Hearing of the Readiness and Management Support Subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee - Opening Statement of Sen. Dan Sullivan, Hearing on "We Need to Fix the Program for Today and for the Future"

Hearing

"I want to make sure that as we listen to the families and recognize their service and courage that we have our other witnesses, the DoD witnesses, the contractors who are intently taking notes and thinking about how they will fix this problem.

As I've dug into this issue, I'm hopeful that we can all agree, everybody here all the senators, all the witnesses, on three things:

We should have the best possible housing for our military and families. Period. There's a lot of talk about the 1 percent in America. Well guess what we're looking at a lot of the 1 percent in America -- it's the less than 1 percent that actually raised their right hand to support and defend the Constitution of the United States and die for this country and their families. And they should have the best housing period. That shouldn't even be in dispute.
Second, we need to fix the lack of accountability and oversight that has come from this, whether it's a DoD, or a chain of command, or contractors. What to me is so appalling as I've dug through a lot of these issues is how families, military families, weren't being listened to either within the chain of command. The Department of Defense or the contractors. We have to understand why and fix it.
And, finally, we need to fix the program for today and for the future. There are things in this hearing that I think are going to likely shock many Americans. We're going to hear about military families who are living with things like black mold and rodent infestations and raw sewage.
We need to look at this program -- not scrap this program. There are a lot of good homes, including in my state, in Alaska, that provide quality and affordable housing for our service members. But something has gone terribly wrong with the system and how to fix it. So I think if we can agree on these three things, Mr. Chairman, it will be an important start.

I do want to thank the service members and their families. It takes a lot of courage for you to be here--those who have traveled to be here, and we are looking forward to hearing your testimony."

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