Transcripts For CSPAN3 Hearing On Military Privatized Housing 20240713

All right, the Committee Meets today to receive testimony from the Government Accountability office, the Service Secretaries, the Service Chiefs, on the current condition of privatized military housing. Almost a year ago, i first heard from the military families about the dismal conditions they faced. Frankly confession is good for the soul. This was janet driver called this to my attention, from Tinker Air Force base. And i thought this was something that was just unique to Tinker Air Force base, and then i thought, no, it is elsewhere in oklahoma. And so that was the background of how this all started. Weve come to learn that its it is a problem nationwide. Its a National Crisis of proportions we havent seen since the scandal at walter reed about a decade ago. Members of this committee, our staff and myself, weve all traveled and seen these problems firsthand. This is the third hearing this committee has had on this issue and im sure its not going to be the last. We open that since our first two hearings in february and march that we would see more differences by now and be able to use this hearing, in fact, it was set up to discuss the progress thats been made. Well, it is set up to look at the progress, but the progress has not been what we wanted. We continue to hear regularly from the families across the country about questionable practices, poor workmanship and about housing contractors not caring about the families theyre supposed to be serving. Additionally as reported in the press, some of these contractors are now under investigation for defrauding the federal government. Im worried what else can come out of the woodwork on this. What other problems are out there that we dont know . To our witnesses from the department, i have to ask, when is enough enough. I have to make one comment, though of the eight witnesses that are here, with one exception, they all kind of walked into this blind because its a new issue that youre not familiar with. When im critical, say some things that are critical, im not looking at you personally but as the department and how youve who is representing it before you arrived here. So regardless of any potential criminal wrongdoing, were still receiving complaints showing that youre still failing to fix the problem. The time for talk is over. If these companies cant get the job done, you owe it to the military families to find a company who will. This housing problem is really a readiness problem. We dont think of it as being a readiness problem. I had experience talking about this. We actually had two airmen who had to come back from uae to handle this problem that should have been handled by the military in their absence. This is a very important element. These hearings are not to be an indictment of the privatization housing system as a whole because in some cases its worked very well. To those who lead our men and women in uniform, i ask what are we going to do about it since almost a year later were still hearing from the same about the same problems. As i mentioned earlier, this will not be the last hearing im putting our witnesses on notice that we will have another hearing early next year to discuss implementation of our housing Reform Efforts and contractors will be back to answer the hard questions. I had some things i was going to say about ms. Field, but i think i will go ahead and not use her time. But i think that the gao has done a great job. And i want to make sure everyone hears from them. But to remediate these and dozens of other problems, we have more than 30 housingrelated provisions in the nda this year. 30 provisions. Thats another reason that the ndaa is important and weve been unable we have those problems that we will be addressing. We cant afford to ignore this readiness problem. Issues like military housing, were continuing to pass the ndaa every year. It supports a Bipartisan National Security of our country and should not be held hostage by issues outside this committees jurisdiction. Unfortunately because of issues that are not in the Senate Armed Services committee jurisdiction, this years ndaa is not yet resolved which means only leadership can clear up this logjam thats out there. Its greater now than it was. Were out of time and i didnt mean to deviate from the subjects of this Committee Hearing but i think its very important that we bring this up, this critical thing thats taking place right now. I hope we can move past these issues so we can remain focused on the promises we made to those who serve our country and get the ndaa signed into law. That should be our priority and it is. With that, i would like to recognize the military families who have traveled here today to seek answers from you and we would like to have theyre in the back of the room. I want all families that have an interest or have been affected to stand up right now. Lets give them a round of applause. [ applause ] as i have said before, these are the people who trust you whose trust youre going to have to regain. Senator reed. Thank you very much, mr. Chairman. I would like to begin by again thanking the vast number of military families who have spoken out about the inadequate conditions of their Privatized Housing. I want to recognize the families who have traveled here today for this hearing. Today we welcome ms. Elizabeth field. Ms. Field, i want to thank you and your team for your dedicated work thus far. The gaos findings confirm the Alarming Trends we have heard. The gao found the 87 satisfaction rate is misleading and unreliable and that the records for work orders and Service Calls are questionable. This committee continues to receive complaints directly from military families. While the services have made strides since last february, many unacceptable problems with housing remain. I am still not convinced these private companies are doing everything in their power and investing as much as they can to improve the quality of homes for our military. I have several questions that i ask be entered into the record that were requested directly by military families and diagnosing medical problems caused by inadequate housing conditions. While the conference process is still under way for the fiscal year 2020, i remain confident that we will reach an agreement on legislation that will represent the most significant reform of Privatized Housing since its inception in 1996. We have a lot of work to do and i thank the chairman for convening this important and timely hearing. Lastly, i want to take this opportunity with the civilian and military leadership of each of the services present to express my deep concern about the president s recent interference in war crimes cases involving members of the u. S. Military. These comments will follow the senate on november 21st. The president has the pardon, but he has the responsibility to use that power wisely and not recklessly. Good order and discipline are critical and time honored traits of the United States military. Ensuring military and women remain tethered to our ethical principles. Some claimed the cases were distractions and the president s intervention has somehow improved morale of the military. On the contrary. President trumps disregard for our military Justice System risked undermines the confidence of our Service Members and the rule of law and their chain of command. Especially those who are courageous enough to bring allegations of war crimes to light and testify against their teammates. When we do not hold our military personnel to appropriate standards of conduct, it also makes it more likely that they will face similar abuses on the battlefield and less likely that we will be able to hold our enemies accountable. Theres no one with more credibility on these issues than former senator john mccain who stated this is a moral debate. It is about who we are. I dont mourn the loss of any terrorist life. What i do mourn is what we lose when by official policy or official neglect we encourage those who fight this war for us to beget that best sense of ourselves through the violence, chaos, and heart ache of war, we are always americans, indifferent, stronger, and better than those who destroy us. I believe the president s interference in these cases have done them a serious disservice. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you, senator reed. Each of the departments has submitted a statement for the record and i would ask each of our departments to look through the to limit your remarks to five minutes. We have a full panel today. We have a lot of members who have a lot of questions. Before we turn to the department, i would ask ms. Elizabeth field to provide her statement which i know includes new findings that will be made public for the first time today. Ms. Field . Thank you, chairman inhoff, Ranking Member reed, senators and staff of the committee, its an honor to be here today to discuss the ongoing work assessing the military housing initiative. Almost as soon as reports began surfacing last year of problems with military Privatized Housing, Service Members and their families began reaching out to us to share their stories. We heard from military families who were reported mold throughout their homes, rodent infestations and other Serious Problems like gas and Carbon Monoxide leaks and repeated sewage leaks. While these are just some of the examples of the complaints we received, theyre indicative of the types of concerns we heard from military families living at Privatized Housing across the country. What we wanted to find out when we began receiving these come complaints was how commonly held they were. Defense Department Officials have primarily pointed to two metrics to help answer that question. First, they cite the results of the annual Satisfaction Survey. According to dods most recent report, Tenant Satisfaction has remained at 87 and is, quote, a critical indicator of Overall Program success. However, as senator reed noted, we have determined that for many reasons ranging from how the survey question was asked to how the results were compiled and calculated, this 87 figure is not in any way reliable. Second, the department points to high occupancy rates. Dod stated that the fact that occupancy rates remain greater than 93 programwide demonstrates a high level of Service Member satisfaction and overall success in providing suitable and desirable housing. However, through our site invites where we conducted 15 focus groups with families, we learned that family members choose to live in Privatized Housing for reasons that have nothing to do with the housing itself. Reasons such as living in close proximity to medical and Education Services for children with special needs or a concern that offbase housing is neither affordable or safe. We sought a different way to determine the extent of the problems we were hearing about. We collected and analyzed over 8 million work order records from all 14 private partners and all 79 projects. Our hope was that we could use this data to determine the hazards to see patterns over time and to assess the timeliness of maintenance conducted on the homes. Unfortunately, we found that because the data in these records are not captured reliably or consistently, they cannot be used to do so. Among other problems, we found anomalies in the data provided by all 14 private partners such as duplicate work order and work orders with completion dates prior to when they were submitted. The problems i detailed are significant not just because they tell us that dods statement that the program has been successful overall may not be fully accurate, but because the department has been using these metrics to reward and incentivize the private partners. The Service Secretaries along with officials from the office of secretary of defense have taken steps to address these and other problems, from working to renegotiate the Fee Structure to strengthening oversight on the ground to increasing Staffing Levels to military offices and i also want to acknowledge the many factories that make this a deeply complex problem. Including the departments inability to unilaterally make certain changes to the legal agreements with the partners. Through our ongoing review, we know that the departments efforts are headed in the right direction. But it will take sustained attention likely over a number of years to work through the many complications of this longterm Public Private partnership and to meet the departments goal of providing safe and clean housing for all Service Members and their families. Thank you and i look forward to your questions. Thank you, ms. Field. We have a lot of participation today. Were going to have sevenminute rounds. Were going to ask our members to stay on subject. There will be temptation to get into other areas, but housing is it today. That will be what we will attempt to do and i will take my first im sorry. Lets go ahead with our Opening Statements. Lets start with secretary mccarthy. