Ranking Member Wasserman Schultz Statement at Fiscal Year 2025 Oversight Hearing on Quality of Life in the Military

Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL-25), Ranking Member of the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee, delivered the following remarks at the Subcommittee's oversight hearing on quality of life in the military:

- As Prepared For Delivery - 

Thank you for yielding, Judge Carter. I look forward to continuing our excellent partnership this year on this subcommittee and working in a bipartisan manner to improve the quality of life for our servicemembers and their families.

I would like to thank the five witnesses here today for their testimony and their continued work on behalf of our servicemembers.

This subcommittee continues to provide the robust funding – consistently above the budget requests, which is necessary to address many of the issues we will discuss here today.

But we all know funding alone is not enough to address issues like mental health, sexual assault, and inadequate housing. Leadership from all of our witnesses here today and other senior military leaders is a necessary part of any solution. Your roles are vital to the success of our military by ensuring we take care of all needs of our servicemembers – on and off the battlefield – and I know each of you take your responsibility very seriously.

Maintaining recruitment and retention is a job that is never done. I hope to hear from our witnesses today about the importance of providing adequate housing and childcare. These fundamental services are essential to bringing on and keeping servicemembers in the military. If we cannot support servicemembers and their families or provide livable, quality housing we will lose people.

For fiscal year 2024, the Committee provided $336 million for Child Development Centers, known as CDCs, which includes funding for six new CDCs. Today, I want to dig into the specifics of childcare needs across the services and the status of your infrastructure plans to meet those needs.

Additionally, in fiscal year 2024, we again provided an additional $30 million to improve the oversight of DOD’s housing portfolio. I would like to hear from our witnesses how that funding will be utilized.

I am dismayed to once again to have to highlight the issue of sexual assault in the military. While I appreciate the steps DOD and the Services are taking to tackle this issue, such as developing training programs to educate and instill a culture of respect for those with whom they work, the statistics we have seen continue to show dramatic progress is still needed both in reducing the prevalence of assaults and in bolstering trust in the reporting system.

The Department of Defense’s fiscal year 2022 annual Sexual Assault and Prevention Report showed another increase in reported assaults.

I hope the fiscal year 2023 report that should come out soon shows more progress.

A large part of supporting servicemembers wholistically includes supporting them mentally and physically. We need to ensure we prioritize each and every person’s mental health and continue to evaluate and study the effects of what servicemembers are doing in combat or in training environments.

And to that end, healthcare is integral in supporting the quality of life of a servicemember and their families. I commend the Department for finally expanding its previously discriminatory IVF policy by now allowing eligible troops to access IVF regardless of their marital status or sexual orientation and allowing for the use of donated eggs and sperm.

I fought for years through language in this bill to change this policy because DOD’s policy affects the care veterans can receive as well. More can be done, but this is an important step in the right direction.

We must continue to make investments to ensure that the environment servicemembers and their families live in are safe and healthy. From addressing lead paint, to asbestos and mold, oversight of housing is not just an abstract goal, oversight has a very real effect on military families.

We must also continue to address contamination that is left behind after a military base is no longer active. I continue to hear concerns from the public that the speed of DOD’s remediation efforts for PFAS contamination is far too slow. For fiscal year 2024, this Committee once again provided an increase above the request of $50 million in dedicated funding to address PFAS contamination.

We have been prioritizing this for several years now and the expectation is that DOD will expedite cleanup of these contaminants.

Looking to the year ahead, we will soon dive into the specific budget requests for the Services, and I hope after those robust discussions on MILCON funding needs, we will see a bipartisan House bill with adequate funding to fully address the requirements to ensure military readiness and improve the lives of our servicemembers and their families.

Thank you all for coming today and for your service. I look forward to your testimonies.

I yield back.

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