us continue to recruit and retain the best military in the world.
We must do better to support our military families. Now I will turn to Ranking Member Scott for his comments to open this hearing.
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