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Chairman inhoff, Ranking Member reed, and distinguished members of the committee, thank you for this opportunity to provide an update since the focus on Housing Operations began in february of 2019. I would like to reiterate the armys serious commitment to providing safe, quality and Affordable Housing to our soldiers, Civil Servants and their families. Its our responsibility to provide housing, not simply to code, but to quality. We must fix the current housing crisis using a housetohouse approach. We must also fix the governance model and address underlying issues to ensure systemic change. Over the last ten months, we identified our governance flaws, initiated town halls and created 24hour help lines to hear feedback from the families. We have empowered the chain of command. Created transparency of the work order process and ultimately sought to regain the trust of the men and women in our ranks and their families. We directed housing as our top priority and are aligning resources against it. As a demonstration of the commitment to this issue, we assigned Housing Operations to the fourstar commander who has the authority to with hold Incentive Fees. We have developed new metrics, measuring work order Response Times. Work order repair quality and satisfaction that will allow us to hold fees for substandard performance. As a service, a bill of rights is being finalized. We are also equally concerned and committed to barracks and armyowned housing. For fy 20, projects will total 790 million. While the army has worked hard over the past 10 months to make significant strides, theres much more work to be done. The immediate focus is to fix current housing issues that can be addressed through work orders and improved management. We owe it to the 45 of our force who live on post. In addition, we need to to rapidly address the needs of families who have been temporarily displaced. Across army installations, theres a need for standard operating procedures, tra transparency and accountability of claims. This must include standardizing rent reimbursement and remediation or replacement of household items. Since february, the army has tracked the displacement of 2,265 families. Currently one 182 families are still in housing. To displaced families, days can feel like weeks, and weeks can feel like months. These arent simply numbers, these are lives. Currently we have over 86,000 privatized homes, with onethird of houses in good condition. Onethird in fair condition. Requiring minor refurbishing, and onethird in poor conditioning needing to be rebuilt. Right now the general is work on overall analysis of the housing requirements and in the spring we plan to present the findings to the key committees of jurisdiction. In closing, the armys resolved in our commitment to providing safe quality and affordable hou housing to our soldiers and their families, but much more work remains. We need congressional help in two areas. First, we need the ndaa approved to the resident bill of rights. Thank you, i look forward to your questions. Thank you, mr. Secretary. My staff reminded me that well stay on our schedule. Next would be hearing from acting secretary modly, then secretary barrett. Try to stay within your five minutes. Chairman inhofe, Ranking Member reed, distinguished members of the committee, thank you for your continued attention to this very critical issue. For the Navy Marine Corps team, our people are our most Precious Resource and we will always prioritize their safety and their wellbeing, particularly of our sailors and marines, also their families who serve alongside them. There is an empty chair at thanksgiving table for many of our navy and marine corps families because father, mother, wife or husband was deployed overseas. These families serve with pride and distinction. On top of the considerable demands of military service, no military family should ever have to contend with chronic maintenance issues or concerns such as mold and pests in their homes. Trust and confidence are the bedrock of effective command and the sailers and marines in our care must be confident their leadership will advocate tirelessly on their behalf. This is commanders business. The three of us are actively engaged on this issue and have been since the beginning. And were committed to empowering leaders throughout the chain of command to assess, monitor and remediate issues of concern. Since the department of the navy last addressed this committee, we have diligently pursued three distinct lines of effort. One, active and engaged leadership, two, reinforcing the department of the navys oversight of our ppd partners, and, three, improving partnerships with Privatized Housing owners to most importantly restore trust with those families that reside in those Housing Units. Our written testimony provides more details on these efforts, so well close with this. While we have made steady progress over the past six months, we are not completely satisfied and we will not rest in our determination to make this right for our sailers and marines and their families. We appreciate the committees continued resolve on this matter, and the committees efforts to secure the resources we need in this effort by ensuring final passage of the ndaa and the fiscal year 2020 appropriations. Thank you and we look forward to your questions. Thank you. Secretary barrett. Chairman inhofe, Ranking Member reed, members of the committee, thank you for inviting us to discuss housing today. The Service Secretaries and Service Chiefs Work Together on this issue. We share ideas of how to improve housing because our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines who live on military facilities deserve safe, secure quarters. We are jointly committed to resolving housing issues and thank you for your continued attention to this matter of mutual concern. Issues with Privatized Housing on some installations revealed instances of faulty construction, subpar maintenance, and late responsiveness. While many bases have effective Privatized Housing, others have suffered with project owners who have simply failed. Some project owners have reportedly disregarded maintenance requests, misrepresented timelines, performed partial repairs, and failed to correct the root causes of problems. The air force owns part of the responsibility as well. We cut too many personnel who provide ed oversight of the projects and to own and fix these issues. As a result, housing problems have distracted from the air force mission. They have disrupted our airmen and dislocated their families. This is unacceptable. So we are taking steps necessary to hold our project owners accountable for improved performance. During my confirmation hearing before this committee, we discussed some of these issues, subsequently my first stop on my first trip as secretary was to survey base housing. Since my successor testified on the subject nine months ago, the department of the air force has fixed many housing issues and made progress toward fixing others. The results of which have been shared with this committee. Dozens of recommendations from the ig and from air force itself and from families themselves have been fully and partially implemented. Process improvements fall into five broad categories, we are empowering the residents, we are integrating leadership and accountability into all levels. Residents, project owners and the military chain of command are communicating directly and candid candidly. Air force policy for Housing Management have been updated and standardi standardized. Under the leadership of air force assistance secretary john henderson, and tenacious base commanders, we are establishing Resident Councils to solicit direct feedback. We are placing new resident advocates at each of our military housing offices to connect residents with resources and to help resolve disputes and additional personnel will help us achieve 100 premovein inspections while enhancing oversight. We have also worked with project owners to fix root causes of reoccurring mold at the bases with the most severe challenges. Some housing issues invite concern about possible misconduct, including allegations that some project owners manipulated Maintenance Data to increase their incentive awards. These allegations have been referred to the air force office of special investigations which in coordination with the fbi will determine whether to press criminal charges. Senator wicker, last week, you and i visited keisler air force base in mississippi, we met air force families who had been displaced from their privatized homes as many as four times in recent years. As these families prepared for thanksgiving, they wondered whether they should decorate a Christmas Tree in their temporary homes or rely upon the latest promise that they would return to their permanent homes in time for their holiday. Family disruptions and Health Challenges are profoundly personal and impactful to these families and therefore to us. We owe it tour air force families to get this right with your continued support we will. I look forward to your questions. Thank you, secretary barrett. Were going to have fiveminute rounds. We have more than a dozen contractors out there, providing military housing to our services and some are better than others. There is one that is kind of notorious, one end of the spectrum and thats Balfor Beattie. I mentioned Tinker Air Force base. They are representing lackland, travis, fairchild. And might be a little unfair since youre the newest one, secretary barrett, but to give o you the first question. When does if you have a repeater like this, and this conduct like this, why is it that there is still there, what do we have to do, how do you how do you pull a plug . How do you get that done . Contract obstacles out there that we want to get things done and youre the newest one out there, what do you think . Senator, thats what were looking at. Before i was confirmed, the air force was taking action on exactly that concern. They received that Company Received a letter of concern from the air force expressing that the air force has lost confidence in their ability to perform under their contract. That letter was issued in september. Since that time, they have not been receiving performance Incentive Fees. Since that time, all of their contract they have the contract on many bases, all of their performance fees have been withheld. So they are under financial penalty right now, in addition to that, they have been it has been requested they submit an action plan for what they will be doing, that plan is due by the end of the year, and there will be metrics and accountability from that plan or the air force will be initiating the elements accessible to us under the dispute resolution procedures, which could lead to anything up to a default on their lease. I guess short version is youre doing everything that you can do that you inherited all the facilities that you are able to changes youre able to make currently. To each of the secretaries, i would like to mention or i keep hearing that theyre talking about these Companies Said that they would be open to reopening these agreements to ensure transparency, accountability and performance. Never talk about what the cost would be. So i would ask any secretary who would like to respond to the question that behind closed doors, our company is willing to reopen these agreements, or are they just giving you lip service to contractors trying to dig their way out of a bad situation . If theyre opening it to reopening them, the agreements, have they have any of them talked about what the cost would be involved to do such a thing . Any of the secretarys . Mr. Chairman, in our most recent discussions with the rci partners, there was a discussion about the restructuring of the debt of their companies, the economics in most cases for the projects are under 1996 Interest Rates. So 7, 8, 9 for the projects, which by changing the scoring model at omb, we can provide an opportunity for them to go to Capital Markets and increase the capital to for reinvestment. What we need to do, what we have instructed in the armies for general gus perna to come back with an analysis of how substantial of a project this would entail, and then would have to negotiate that, but the sense that i had from the most recent discussion in september was there was definitely energy to do that. Any other secretaries . We absolutely would consider reopening the contracts, renegotiating the contracts. It is much more efficient to work under that contract now if they will correct their behaviors, but if not, we will certainly and less cheaper than trying to start all over again, i would exactly. Okay. The you know, we do have some we have gotten some positive results, i know well hear more about the negative results, but i know in the case of tinker, colonel fieldcheck took command of the 22nd air wing and things started to improve. One thing he did, i was down there, and i heard from other people, he actually went to town Hall Meetings and were talking about the those that are in charge in the chain of command, going to town Hall Meetings and meet with people and really getting emotionally involved in them. So i would like to at least point out that some good things are happening and we want to learn from those experiences. Senator reed . Thank you very much, mr. Chairman. And let me once again commend miss field and the gao for their excellent work. You made the point that many of the statistics that are used, particularly for the performance incentive Fee Structure are erroneous, misleading and not appropriate. Which begs the question, which sector he responded to. Ill address it first, since im in the navy, have you withheld performance fees just in general because of the inaccurate data or specifically because of problems you encountered . Director mccarthy . What we did, senator, had to go back and look at the incentive award fees to ensure that the metrics were such that we incentivized the appropriate behavior by the contractor in this case. So what general purna has done is revised them. We did get inputs from the gao and others, but he has revised those, those will go live here in a