Servicemember Quality of Life Improvement and National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2025

Floor Speech

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Mr. ARRINGTON. Mr. Chair, for his entire childhood, the dream of a young man by the name of Caleb Smithers was to serve in the United States Army.

He got the chance to serve. Literally months into his service, his training at Fort Bragg, he had a serious accident, and because the safety protocols weren't there to check on a soldier who had such a serious injury, because there weren't accountability measures for private contractors for healthcare services to the Army, this young man ended up dying.

I think his life could have been saved if those protocols were in place and if the accountability measures were in place. I think the Secretary of the Army has all but affirmed that.

This provision would put those things in place or would expect that the Army does, and we would defer to their best judgment on how to do it. This young man's life, and his mother here, Heather, who has worked diligently, relentlessly with the unconditional love for her son that not only would his spirit of service live on, but would actually save the lives of other soldiers who would find themselves in the same predicament.

I think we all care about our soldiers, our sons and daughters in uniform, and that we would want the abundance of precaution so that we would prevent this from happening.

By the way, in the future, if this should pass, those checks would be called Smittys after Caleb Smithers.

I ask my colleagues for their support.

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