Senate Floor Speech
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison
September 15, 2004 -- Page: S9242

MRS. HUTCHISON. Madam President, I am very pleased to bring forward for the Senate's consideration the fiscal year 2005 Military Construction appropriations bill. I am also pleased to be joined by the ranking member of the Military Construction Subcommittee, Senator Feinstein from California. We have worked very closely on this bill. That has been our tradition. We have never had a problem with our Military Construction bill. Frankly, we have done some very important work and begun to help the Department of Defense shape the military for the future.

Our bill provides, including $5.3 billion for military construction, $4.2 billion for military family housing; $166 million for NATO infrastructure, and $246 million for base realignment and closure costs.

Although the military construction needs continue to exceed resources available, I am very pleased that the bill provides a significant increase over last year's funding. I believe the bill we have on the floor today attends both to the President's most pressing priorities and to the concerns of Senators.

Since September 11, 2001, we have made great demands on our military personnel as they have waged the global war on terror. The sacrifices have been widely shared, but the demands have been particularly acute for our Reserve components who have faced deployments on a scale and for durations unprecedented in the post-World-War II era. Facilities support for the Guard and Reserve have traditionally failed to keep pace with need.

I am pleased that this year the administration increased the request for Reserve component funding by 68 percent. Even this higher figure, however, is not adequate and the bill adds an additional $194 million or 31 percent more for critically needed projects in the Guard and Reserve. We believe this bill does a very good job of providing the resources needed to accomplish our military mission. But nothing is so critical to the mission as the people who carry it out, particularly in a time in which so much is being asked of them. For that reason, we have paid particular attention to projects that enhance the quality of life of our military members and their families.

The bill provides over $1 billion for construction of new modern barracks, $188 million for design and construction of new hospital and medical facilities, and $11 million for child development centers to serve our military families. It also provides a 9-percent increase over last year for family housing construction operations and maintenance.

Because we are concerned about the quality of life of our military families, I want to comment briefly on a provision that is addressed in our bill and is very important to meeting the needs in the future for military housing. In 1996, Congress passed legislation to provide the Defense Department with authority to enter into partnerships with private entities for the acquisition and management of military family housing. Because the initiative was unprecedented, the budget authority for the program was capped at $850 million, pending an evaluation of the program's success. The success has been striking.

To date, the Department of Defense has awarded 34 privatization projects comprising 63,200 housing units. Another 63 projects involving 116,000 housing units in 37 States and the District of Columbia are pending. The program has accelerated significantly the elimination of inadequate housing for our Armed Forces and has placed thousands of military families in better housing far sooner than would have been possible otherwise. Customer satisfaction with privatized housing is extremely high, and the Defense Department estimates the program will decrease long-term housing costs by 10 to 15 percent due to more efficient maintenance. TheDepartment expects to reach the statutory cap late this fall, and the cap must be raised or the program would end. However, the Congressional Budget Office has decided to change its methods for scoring the additional authority, counting not just the annual appropriations required to fund the Government's contribution to privatized housing but also all the estimated benefits that accrue to the Government over time.

Effectively, the CBO intends to score the additional authority to enter into partnerships as though there were no partnerships, and the Government was paying for all of the new housing itself and paying for it all this year. That approach, besides seriously overstating the Government's expenditures for housing, negates any advantage of privatized housing over traditional military construction.

Public-private partnerships are relatively new, and we recognize CBO is struggling to account for them properly. We acknowledge the appeal of a theoretically comprehensive accounting of Federal financial activities. But the practical reality of CBO's proposed approach will be prolonged substandard housing for tens of thousands of our military families, with not a dollar difference in the amount of money Government is spending. So we are not going to allow that to stand.

I hope a sensible solution to this issue will prevail. We are going to continue to work with the Budget Committee, CBO, the Armed Services Committee, and in our own Military Construction conference. In the meantime, there is an amendment that is now part of our package that will direct the Defense Department to assess the impact on our military families if we fail to resolve this issue and, by doing so, put a marker down to address the issue in conference if it is not settled elsewhere.

Last year this bill differed from the administration's request in only one significant way, and that was overseas construction. The administration was in the early stages of its global posture review and there were many uncertainties about the future of the U.S. military presence overseas. Today, the Department's vision is clearer. The Department has made significant progress in thinking about the future of our overseas military facilities and, over the recess, began to publicly disclose some of that thinking. They have made a major step in the right direction. The Independent Overseas Basing Commission created by last year's Military Construction Appropriations bill is up and running and has begun its assessment of overseas infrastructure needs. The commission's work will help inform our evaluation of our overseas construction requirements.

I and my colleague, Senator Feinstein, have visited numerous military installations all over the world. I know our colleagues have as well. I am certain they have found the same thing we have--that the needs at these installations almost always outstrip the resources we are able to direct to them. Although most of the needs are eventually addressed, sometimes the urgency of the requirement isn't fully appreciated here in Washington, where the budget requests are being prepared.

This bill provides funding for a number of projects which are badly needed at particular installations and are in the future years defense plan, but which were not included in this year's budget request. All of them have been carefully screened by the military services to ensure that they meet urgent military requirements; all are top priorities for installation commanders, and all have been authorized in the Senate version of the Defense authorization bill. A significant percentage of them support our Guard and Reserve forces, and I am pleased we were able to include them in this bill. They are a priority.

The bill before the Senate was approved by the Committee on Appropriations on a unanimous vote of 29-0. I thank my ranking member, Senator Feinstein, for her cooperation and counsel throughout this process, and compliment her staff, Christina Evans and B.G. Wright, who have worked so cooperatively with my staff in preparing this bill. My staff, Dennis Ward and Sean Knowles, also have done a terrific job. They have traveled to the bases where we have requests to find out for themselves that these requests are needed and how we can best meet the needs of all of the military installations in our country and where our troops are based overseas. I so appreciate their professionalism and support.

I am pleased to offer the 2005 Military Construction appropriations bill for the Senate's consideration.