couple of weeks. But there are specific instances for installations in fort benning and i think one other location, most recently where we held back substantial joint base lewismcchord withheld substantial fees, back from the contractors in this case because of poor performance and work order Response Time and quality. You want to add anything . I just add that as the secretary said, the average Incentive Fee is 77 . Were taking a much harder look at that. Theyre not all getting 100 . As low as 11 , and we see that making a difference in the performance of the contracts as they execute their mission. Mr. Secretary . Senator, we in the navy have not paid outcentive fee this year. Were looking at those carefully to understand whether or not they earned them and were going through that analysis. We have done what the army has done in terms of changing the way were calculating the Incentive Fee to much more heavily weighted towards Resident Feedback and their perceptions to including health and safety issues which were not part of the incentive Fee Structure before. Thank you. Secretary barrett, do you have anything to add . The air force has been looking at restructuring the fees including a lot more of input from the base commander so that the performance on the base is calculated into the structure. Let me return again, directing questions to each of the services, this these contractual agreements are you find now somewhat constraining in terms of getting the proper performance. What is the biggest contractual obstacle you see, secretary mccarthy, and is there any way we can provide the assistance to you to get that modified . Senator, when the bill of rights is published, i think that the dispute resolution is one in particular that we need to put in place as quickly as possible. It is why many cases that the only mechanism the families have to get results is legal action. So the sooner we can have a dispute resolution in place, it will help improve matters dramatically. If there was a meeting of the minds between the companies and the services on dispute resolution to benefit the quality of life of soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines, that would be a positive step . Yes, sir. Thank you. Mr. Secretary . Yes, senator, i agree with secretary mccarthy on this one. I would say one of the other challenges we have is that we dont have until now we do not have great visibility into the data. Most of the Maintenance Data was captured in two different types of i. T. Systems. They werent capturing data in the same ways. Were trying to standardize that so we can get visibility into that a lot quicker. We understand if a contractor is not performing properly, we can take action on that a lot more immediately. And i also agree with secretary mccarthy on this issue that the tenant bill of rights. Once we standardize that, i think thats going to help our ability to resolve disputes more quickly. You can rationalize the data without any contractual changes . You can do that within the current context . We believe we can do that. We need the partners to enter the data in a way that makes sense to us so we can compare it across the entire population of homes that we manage. And secretary barrett, your comments, please . I dont know of any contractible changes that congress can help us implement, but well take a look and if thats the case, we would be happy to provide those for the record. Thank you very much, thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you, senator reed. Senator wicker . Miss field, who performed this Satisfaction Survey . The annual Satisfaction Survey that i referred to in my opening remarks is conducted by an independent Third Party Group named cel. We found nothing wrong with how cel conducted the survey. It is more the questions that were asked and how the results were collected and analyzed and presented to you. Okay, who makes that determination . Well, the there are multiple levels in which there are problems with this. So cel did not devise the questions . They just simply asked what they were told to ask . My understanding is that the services coordinated with cel to develop the questions specifically they asked how much do you agree or disagree, i would recommend this community to others, which is different than the question that was presented to you. Well, i think we should all agree this we got bad information, inaccurate information, and we ought to completely rethink how we ask that question. So we can find out what the troops are really thinking there. So thank you for that. Secretary barrett, thank you for coming to mississippi and visiting with our Service Members there at keisler, senator hiyde smith was there with me. Congressman palazzos staff was very involved also. And i let me give a shoutout to colonel heather blackwell, the Wing Commander there at keisler, as well as her senior enlisted leadership. I think this particular group of leaders represents a mind set change to be very customer oriented and to be empathetic with the troops and the folks trying to make it work in these houses. And, frankly, i would contrast that with some of the previous leadership we had at keisler where one particular person told a member of my staff that by raising the questions, he was simply making matters worse. And i was absolutely delighted to see that there is none of that left at the leadership at keisler anymore, and there is very much a mind set of knowing what the problem is and that it must be solved for folks that stepped forward. You also i think you have dedicated an assistant secretary to work almost exclusively with this problem, is that right . Secretary barrett . Well, senator, that assistant secretary has a lot of other duties as well, but hes really spending a great deal of his time on exactly this topic and really is devoted to it. Right. And thats john henderson. Hes sitting behind you. So i want to thank him too. And it does occur to me hes spending a lot of time on this. We have an unusual situation at keisler in that katrina hit. And almost all of our 1188 Housing Units had to be replaced in one felled swoop. And it took me a while, but yesterday i finally found out this information of the 1188 residences there, 1,084 actually have experienced moisture and mold. Now, were told this was a mistake with the installation of the air conditioning units and particularly the air conditioning ducts. I would like for you to tell us on the record how many air Conditioning Companies were involved in this, were all of them involved in the homes that have had the moisture problems, why the multiple instances and you mentioned a family that had four that had had to leave their residences four times and the problem still hasnt been solved. Why is it that the remediation is often not getting done. Why are they typically told youre go to be out of the house two weeks . And typically that turns into four and six and eight weeks. Are there any houses that are ever repaired in two weeks . Id like to know that. How often does it in fact take two weeks, and why is it that neighbors tell these people that their units that have been vacated often go days without workmen being there and of course theyre out for longer and no work is being done. That cant be a good use of the time. Many of our troops are asked to move out to hotels because there is not adequate housing for them to be in. One troop said he had to be out by 11 00 a. M. Got all this belongings in his vehicle to be to comply with the 11 00 a. M. Checkout. And then midafternoon, as he sat in his car, he was told it will be another two weeks. You have to move back in. This is this is called being jerked around by the system. And then one other question and im over my time, but these need to be answered on the record. In many instances like biloxi, mississippi, the Homeowners Insurance is so high that the basic allowance for housing isnt adequate. When i was when i was in the air force on active duty, i was happy to go off base and use my bah and live well. Do we need to change the statute to account for higher Homeowners Insurance with bah . Thank you, mr. Chairman, for that indulgence. Thank you. Senator blumenthal. Thank you for having this hearing to follow up on our last hearing in march, most of you were not here for that hearing. I recognize. The progress that has been made since then has been encouraging, but extremely limited. And i want to thank the military families who are here today, but also the countless military families who have continued to contact us directly. And as well to advocate for better housing. And i want to highlight as a matter of fact one area where we received complaints and i would like to know of all the complaints that you have received about retaliation. This issue is one that is most troubling to me, retaliation for legitimate complaints, ranging from Service Members being prevented from attending certain training with their unit, or Military Spouses being disinvited from participating in spouse support groups, we heard stories about Housing Company representatives circling homes of military families in cars, making verbal threats or moving work orders to the back of the queue for families who are asking for desperately needed maintenance. These reports are absolutely outrageous. And i would like to know in writing of all of the complaints received by the service, my time doesnt allow me to go into them here. These military families report to us conditions that have been chronic. Repeated, recurring, endemic to their living and no doubt loss of Incentive Fees will spur some improvements. But Incentive Fees and even the bill of rights and ive been a strong advocate for a bill of rights, in my view, lack the impact that rightful criminal prosecution would have. And i note that in none of the statements presented here this morning has there been any mention of an actual referral or criminal prosecution. I am deeply disappointed that there has been no such referral. Secretary barrett, i thank you for mentioning that in all actions where fraud is suspected, you, quote, immediately notify the air force office of special investigations and the department of justice. There has been a recent report by reuters released last month that Balfor Beattie communities fake records at several air force bases nationwide, thats time reports have been in the misrepresentations and outright lies to every one of the services and i would like to know from each of the services whether you have referred any cases for criminal prosecution beginning with secretary mccarthy. Not at this time, senator. Secretary modly . Senator, we have not done that yet, but i would like to say that a couple of months ago i made a decision as the under to put a dedicated audit function within the assistant secretary of aine solely for ppv to go out and investigate and to determine whether or not there is any such activity as you mentioned so that if there is such an instance of that, we have the ability to have data, to have evidence and then turn that over for prosecution if necessary. Secretary barrett . As i indicated, we have investigations going on by the office of special investigations of the air force, and we have where fraud has been alleged, those facts have been presented to the department to the fbi and they will be determining whether or not to go forward with pressing charges. Have there been any referrals for prosecution as yet . Not yet. Well, i i really want to urge you and i did it in the march hearing as well, it is not a new concern on my part, and in fact in the ndaa there is language and the Senate Passed version of the ndaa to encourage these investigations which i helped to write. I also have written to each of the Service Secretaries urging that fraudulent activity be referred to the department of justice and i would like a report within a reasonable amount of time from each of you as to what the status of any investigations are within your department. Thank you for your attention and i know just in closing, let me say, i know that every one of you wants the best possible housing for the men and women under your command. I have no doubt about your commitment, but i think we need to use every tool, every possible resource, to make sure that these private contractors get the message that there is a new era for military era for mi. Th thank you, mr. Chairman. Senator ernst. Thank you, mr. Chair. Id like to say thank you to the Witnesses Today and for your commitment but even more importantly i want to say thank you to the responspouses, the f members that are here today. In the 90s i was a young army wife, newly married into the rangers and had a husband that deployed frequently, so i can only imagine the situation that all of our family members went through, whether you are juggling family, children, child care, school, a civilian job, whatever it was that you had in addition to that, you had housing issues that you had to address because maybe your spouses were elsewhere doing what the United States federal government told them to do. So thank you to all of you. I do understand those challenges and we have to make a change. So thank you for being here. So weve talked a lot about this high level of investigations and involvement of our secretaries and so forth, but what i would like to hear from commandant and our chiefs is what are we doing to educate those young commanders, you know, the health and welfare of their troops, that is up to them. So while we do have other special offices that are involved, what are we doing to educate that chain of command and how they can get engaged with their troops and making