Ranking Member Wasserman Schultz Statement at the Full Committee Markup of the 2027 Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Bill
WASHINGTON — 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 full committee markup of the 2027 Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Bill:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for yielding.
I also want to thank Chairman Carter for our work together for the past six years for our veterans, servicemembers, and their families.
I appreciate your continued partnership to maintain the bi-partisan tradition of this subcommittee.
And thank you Chairman Cole and Ranking Member DeLauro for your leadership on the full committee.
I believe that the bill before us today is the best that could have been written, given the subcommittee’s inadequate allocation.
While there are a few policy disagreements that I’ll discuss, given the tentative inadequate allocation, if I had the pen, I would have needed to craft a bill with similar funding levels.
The bill makes many necessary investments, but it also fails to fully fund some important programs.
For military construction, the bill cuts $9.4 billion from the President’s request and continues an unfortunate, longstanding, bipartisan problem underfunding the serious infrastructure needs of our military. This must change as we continue to do nothing to change the fact that 30 percent of our military infrastructure is in fair or poor condition.
It includes $50 million in funding to address PFAS remediation efforts and $15 million in dedicated funding to improve the resiliency of our military installations. These are positive steps forward.
I think we can all agree, $15 million in prevention now is a wise investment to help avoid billions of dollars in damage later, as we have seen in places like Guam or Tyndall Air Force Base in my home state.
The bill also provides additional investments in child development centers and barracks, both areas of bipartisan concern.
It includes $30 million for the military services to conduct oversight over privatized military housing. This is critical to improve the accountability owed to our military families living in substandard housing.
Unfortunately, the bill does not sufficiently fund the NATO security investment program, underfunding it by $122 million below the President’s request, but equal to last year.
VA health care is fully funded, although not as high as what the President requested. With increasing health care costs and growing demand for VA services, the bill’s funding level is sufficient.
I’m disappointed the bill does not include $53.7 billion in advance funding for Toxic Exposure Fund, to ensure VA can provide health care and benefits to veterans exposed to toxic chemicals, as promised in the bipartisan PACT Act.
I hope we can work this out today as we did last year, but it’s vital that we maintain our commitment to fully funding the TEF.
This advanced funding is also included in the President’s Budget request.
In terms of language, although this bill is largely devoid of culture war riders that plagued the process last year, which I appreciate, it still contains several provisions I oppose.
This bill undermines VA’s ability to keep at-risk veterans safe by preventing VA from reporting a beneficiary to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.
This requirement helps keep guns out of the hands of those who are prohibited under Federal law from purchasing or possessing firearms.
This bill is, in effect, prohibiting VA from following the law that is intended to protect veterans from doing harm to others or themselves.
Veterans make up about one in five adult firearm suicides, and we see an average of 4,600 veteran firearm suicides every year.
It is tragic and unacceptable that this bill undermines this effective tool that, when used, keeps our veterans safe.
The bill also includes two unnecessary provisions related to Guantanamo Bay and reproductive health report language.
Although the report language is non-binding, it serves no purpose but to stick a finger in the eye of women veterans and those that support the ability for women to make decisions about their own health care.
While the bill was written with the best information available –the budget was, once again, unacceptably late, impacting this subcommittee’s ability to do our job. And as I speak, the President has still not provided the required justification materials that we need to inform our funding decisions.
We also only held two hearings – down from about six, the number we normally hold before we write this bill.
We’ve not even heard from the VA Secretary, whose discretionary budget makes up 88 percent of this bill.
I know the Chairman has been working to get the Secretary scheduled to testify. I have told the Secretary directly about his need to testify about the President’s FY27 budget proposal for VA.
Finally, once again this year I am concerned about the government services veterans rely on outside of the MILCON-VA bill.
The President wants $1.5 trillion dollars for the Department of Defense, but his proposed tradeoff is to slash critical programs across the government upon which our veterans rely. Without the interim allocations for all 12 bills, it is impossible to understand the full impact to all our veterans and servicemembers as we consider our bill today.
I appreciate the hard work Chairman Carter has put into the bill before us and look forward to working with him to strengthen the bill during the markup today.
I look forward to continuing this important work with my colleagues throughout the rest of the Fiscal Year 2027 process.
Thank you, and I yield back.
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