Requiring Reports on Management of Arlington National Cemetary

Floor Speech

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Mr. WITTMAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of S. 3860, a bill that would ensure greater accountability for the operations at Arlington National Cemetery.

I would first like to thank the gentleman from California, Chairman Filner, for his leadership on this issue and bringing this bill to the floor to make sure that this issue is put out there in the forefront, and to the gentleman from Indiana, Ranking Member Buyer, who has done the same, who is passionate about making sure that we are doing the right thing and making the right decisions. I think the ranking member points out some great things we ought to remember, and that is, let's make sure we do a proper examination. Let's not be hasty in reaching judgments. Let's make sure that we are thoughtful about this and make sure we are holding people accountable and not too quickly getting to a point of transference but really getting at the root of the problem. So I appreciate the ranking member for his thoughtfulness on that.

Mr. Speaker, these are our Nation's heroes who have fought and have died to protect our country, and they deserve absolute dignity and honor. The mishandling of remains and gravesites at Arlington has demonstrated that there was a clear lack of accountability. After allegations of mismanagement surfaced in June, Army Secretary John McHugh rightly came forward to accept responsibility and immediately made changes to correct the system. And I want to applaud the Secretary for doing that. He has done great work in making sure that this issue gets addressed. I do believe that this legislation is necessary, though, as the next step to ensure accountability and to avoid these issues in the future.

S. 3860 would require the Secretary of the Army to submit a report to Congress accounting for all the gravesites at Arlington Cemetery within 1 year. And folks, this is a significant effort. There are 320,000 of our heroes buried at Arlington. There may be up to 6,600 gravesites in question. We owe it to the families, we owe it to those service members to make sure that this issue is addressed.

This bill would require the Army to submit plans to remedy any errors found and make sure that those don't happen again in the future.

Under the bill, the Comptroller General would be required to report to Congress on efforts to change the management and oversight structure at Arlington National Cemetery, including contract management.

I am pleased that the legislation requires an assessment of the adequacy of current practices at Arlington, to provide information, outreach and support to the families of individuals buried at the cemetery as errors are detected and corrected. And we've seen some of those things happen here recently.

I just heard the other day of a family who was told that the remains of their loved one were, indeed, known and that they were confirmed. Unfortunately, a week later they were called and told that that was not the case. We need to make sure we get this right, and we need to make sure we keep in mind the effects on families who have loved ones and our Nation's heroes that are buried there.

The families deserve timely and accurate information about the location of their loved ones, and I want to make sure that that happens and happens in every case without ambiguity.

Arlington is the last resting place of so many of our Nation's heroes, those service men and women who are called upon and gave the ultimate sacrifice to this country and, folks, they deserve nothing less.

I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

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