sure that housing is appropriate . Secretary barrett, if we could start with you. We are, in fact, working on training for the commanders of the bases and the squadron commanders on the housing issue and on medical issues so that there is a better understanding, and that will be passed on to each of the of the members of the military. General goldfein, did you have any more to have. When it information came up i hosted a conference with all of our Wing Commanders, active guard, reserve, civilian leaders 278 strong. What i shared with them is there are certain things that we have to do as leaders that are nothing short of sacred duty and one of them is ensuring that every airman that deploys in harms way is properly organized, trained and equipped and when they come home we have taken care of their families when theyre gone. You cant delegate that, that is command team business. In every echelon of command now we have training not only on their responsibilities, but also on the tools they have available and to get to senator blumenthals point to make sure that we have all the tools available and were pushing Decision Authority down to where they can make the most difference. Absolutely. Thank you. Commandant . I think your point, maam, about the two chains of command is really important. To both have a key role as you pointed out, the installation this is what they do every day and they focus on it, but i would say accurate prior to the spring they were not educated on how to interface with their ppv partners and what labors they had when they werent performing. On the unit chain of command, which is what general goldfein focused on, i think we didnt we didnt look the other way, but im not sure that all of our commanders in fact, pretty confident most did not understand their they understand their role in leading their troops and everything they do or fail to do, but not when their housing situation isnt working right. What are they supposed to do . Now thats part of our commanders course. Should have been you could argue it should have been before happened. Now it is. So in both chains of command i think your point about education has to be there, but it cant be one time. It cant be in 2019 only. This is something we have to sustain. Thank you, commandant. Admiral . Yes, maam. So thinking about the core issue here, really the root cause of what drove us to where we are right now, i think a big part of that was mindset, the commandant got at this with the fact that we dismissed responsibility for those things that we are accountable for as general goldfein said. I think the other thing that went hand in glove with that was the fact we never codified responsibility roles and responsibilities, including oversight for commanders. So like the marine corps we now have formalized courses for all our commanders, executive officers, senior enlisted, but even more importantly right now recognizing that most of the progress that weve made to date is grounded on good leadership that allowing or enabling commanders at every level senior enlisted, what the right what the right levers are to pull. When a sailor and his family has an issue we can respond immediately and not put it on the back burner. General, if you have anything to add briefly, please. Yes, senator. We may have outsourced housing to private contracts but we have not outsourced responsibility. Our command is the lowest level every leader is responsible and accountable for their soldiers, they understand that and they are back into fixing this problem set. Thank you. And, again, to our families i want to thank you for your resiliency and intestinal fortitude, i truly appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, mr. Chair, and chaings to our witness thank you to our witnesses. Yesterday secretary mccarthy asked me to accompany him to fort belvoir and we saw two houses there that had very Serious Problems. Fort belvoir has 15 communities in it, some of the houses from the 1940s and 50s and some are ten years old. We visited two communities that were new communities, in one house we saw a family who were repeatedly told that they didnt have a mold problem, the husband has some carpentry skills and he could remove some molding around a shower and find that indeed there was mold. He was being told there wasnt a problem when there was. Even after the mold problem was discovered by him he couldnt get a response until he said the place is so safe we need to move out and then the Housing Company jumped into action, maybe because there was going to be a financial consequence if they moved out. A second family was having their home repaired, the spouse noticed that they werent bringing any new insulation into the home, they were supposed to clear out a mold situation and put in new insulation. They told her they had done it. She noticed that no new insulation had been brought into the home and she said open the wall, i think youre lying to me and the wall watts opened up and the old insulation that was dirty had been put back in and it was already soaking wet because not only had they not put in new insulation they hadnt fixed the water problem behind the wall. And this is six months after we have had this hearing. Secretary mccarthy was not happy with this when he heard these stories nor was the Garrison Commander. I think weve identified two main problems, the military chain of command abdicated responsibility for this when the contracts were entered into. And i can understand it, especially gives the ops tempo of war fighting in the last 15 or 20 years, there were priorities that assumed front of mine and other priorities that didnt get attention that they deserved and need to now get. Secondly these Housing Companies they had a double standard and the double standard was they all separate in the private sphere and lease to private tenants and have to compete hard to make sure they have high occupancy rates. If they treat their private tenants badly they will go elsewhere but they treat military tenants like theyre captives, like its a captive audience. People who move from across the country to a place where they dont know anyone, where they dont know anything about the rental market, where theyre trying to find new schools and get accustomed to everything else, there is a natural tendency to want to live on base and the occupancy rates will be high because of that tendency. So these companies who would compete hard and try to produce high quality product in another Business Unit of the identical company treat these folks as if they are captives and that they dont have to treat them in the same way that they would treat private tenants and i find that outrageous. I want to ask you, ms. Field, a question about your testimony because i find a couple things about it pretty shocking. The 87 satisfaction, that is in a report that Congress Demands and so its a report to congress and i feel misled and im trying to determine whether im accidentally misled or intentionally misled. So if you read ms. Fields testimony pages 12 and 13 you understand her conclusion that the data is unreliable. Osd gave an instruction to the military departments that in the annual Satisfaction Survey they were supposed to ask this question, would you recommend Privatized Housing and it was yes, no, or i dont know. That was the osd instruction to the demts. Instead the departments on the survey they didnt ask that question, they asked this question, how much do you agree or disagree with the following statement, i would recommend this community to others . I would recommend this community to others. A reasonable person reading that question wouldnt think it was a question about housing. What does that mean . My neighborhood . Fort belvoir . Fairfax county . Northern virginia . If people had a problem with housing it might factor into their answer, but the answer to that the fact that the answer to that question is 87 tells us precisely nothing about what people think about their housing. And if i understand your report correctly the military departments didnt ask the question that the osd told them to ask. Now, i understand from a footnote that in 2019 finally theyre going to ask the question that they should have asked all along, are you satisfied with the condition of your unit . Thats the question that you need to ask to have a statistic an answer that you can count on, but the answer to the question of would you recommend this community to others tells us exactly nothing about housing. So i definitely feel misled by this 87 number. And i dont know whether to feel intentionally misled or accidentally misled. Im going to conclude. Secretary mccarthy youve raised an important point that we need to frap grapple with as a commi. If the companies structured the finances around a 7 or 8 Interest Rate and right now if they could refinance and refinance to a much lower rate and free up capital that could be used to capitalize improvements in military housing, we should be doing what we can in a fiscally responsible manner to allow the refinancing of these contracts with the expectation that some of the money thats freed up with the refinancing could be plowed back into houses. So many of us have probably refinanced our own houses during times of low Interest Rates and we have been what the military and what these housing provide should be able to do. I hope we will explore if there is a fiscally secure way to help them refinance and perform improvements. Thank you, mr. Chair. Thank you for being here and worrying about the housing for our families. Ms. Field, you said in your testimony that there was changes that if we could make those changes that it would have a big impact. Is there legislation that we can pass right now that would force changes that would impact positively Impact Housing for these families . Senator, i think the most important thing that this committee can do is to keep the pressure on both the services as well as the partners. A lot of the things that are in, for example, the bill of rights are things that could be done right now. They dont necessarily need to be legislatively mandated. We at gao have been looking at mhpi almost from its inception and we have found problems throughout. Its really that pressure that you can exert that will probably be most impactful. Okay. So there is no legislation that the services need right now that would change the housing . I dont want to state that categorically but i would say that some of the things that probably would be most helpful are not things that can be legislatively mandated because they have to do with the legal agreements between the services and the private partners. But we can pass legislation that required the private companies to change, right . We could pass i believe that that would still require negotiation with the partners because of the existing standing legal agreements, many of which are 50year agreements. Whats the limitation on issuing a limitation . Senator, there is a couple issues related to the nda language that we have that are different than the departments position. Specifically i will cite two examples with the dispute resolution we need to hire an outside firm to be a thirdparty mediator and there is a difference of opinion between us and the committee on how to best bring a thirdparty entity into the fold. Another one would be on whether or not the army could have on post Quality Assurance folks to inspect the rci partners homes through legal liability because we dont own the assets. We are working through that with the committee. We could step out but we want to do it in concert with the congress to have support of the congress, sir. Senator scott, just let me add to that the Service Secretaries have all agreed on the tenant bill of rights that we have negotiated with the ppv partners. So we are ready to go and to sign, were just being differential to the committee and what theyre trying to put in legislation and make sure we are in synch on that. Senator, thats exactly the same with the air force, we are ready to go, could have issued it earlier, but dont want to issue something today that then lies in contrast with what the ndaa might come out. Why dont we just do it and if the committee ever gets it done then change it. We could, but then i think that our air men would rather have a consistency of what that bill of rights entails. So the dollars that have been held back on performance, can you take those dollars and mitigate the problem . Are you allowed to do that . Again, a private contract, if somebody violates the contract i can go spend the dollars and eventually get the money back. Do you have the ability to do that under existing contracts . So if you want to take the dollars, any dollars, but take for sure the performance dollars and say ive got 15 homes that need mold repair, i will go ahead and take the money and spend it, can you do that . Senator, i have to get the answer for that specifically. Im not familiar enough with what the contract with the negotiations with the ppv partners say, but when the fees are not paid out they stay within the service, so i have to look and see exactly what our legal rights are in terms of what we can do with that and i dont know the answer to that, but we will get the answer for you, sir. Barbara . Im not sure of the contract language of whether thats held in escrow or withheld with you not available to the air force. In the air forces instance we have, however, spent 25 million in remediation that is that may be brought against that the contractor fees. So do you know senator, its my understanding the funding is held in escrow but i dont think it can be converted to other projec projects. Will you find out when you get back and just let me know. Yes, sir. Why wouldnt you spend those dollars if you can do it and limit and take it away from the money you had to pay the companies. Have any of these Companies Said to you all that they dont have because of their finances they dont have the financial wherewithal to make the changes . Yes, sir. I mean, the last discussion we specifically addressed how do we increase the ceiling on capital for investment because as i mentioned in my Opening Statement, a third of our housing is going to be required recapitalization. So we should substantially more funding and if you have economics from the mid 90s, 8 , 9 interest on the bonds. So they are never going to fix this if they dont have the capital to do it and they cant get the capital to do. The general and i sent a letter to the director of Office Management budget to change the scoring criteria on projects. Go back to Capital Markets, get lower Interest Rates which they have very much a desire to do that obviously from a business perspective but to be able to increase the capital so it can be much more aggressive on investment projects. