During a House Appropriations Committee hearing prior to the congressional recess, Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-TX) questioned Sergeant Major Michael R. Weimer of the Army about meeting military construction needs.
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00:00Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman and Madam Ranking Member for this hearing.
00:08Gentlemen, thank you so much for your service.
00:10Thanks for the time you took last week to visit with me and others.
00:16I have had the incredible privilege of serving on the House Armed Services Committee
00:22and serving on that committee's quality of life panel.
00:26And many of you came before us last year to talk about quality of life.
00:31And I'm privileged to be on this committee and this subcommittee to be able to take all of those lessons learned
00:38and apply them on the MILCON side.
00:41I also want to say I have the incredible privilege of representing Fort Bliss,
00:47which is one of our nation's premier military installations.
00:51And working with leadership there over my three, now my fourth term in Congress,
00:57has been the highlight of my service.
01:00So I'm grateful to all of you for your leadership as well
01:04and everything that you do to help inform our decisions.
01:08I've been really alarmed by the mass firings, deep cuts to personnel, but also the yearlong CR,
01:17which has a direct impact on our nation's military, on leadership's ability to plan ahead,
01:25on the impact it has on our contractors who depend on their ability to plan for the future
01:32and to have some stability.
01:34I really hope that Congress understands the negative impact on our military every time there is a CR.
01:45So I just wanted to get that off my chest.
01:47Thank you for allowing me.
01:49I'm going to focus on the Army.
01:52So, Sergeant Major Wehmer, you and I had a great conversation.
01:56As we talk about our MilCon obligations and the backlog and the incredible need that leaders like you relay to us,
02:10we have to figure out better ways to stretch the dollar and be more efficient with the funding that we provide.
02:19And there was a mention a few minutes ago about data.
02:23Data is so important, and I can tell you some of the data that I've seen locally.
02:29When we look at MilCon investments at Fort Bliss and we compare them to non-MilCon investments,
02:38but regular investments, either via the university for housing and compare that to military housing
02:45or local governments investment in healthcare building hospitals versus what the federal side spends on building hospitals.
02:57There's a real opportunity for us to find more efficiency.
03:02The data I have seen demonstrates that we're spending up to five times more money through federal spending on similar infrastructure projects
03:14than what local governments are spending.
03:16And so there's great opportunity for us to do more and to learn from that and to be innovative.
03:23And Sergeant Major, you and I talked specifically about integrating intergovernmental service agreements for major military construction,
03:33scaling up privatized barracks construction, land lease for industry to facilitate construction of non-military facilities,
03:42like childcare development centers or administrative office buildings.
03:47We also know in Fort Bliss, really cool innovative projects like 3D printed barracks.
03:54We really have a great opportunity here.
03:57Sergeant Major, can you speak to the utility of implementing more creative mechanisms to meet our military construction needs,
04:05especially at mobilization forest generation installations like Fort Bliss?
04:12Yes, Congresswoman, let me look at that clock real quick.
04:15There's a lot there.
04:17Thank you for the meeting we had.
04:19It was fantastic.
04:20And I really do appreciate your energy and others' energy when it comes to helping us find creative solutions during things like CR.
04:28There, I said it. I can get it out of the way.
04:30But also where we are with our MILCON and MILCON reform that we really do need some assistance with.
04:37Like any good organization, we have to look internally ourselves first, right?
04:43We can't just immediately ask for legislation assistance, although there's some space there where we could use some help.
04:49But we also have to look at like our own force protection.
04:52We've added some crazy force protection measures that are a bit legacy, in my opinion, and others before we closed off our installations.
05:03But we're still paying for those additional costs.
05:06Some of our construction costs have increased 50%.
05:10Every state's a little bit different.
05:12I don't really want to talk labor laws and agreements, but that's a factor in this also.
05:18We can't even get construction workers onto the installations because of their federal records.
05:24And so they're continually changing the construction workers.
05:28And so you have delays, and I could go on and on.
05:31But I guess I would like to say creative solutions are fantastic, and we're never going to stop working with you and anyone else that's willing to help us in the core of engineering that space.
05:44But really, a lot of those are band-aids in, I think, to true MILCON reform.
05:51So I'd love to work with you on this in the future.
05:54Count on it.
05:55That will be a priority for me.
05:58It is a priority for me, not just Army, but across service lines.
06:03Because as we see budget constraints going forward, and we compare those constraints to our inability to be creative and thoughtful and strategic in terms of our reforms and our creative approaches.
06:23It's those families who end up living in subpar conditions or are active duty service members who have to deal with the inadequate responses.
06:34So when I spoke with each and every one of you, I mentioned that as a priority.
06:40That is something my team and I are really going to dig into.
06:43Really appreciate your collaboration.
06:45Again, appreciate your time today and your service to our nation.
06:49I yield back.