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Senator scott, let me just interject here that we have had the bill of rights language in the Defense Authorization bill. Our problem is weve been bogged down mostly because of the house on the Defense Authorization bill. Now, were dealing with an absolute deadline now and of course that language is in there. It was our thinking at that time so not encourage the bill of rights to be put together until we had a chance to do that in the ndaa. That makes sense. You sure think, though, that they could take the money thats been held on performance and go spend it to go fix the problem that these companies are responsible for. That makes sense. Thank you. Senator heinrich. Thank you, chairman. I want to start by saying that i share senator kaines frustration with the data that weve been given and frankly how that data has been characterized and we need to understand as ms. Field points out exactly what the situation is and the way questions have been asked has really obscured that. So i want to ask each of you, one, are you currently as Service Secretaries are you asking the question that osd suggested that you ask, that would you recommend prioritized housing, and in addition are you asking the question that was also referenced in the gao report, are you satisfied with the condition of your housing unit . Yes, senator, we are making the changes to the customer survey. And is that current or is that in process . I believe its in process, sir. Senator, we are looking at that as well to ensure that the surveys are asking the right questions in terms of whats happened in the past in terms of how we followed the guidance of osd, i dont have information about that. I will say that we did an out of cycle survey immediately after this situation came to the forefront last year and we discovered that we actually had much lower rates than we had thought before. So i think were looking at this and we want to make sure and this is my point that i made earlier about data and understanding what the data is telling us and making sure were asking the right questions and measuring these tbd partners properly. Well, i will say that i think that ms. Field and the gao were able to get to the heart of a lot of data very quickly and to implement other tools like phobe us groups to understand the nature of this problem. All of us up here need to be able to have reliable consistent data. So for the remaining two secretaries id also ask are you asking those two questions today or when will you be asking those two questions . Senator, we are asking the questions as directed by the secretary in the form that is the requested form. One of the key issues on the data is that we really are challenged when we dont dis aggregate the data, when you put it all together it looks like 87 sounds like a really good number, thats 90 plus percent on many bases but its much, much lower and thats where we really need to focus our attention, but when we aggregate the data its harder to find the real answers and the real problems. Secretary mccarthy, you mentioned the need to fix the model, i think those were your words, but we also heard a third of housing is in poor condition. So, you know, it forces me to ask the question was privatizing our military housing a mistake . And to put that another way, do we at least need to take a step back and analyze whether this model is actually working for our men and women in uniform . Senator, if we hadnt prioritized we would not have been able to bring the Investment Capital to bear to have the current housing portfolio in the shape that its in. The 13 billion worth of investment has been put in place since 1996. We wouldnt have had those funds, for example. I think that the challenge is that over a 50year relationship you have to adjust over time. The flexibility of the contract, the manner in which to restructure debt when Economic Conditions are better, you have to present these opportunities. So that that is where the challenge is. Do we have the tools and the knowledge built into your services to actually implement those contracts, to hold people to account, because those things happen every day in private real estate business but thats not an expertise that is necessarily something that i think the services have spent a lot of time thinking about, and we if we are not doing that we certainly owe it to the men and women who live in these homes to get that right. Great question, senator. It really hits home to the point secretary modly mentioned before, our ability to analyze the depreciating assets, when to make the right investments. Are we capturing the appropriate data to know the health of these homes . The oversight, the Quality Assurance, it requires substantially more resources but also to your point the right skill sets associated to manage that. We are in many cases we need to improve across the board in all those areas. Senator, i think it was absolutely the right decision at the time to go in this direction and as secretary mccarthy said we would not have been able to recapitalize these homes at the time that we did it. That does not mean that its worked out great and i think i would say that its not horrible performance but i think its very uneven performance and i just from personal experience i have a soninlaw and a daughter who is on active duty and they have lived in Privatized Housing and it was fantastic. Ive gone and visited several different bases and some of its fantastic and some of its not. The problem we have right now is really understanding the differences because we dont have good access and visibility into whats actually going on on a unit by unit basis. When you accumulate data and it says 87 , well, what about the people that arent happy and how are we finding out about that, and not just finding out how are we fixing it . Were also finding out about it sometimes a year after its happened. So we need to be much more in a realtime monitoring of this problem and thats what were trying to do. And we certainly have the tools to do it. Data is being captured, its just not standardized. Once we have that and we have realtime information we can act a lot more appropriately and a lot more quickly and we certainly have the tools to do that given some of the tools that exist because of the revolution in technology that weve seen. So we can address this, i think the model needs tweaking and as secretary mccarthy said there may be some structural challenges with the debt that we need to look at as well, but this is a problem where when you outsource something i think there is a multiral shift where people felt that it wasnt their problem anymore, but its always going to be our problem to worry about the health and well being of our military families and we just have to reinforce those messages and im sure we will. Thank you, mr. Chairman. And i also want to recognize our military families that are here today. Its hard enough to serve in the military, its hard enough to be a spouse of someone who serves in the military, but you add on to it the challenges that we are talking about here today and the types of stories that we have heard for what families have had to put up with and as someone who served myself this pisses me off and, you know, again, what you endure is hard enough. This is a leadership issue. I appreciate our Service Leaders being here today and your commitment to address this issue. This is also a leadership issue by these companies, you know, in america we just came past veterans day, we are very patriotic we want to say thank you for your service and all you do yet climate and culture in these companies starts at the top, too. The culture from the top all the way down whether they are going to be Customer Service oriented, responsive 24 7 to the needs of those families, whether they are going to do whatever they can to make sure that they are addressing the health and welfare of these families, i mean, thats a climate issue. Maybe soft of the ceos need to move into military housing over the holidays, what do you guys think about that, and see how they feel about trying to figure out where theyre going to put up their Christmas Tree or where theyre going to be serving christmas dinner. Ms. Field, thank you for all of your work on this. I see theres basically 14 companies that have been involved in privatized military housing. Are any of them not acting like slum slords at this point . Are think any of them doing a good job . I wouldnt want to characterize any specific company as good across the board or bad across the board. At almost every installation we visited we found that the military housing officials on the ground were extremely frustrated with the private partner personnel on the ground, were not getting the cooperation or support they needed. There were some exceptions to that which i would be happy to talk about, but i think its fair to say as weve discussed earlier whether tenants are satisfied at an 87 rate or not theres clearly a problem here. So one thing i read in some of the testimony is that sometimes families were confused when they went to the office as to who was the advocate for them thats paid by the taxpayer and who is actually a representative of the slum lord. Maybe they could wear their tshirts that say slum lord on it, im not trying to be facetious, but identify whether they are with the company or a housing office. I would encourage our Service Chiefs to ask them to do that. They need to know who is who. That they are not talking to the contractor when they are making a complaint. General goldfein, do you want to Say Something about that . I would offer there is a trifecta approach to this. There is the command team, there is the Housing Management officer and the office and then there is the privatized owner and all three of those have to be engaged and where we have good engagement by those three and ownership and responsiveness, its working. Where one of those is not there, it doesnt work. And just the family member, though, needs to know if they are coming in to vent their frustration whether they are talking to somebody who is representing the Company Versus somebody who is supposed to be their advocate. Do you guys agree . Im trying to get audience engagement here. But one other factor is we specifically put language this as youre trying to fire more individuals in the housing offices and to be advocates is to prioritize Military Spouses for those positions. I dont think you need ndaa language for that. Is that something that each of the services are looking to do because, you know, they are at a depression level unemployment as well. This is something weve been working on this committee as well related to Military Spouse employment, but pretty quickly i bet you would have a number of Military Spouses who would love to serve in that role. Id love to hear from each of the services whether thats a priority. Secretary esper prioritized that early on in his tenure to give the opportunities for Military Spouses to have preference for hiring opportunities on the inns la igs. Are there positions that are open that are unfilled right now, though, that could quickly be used be filled with Military Spouses . Any of the other Services Want to jump in . Senator, weve added 300 additional positions and this is one of the problems that we discovered in our discovery this last year was that to your point we didnt feel like we had enough advocates out there and so were adding 300. We are in the process of hiring them. We are also waiting on the appropriations bill to pass so that we can fund those positions, but prioritizing Military Spouses for those jobs is something we are going to do. Great. Thanks. Secretary barrett . We have also established 219 new positions for residents advocates and those would be great jobs for Military Spouses. Thanks. Im almost out of time but i want to just make sure everybody understands that the ndaa is being held up for political games. The defense appropriations bill is being held up for political reasons that have nothing to do with our troops. So i just want to make sure everybody understands that without an ndaa and without the defense appropriations bill at the level that we have agreed to or that we have been fighting for, this is going to hurt fixing some of these issues that military families are feeling dealing with and military housing. Can i get a yes from everybody . Thank you. So lets get everybody on both sides of the aisle to vote those out and get them done this week. Thank you. I yield back. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I thank all the secretaries and the chiefs and the families and advocates who are here. This is a continuing addressing of a concern that is going to be ongoing and as you noted, we have to be vigilant not just today, tomorrow, but going forward. So, ms. Field, you said that the department cant make unilateral changes to these longterm contracts to address some of these issues that have been brought forth. Can you give me an example of a limitation in contract that would make it really difficult for the department of defense to unilaterally make a change or require a change . Sure. Senator, most of the agreements, although not all, do have a performance Incentive Fee built into the agreement. What weve determined through our work is that a number of the metrics that underlie those performance Incentive Fees are not good ways to measure the condition or the quality of the home. So they are looking at things like occupancy rate which has nothing to do necessarily with the condition of the home or with things like timeliness in reporting. Our understanding is that to change those underlying metrics as written in the agreements the partners will have to agree with the services to make those changes. There is no underlined may trick for habitability of units . I cant say uniformly across all of the agreements because they are all different, but when we looked at them we found that they were overwhelmingly more focused on the Financial Health of the project and the partner as opposed to the quality or condition of the home and holding the partner accountable for that. So for the secretaries or the chiefs, are any of your agreements relating to habitability of the units . Are there is there anything that allows you to negotiate regarding habitability in any of your contracts . Anybody can answer. Senator, the metrics the incentive award fees referenced they were not uniform across all of the installations, first off. Second with respect to habit the question you asked, i dont know if its on any of the installations if we have that today, but as i mentioned in my Opening Statement we are changing the incentive award structure and starting that on january 1st. So you are able to change the incentive structure by focusing on habitability even if somehow theres not reference to that in your longterm contract . Well, weve gone back to the partners and we are changing the incentive award fees. We had to go back to the partners to do that. And are your partners cooperating with changing the matrix . Its been a negotiation, but thats how were initiating on january 1st. What about the other Service Secretaries, what are you doing regarding obviously we are here because of the n nonhabitability of those of these issues. Its a huge issue. Are you imposing habitability as a factor in your incentive payments . Senator, yes, we are going through that process just as secretary mccarthy said, weve restructured our Incentive Fee and what weve measured and before this we didnt have that health and habitability as a factor and now we will and our partners are working on us with this and they are accepting this. We are in the process of restructuring our Incentive Fees and that will include elements of the commanders overview or observation. Habitability would be probably one of the elements that they would put. In addition, 100 of our units have had health and safety review prior to people moving in and so that habitability would be another word for the health and safety of that yes, im using the word habitability to cover the broad range of issues of concern to you will of a us. There was a mention made i think it was secretary modly that the data is not the data is input in such a way that its really not terribly helpful in terms of whats actually going on so what are you all doing to make sure that theres for one thing shouldnt all of the contracts, these housing contracts, be the same in terms of the terms of the contract across the services . Ms. Field, can you answer yes or no on that one . Well, because they were entered into at different times and by different services, they created them with different terms and Different Levels of accountability built into them. Yeah, thats a problem, okay, be that as it may, what about the data, the insufficiency of the data . Do the rest of you besides secretary modly agree that that is an issue . Anybody . Of course, senator, we have addressed that at the quarterly discussions and that process is starting to improve. I agree that the data is an issue and dis aggregating it, working to improve the quality of the data is one of the key things that we are looking at. May i ask just one more followup question with secretary mccarthy. So the condition of the housing that you went to see with senator kaine, very clearly that if they are putting back molding that should never have been put back that sounds like fraud to me. You had testified that you are not you did not refer any matter for prosecution. Is this the kind of thing that you are considering sending on for prosecution . Senator, after what i saw yesterday i was very concerned and this is something that i addressed specifically with general pernan, we are going to take a very hard look at that, yes, maam. Please do so and that goes for all the services. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I want to thank the chairman and the Ranking Member for the participation today. Ive been here five years. I have never seen a panel of military leadership that we have today. I think that sends a message to the families, but also says how serious this problem is so i want to thank everybody for being here. I have a question for the panel and your staffs that are here. If you ever lived in base housing at any time in your career would you raise your hand, please. There is the issue. These people understand i grew up in base housing, i understand what it means to be dislocated. This is unacceptable whats happening right now, but i want to understand i want everybody in this hearing to understand the hypocrisy that you heard this morning. Were pointing fingers at contractors, yes, there is culpability there and it needs to be dealt with. Theres leadership issues, maybe within the dod needs to be dealt with, but the one thing we are not talking about is responsibility we have right here in congress. This is the third month, this is the end of the First Quarter of our fiscal year, we have not funded our men and women in uniform, period. We can talk about a continuing resolution all we want to, but we have sent a message to putin and xi and everybody else in the world that political games here are more important than our men and women in uniform. Thats unacceptable and it directly affects housing capability. The u. S. Army did a study recently, secretary mccarthy, that you guys said that specifically right now 4,400 new units are being held up from construction because of this continuing resolution. By the way, this is like the tenth out of 11 years, this is the seventh year that the First Quarter has been spent under a continuing resolution where no contracts can be let, no followup can be made, no accountability can be accomplished and my question is are these numbers right . I think there are 269 other maintenance Housing Units for Something Like 69 million which i dont understand those numbers. Thats 250,000 a unit. So somewhere offline i want to get at these numbers because they dont make any sense. Would you give us an update as to the impact that continuing resolutions have on this specific issue of getting this problem fixed. So specifically on military construction for barracks projects, senator, we have about 239 million held up, fort sill 73 million, joint base langley u. S. A. Is 55 million, jackson 54 million so barracks is being impacted across the force. The Family Housing projects overseas look, i could interrupt you, im sorry to interrupt, we could do this all day. I dont want to give you guys a pass but i want full accountability here and we bear the brunt of this at the very get go here. Had we funded this prior to september the continuity of the programs that you already started to be continuing right now. I want the people being affected is the fix cannot be accomplished as long as the political games are being played right now. Thats the point i want to make. Can you give us the other impact that may be caused by this insidious practice that we have here. 187 times since the budget act was put in place in 1974 this is our 187th continuing resolution that this congress has used and it devastates you guys and it hurts these families. So can you give us a little more detail around that . 1. 1 billion requested specifically on housing restoration modern nation is being held up right now. What does that mean . We cannot start the projects, we cannot initiate the projects, we dont have the funding. So the projects that are already under way does it affect any of those . In some cases, why he is. All projects being directed toward this problem with being directed through this any new projects and the existing ones are being funded at the prior level so the buying power is reduced. I visited bening, i have red clay under these names like im sure you do from your time in that part of the state. I just met with the general down there and he is doing a fabulous job there. You have a different problem in columbus, you have Historic Homes and they have lead, probably had ast hbestos before. Give us an update of how the lead problem is being dealt with. We deploy a significant percentage of men and women in uniform. We have a significant percentage across more than 100 countries right now today. So on most of our people on these bases have a spouse overseas and so can you help us understand the progress being made there and the displacement that we have incurred there and what we can expect . Yeah, i can. First of all, on the historical homes, you know, weve taken the philosophy old is not historical. And what i mean by that is we have homes we have to replace them or restore them to the level they were at, they may be a house thats 100 years old that a captain lived in, we have a whole bunch of these type homes somewhere from 50 to 100 years old. We dont want to restore them with the original materials and those type things that are sometimes required. We are working our way through that right now, we think we have a way ahead so we dont have to go back and get original materials, we can modernize some of these homes so they are not living in an old home. I grew up in an old home, its old, its not historic. What we need to do for these homes is modernize them so what we need for the families as you know were going through the homes right now, lead is a huge issue, we are very concerned with our families, we are going back and getting these homes and remediating the homes, but it just takes time and i think were working 8 to 9 homes a week and its going to take us some time and it will take us two to three years with these homes to get them to a level that we want them to be. Would you get your staff to keep us updated about the progress of that project specifically because i think thats a bellwether for the rest of all of the bases out there. It is, senator, and we will. Thank you. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Im going to yield a couple minutes to senator manchin who has to leave for a Committee Hearing. I thank all of this. This is so the secretaries and mrs. Field to you, listening to everybody and the concerns we have there is not a person up here and im sure you all feel the same way who are not concerned. Service members should have better quality of life and their families and should not be in this jeopardy. Homeowners association is doing something im familiar with and Homeowners Association works this way, if you are the developer and basically when you have the covenants and turn it over after a period. Time to the homeowners we have a responsibility to basically evaluate are you doing your job or not, have you lived up to your part of the bargain when it was turned out r over and we have the right to bring civil actions against you. Why cant we do the same here . Every member of the service and their family that moves into one of the homes basically would be part of a Homeowners Association. That association develops their own board an they are able to bring civil suit if they havent performed. Thats the best way to do it, much better than what the military and everybody else bell spend millions and millions of dollars for the people on the front line that could tell you immediately. If you are the contractor that is awarded one of these exclusive contracts for 50 years then you have a responsibility. If thats the responsibility and you havent lived up to it let them go to civil court, not through the military court let them go directly to the civil court. You will never have this problem. This will eliminate and remedy this immediately. We can put this right into the bill of rights. Mr. Chairman, we could do this as we are going right now and it will basically take care of i think a remedy of how you can cure this quickly and they will step up to the plate. They dont want civil lawsuits brought against them. Thats my input. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Im good. Mr. Chairman, thank you. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you, senator manchin. Two comments before i ask a couple of questions. Number one, i agree with senator perdue completely about the cr and about where we are in the politics in the ndaa and appropriations. I just dont want there to be any impression of anybody in this room that the politics that are being played is only one one side of the aisle. That is a process thats ongoing and there is too much politics being played not only in congress but with the administration as well. We need to get it done. I completely agree with him we need to get it done. The second thing i would like to comment on is im hearing a lot in these hearings where these companies are being referred to as our partners. They are not our partners. They provide a service. We pay them for their service. They are not a partner where there is a give and take and issues like that. They are providing a service to these people and their military and their families and we should be demanding and make sure we are demanding that they deliver the Excellent Services that we are paying them for and that we dont consider them a partner like i would my spouse or a law partner. They are providing services. Now, just with the time remaining, id like to ask each of the secretaries, secretary mccarthy, you mentioned general perna, i am a big fan of the general so i commend you for getting him engaged in this because he can get it done. When we had the companies here one of the things i asked them if they would agree to withhold Incentive Fees and i think you mentioned in your testimony that general perna is working on that. Has any Incentive Fees been with theld that or is that part of the process thats ongoing . Yes, sir, we have withheld fees at bening and mccord and we will be doing it at others. You have a process in place for that . Yes, its being formalized on the 1st of january, but some of these incidents that were pretty extreme and we have done that here just in the last couple months. How about the in a navy. Senator, we have not given an award or Incentive Fee this year. We are reviewing those to determine what they earned. Is there a process in place to withhold incentives fees . There is. How about the air force . Senator, we are withholding all into he is from one contractor on the bases of misperformance or performance problems on some of their bases and the other contractors we are observing their performance and they are aware of the contract withholding fee the process the fact that we are withholding fees on others. All right. Thank you. Thank you all thee. I think thats a good step. I will say secretary barrett im still hearing issues. Ive visited the Maxwell Air Force base and there are particular issues with Historic Properties and i get that, but im still hearing from constituents down there who are having Serious Problems so please take a look. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you all for being here. Special thanks to the military families who are in attendance. Back in march when we had the last hearing i didnt have a very happy discussion because we had a revelation come up about these nondisclosure agreements that the Housing Providers were requiring the tenants to sign on to before they would settle anything. That seemed to be a legitimate tenant complaint. At that time i asked everybody to go back and make sure over the next 30 days to have all of those ndas rescinded and if there was any private property Housing Provider that thought they had a great case to call me up and come to my office and explain to me why they should have these nondisclosure agreements. I had nobody come to my office. I thought that i was assured that these had been rescinded but this week ive got an email, another nondisclosure agreement for monterey bay where the practice has continued at least up until august and secretary mccarthy, we will have a discussion about this because its in your lane. But, look, when i was ms. Field, i think when you were responding to senator kaines question about the Satisfaction Surveys, if you have a nondisclosure agreement that says you cant speak even about the existence of the agreement and you cant speak disparagingly about the Housing Provider, then how does the answer to that question go . Thats a great question. Right. Which is why these damn things have to be eliminated. Now, i want to ask you all right now can i get your assurance that you can go through your chain of command and go to your Housing Providers and say, this ends immediately and if you think you have a legitimate reason for having one, contact me. Id love to hear the basis for that. I dont think there have been one. And i want your assurance that we are going to move forward with this. This is a part of the problem. Look, i have tried to be balanced every time i come in here. If you look at it when these contracts started getting initiated back in 1996, you were moving, conveying property that was owned by the government to a private Housing Provider, they were to fix some of them, the old units, maybe upfit them, they were to build new units and they had to make a financial decision that ultimately resulted in an investment that private sector investors invested in. Great. Hopefully they made a good decision. Now, it may have been that in some cases they simply didnt know what they were buying, you know, everybody that flips a house, sometimes you buy something and it worked out well and sometimes it didnt work out so well. There may be a rational basis to go back to some of these Housing Providers and say, look, we may have sold you a bill of goods and we have some responsibility for trying to smooth out the economic consequences of that decision. In other cases they guilt houses that are the subject of the problem. We owe them not a dime to fix that. Thats on them. So my question to you all is when is enough enough . When do we finally look at these contractor vendors consistent with what senator inhofe opened up with and say its time to recognize that you are in breach of contract, weve got to go a different way, your Business Practices are to a point where weve got to go to a court of law and settle this. When is enough enough . Secretary mccarthy . We might be right now, sir. Secretary modly . Senator, i think that in certain cases we may be there, in other cases i think there is a pretty heavy responsibility on the navy and Navy Leadership over the last couple years in terms of not Pay Attention to it. Secretary barrett . Senator, enough is enough. We have had enough. On some of these properties they have worn out the patience of the air force. In other instances theyre doing a great job and were happy. I agree. I dont want to go too far over time, but i want to be fair. I dont want to all of a sudden let our passions sweep up people sweep up private Housing Providers that seem to be doing a good job, trending in the right direction. But we probably need to make an example out of a couple of them and just draw the line and move forward. And in the other cases go back and figure out secretary ryan, i think youre right if we dont look at recapitalization im not one who thinks we should take this over and go back to the old ways because it wasnt working. Senator perdues point is right, then you have to rely on us to give you your resources. How has that worked out for you . We have to look at recapitalization, we have to go back and rationalize what is what should be a consistent model. To shart hironos point, i know contracts were negotiated over time and there were differences. Some of them were learning from the past contracts but at some point we have to go back and reopen this and aggressively pursue it. Im going to leave you with this, i dont know what other members have done, but ive had town halls at camp la join, town halls at fort bragg, multiple sessions, i have literally met with hundreds of military families down on those two bases and things are improving there but i had at least one Military Spouse drive up from fort bening and she said we were here when you all started really shining light down at fort bragg, but now im down at ben thing and its not so good oochs sounds like its improving. I would encourage all of my colleagues in the senate and in the house to go on base and cast light on these folks. It makes a difference. Were making progress, but we are not near making it nearly as quickly as we should. And i really do believe its time to draw a line with some of these vendors and some of these contracts and say enough is enough. Thank you, mr. Chair. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Ms. Field [ applause ] i dont want to step on your recognition, senator tillis, which is appropriate. Ms. Field, i want to get to the basic question. Are these contracts adequate or inadequa inadequate . Is the problem the contracts or the enforcement of the contracts . I think its both, senator. In many cases the contracts were not written in such a way that the services could truly hold the partners accountable for everything they should be holding them accountable for. Let me stop you there, though. I want to follow up on senator hironos question. I cant believe that the fundamental nature of the contract doesnt prior that the contractor and, by the way, i agree with senator these contract partners, they are contractors, ban initial that word, quit referring to them as partners, theyre contractors i cant believe the basic requirement of that contract wasnt safe and healthy habitable units. The part what were we buying . The companies, pardon me, are required under all of the projects to comply with all federal, state and local Environmental Health and safety codes. So that is a requirement that is in all of the contracts and to your second point i think part of what we have found through our ongoing review is that these services at many of the installations have not done everything they could to perform oversight to make sure that that was happening. When it comes to things like incentives to really get the companies to Pay Attention, thats where there are problems in the contract. I dont think they should be paid even the basic rent if they are not renting safe inhabitable units. Forget about incentives. The services the services do have the option of rescinding these contracts and that is an option available to them. My experience in this kind of work is that implementation is as important as vision and my sense is there are differences in the contracts but clearly as you say there are basic provisions that they have to be safe and healthy, this he have to meet codes and that the i believe not having seen the contracts myself but i believe that this is really mostly an implementation problem and then my question is who is in charge . Is it the base commander, is it a base housing officer, is it the secretary of the navy, is it the secretary of defense . Theres got to be somebody who can be held accountable here in what looks like endemic nonenforcement. If i may, it is the Service Secretaries that signed the agreements with the companies so i would say that the Service Secretaries are ultimately responsible. Part of what ultimately responsible means not so responsible. I want somebody that can be fir fired. Well, i think that would have to be done on a casebycase basis. I do want to point out two examples of where there was a break in leadership. At camp lejeune and Tinker Air Force base we learned from the military housing offices that they had recommended to Senior Leadership to withhold either part or all of the performance incentive for years and had never gotten support for that. So thats an example of where there was a break in leadership. Was that a break was that the base command or was it regional command . I think part of the part of something you all should do, the secretaries, is assign somebody who is in charge of this and hold them accountable. I dont know whether it can be a oneperson at each base or it can be somebody in the department or in the in the army or the air force, the navy, but somebody has got i mean, we have had this diverse diffuse responsibility and, therefore, nobody really is held responsible. Can these things like secretary mccarthy you have talked about the bill of rights. Can that be imported into these agreements without without permission, if you will, or negotiation with the contractors . Is that something that can just be stuck into the agreements . We had to work through the language with the companies in question, senator. With respect to your earlier comment, it is the chain of command on the installation of those installation commanders in the army case had not been empowered. Wouldnt that be the logical place . Seems that would be the logical place to lodge this responsibility. The senior commanders are now back part of the process and they rate the Garrison Commander who manages the housing relations is that true in the other departments . Im getting a yes. Let the record show affirmative nods. Yes. Final question, sort of a detailed question on this refinancing. I dont understand why they need our permission to refinance. People refinance all the time if Interest Rates have gone down they can go in, raise more capital. Whats the hold up there . So in the contract they have to have a scoring criteria for the projects and thats managed by the office of management and budget. What weve referenced earlier is we would like to rescind the rains memorandum from the 90s so that we can adjust the scoring criteria so that they can go back to Capital Markets to raise the capital. So this is something thats within the control of the government. We can fix that. Does it take an act of congress . No, senator, we are working with the office of management and budget on that. Would you please let us know if that gets bogged down because that would be one way to get a lot of new capital into these projects. Yes, sir, i will. Please. Thank you all very much and i would like for the record statements from the secretaries about where you are lodging the responsibility for the enforcement of these contracts, the name of the person, the position and what the arrangements are to be sure that the enforcement takes place. You can have the best contract in the world, if its not enforced an implemented properly, people are going to suffer for it and thats exactly whats happened in this case. Thank you. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Do any of you feel thats an unreasonable expectation . We recorded the nods. Affirmative nods. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I also want to thank the military families who are here for your service to this country and thank you for the sacrifices that youve made, your Service Members, your family members and thank you for doing what youve done to defend this country. Thank you for being here today. Thank you for making the trek and for showing up and for advocating. I just want to say that what you have been through after the service that you have rendered this country is absolutely outrageous and it is absolutely unacceptable. It wouldnt be acceptable for anybody to be treated like this in this way, but for you as Service Members and families who are sacrificing day in and day out for this country to have been through what youve been through is really a breach of faith in what this country owes to you. So thank you for being here. Im sorry for what youve been through, and you have my commitment that my office and i will do everything we can to see that this does not continue. So thank you for being here. Let me ask a few questions specifically about fort leonard and white Fort Air Force base in my home state of missouri. Many military families in miss our they base housing may still be at risk. I want to thank the base leadership of both of those installations for doing their part to make sure the Service Members are getting high quality on base housing and let me ask about the concerns that military families in the state have expressed to me. In particular, military families in missouri have raised concerns to me that as balfour baby and other companies shift their attention to shift problems in other states that the companies that those Companies Might take their eyes off the ball in missouri and let me ask you in particular, what are the services doing that force leonard and whitewood respectively would not be short changed as the companies would reallocate the resources for the glaring der fi glaring deficiencies elsewhere. Well, both have had poor performance in some settings and very fine performance in others. The base commander having responsibility and authority over the housing topic will mean that there would be careful attention by the local leadership. So distractions by outside other element by at other bases will not be a distraction from performance at whiteman. Thank you. Secretary mccarthy . We are watching it very closely, senator, and we a sure that theres no change with the performance of anything to improve it. Thank you. Let me ask the both of you again, secretary Mccarthy Well start with you maybe this time. Families in my state have also raised concerns about insufficient tenants rights for Service Members who live off base and with that in mind, i want to ask you what the army is doing to ensure that military families are having to quality, offbase housing in missouri. Can you address that . Specifically to missouri, i would have to get back to you on that, sir, but in other instances like yesterday, fort belvoir with respect to fort benning and bragg and others that i visited over the last 90 days, 100 days. Theyve worked very hard with the local communities to get additional opportunities for offpost housing. So were doing this at all of our installations and i will get back to you specifically on what were doing. Thank you. I would appreciate that. Secretary, can i ask you the same question about whiteman . Offbase housing is covered and theres an allowance that members get and maybe the chief would have further detail on that. Yes, sir, as you know, we do a routine Housing Allowance surveys and we go and get the basic allowance for housing. Something thats said that the Service Secretaries all signed a memo to governors last year and it was a very important memo that said as we were looking at your bases, there are two issues that are top shelf for our families and that is number one, reciprocity for licensure of spouses so as they move around the country they can continue to work and the second is the quality of of their schools and that letter has had a fairly significant impact, and so i want to thank this committee for all of the work thats been done because thats improved the quality of life for our spouses. Thank you. In my time remain, let me just, miss field, ask you, at the current rate of the decline of the housing inventory, i wonder if you think that the program is financially viable and will survive the full 50year term . The department has determined that the portfolio across the board is healthy. We issued a report last year that while we found that the services had good mechanisms in space to have the financial strength in the long term and they dont in the nearterm and your concern is well founded. Quite frankly, though, what concerns me more is there are more mechanisms in place for the services to assess the Financial Health of the projects and hold the partners accountable for Financial Health than they are for assessing and holding the partners accountable for the housing. Thank you for that. Thats a very, very important point and something that we got to rectify. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you. Yeah. I just dont buy this argument that the chain of command cant really be held accountable in the past because we havent empowered them to enforce these contracts because by nature of being in command or especially with being a commander, youre responsible. If youve had troops in bear axe where they come to complain that the ceiling is collapsing and hurting these soldiers and the Garrison Commander did nothing about it you would hold him accountable. If you had a gunnery range or a door gunnery range that was constantly hurting the troops who were operating that range and that range was not up to standard, that Garrison Commander would be held responsible for whether or not he held whatever contractor that was running the range for you and keeping it safe for our troops to use. So i dont understand why not a single Garrison Commander, to my knowledge, has yet been fired over a failure to maintain these standards. Period. Okay. Thats the past. Lets look forward. I would like to ask each of the Service Chiefs. Is maintaining the highest quality of housing for your troops and their family members a lineitem on every persons evaluation report all of the way up for Garrison Commanders up to and including yourself right now . Is it this is a line. Senator, its not. It is at the flag level and were doing that down at the 06 level and below. So no so far . No. How many years has it been . Why has it not . . Sorry, general. No. I would like to recommend that it be one there for every single Garrison Commander and all of the way up to and including the Service Chiefs because until youre being evaluated on it you can just walk away and ive looked. I cant find a Single Person who has been fired over this. You look like you want to Say Something. With all due to secretary mccarthy because i know this was not a decision that you made. I think its important to point out that in 2013 the army issued Garrison Commanders not to perform inspections of homes for the life, health and safety of those Service Members. That has since been reversed, but to me, i can see how commanders during that time period would have been confused about what it was that they were and were not supposed to do because they were getting an instruction that told them not to perform inspections. Thats good, but it is not enough and it should be on the oers that they will be evaluated on this. Period, for every Single Person up the chain. I want to touch on one other topic which is the family members who live in this housing, there is no safe level of lead especially for children to be exposed to. None. Are we doing anything to track the children who have lived, the family members who have lived in these in these Housing Units and are we keeping and maintaining a database so that we may track their health over the course of a life time and they can receive benefits and or health care over the course of the lifetime, because we know that children cannot be exposed to any level of lead safely. So what are we doing to protect the children and the family members in general who have live individual of these Housing Units. Mr. Mccarthy. We have the army Health Registry so when family members put that into the database, we can capture that data and then track it in each of these cases. Does that come as part of the briefing for every Single Family member who moves into housing that you should come forward. I feel like you should know and be able to track and have records of every Single Family member who has lived in every single one of these units in order to track them. I dont see why were putting the responsiblity on the family members and they have enough on their plates and the services should be doing this and we have the records. Certainly, the contractors do, so they know who lived in these Housing Units. Why are we not maintaining this. Have we done this for any of the sortse services, database . Were capturing that information in the individual Health Record for members and their families. The challenge we have is that they go out and they go outside of the military Health System for their health care. We dont have an ability to get that. So we are looking at developing a database to do that. Im not talking on the health care side. You know who has lived in every single one of these Housing Units. You can go back into the housing records, not into the medical records and make a list of every Single Person. We know every Single Person thats been stationed at fort bliss and fort bragg, wherever, why dont we have a list of every Single Person thats lived in these units. We have them. Dont put it on the family members and on the medical side to wait until the Health Condition happens. Do it on the front end so that everybody can later on some child comes up and has a problem, they can say hey, i was at fort bragg and theyre in the system without them having to come forward. Im out of time. I yield back, mr. Secretary. Thank you, senator duckworth. Anything further . Any other member . Any other comment . First of all, as i mentioned in my Opening Statement, well have another housing hearing as early as possible next year, and at a minimum, we need to need the Companies Back and maybe even some of the new ones that seem to be a part of this problem in the services so that you can let us know and we can reflect on if we ever get our ndaa passed and the language and we are out of time. So that is a serious problem. But first, i do want to thank all of you. That is a large number of people and went through a lot of inconvenience to be here, and you have been heard and you have heard us and i appreciate very much your being here. I would like the record will stay open until close of business wednesday december 4th for any additional questions. Now what i would ask of our witnesses, respond no later than friday, december 20th. Do i have your commitment to respond to the committees additional questions by that time . All of you nod. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Thats good. Appreciate it very much. Appreciate your testimony and i thank you very much. Were adjourned. [inaudible conv] the u. S. Supreme court heard oral argument monday at new york state rifle and Pistol Association versus the state of new york, a case concerning gun rights. The audio will be released today and you can hear the arguments in the case tonight on cspan2 starting at 8 00 eastern. Americans are coming out and getting engaged and politics is feeling a little bit less like a spectator sport for people on the left and a lot of the same social issues that the book covers are still the ones that are relevant today. People in this book are outraged by issues like family separation and like Sexual Assault on women, and the devaluation of black lives, et cetera, and this period provides a really crucial precursor to our moment. University of massachusetts professor Holly Jackson talks about her book american radicals. Watch sunday night at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on cspans q a. As Health Democrats along with Speaker Nancy Pelosi began drafting articles of impeachment against President Trump and ukraine. The house judiciary Committee Meets for evidence monday at 9 00 a. M. Eastern with democratic and Republican Council presenting findings for impeachment inquiry. Watch online at cspan. Org or listen with the free cspan radio app. The Supreme Court heard oral argument about the legality of President Trumps decision to rescind the deferred action for childhood arrivals program, the daca program which started under president obama prevented undocumented immigrants from deportation. In september 2017, President Trump announced that he would fizz out the program. Lawsuits across the nation soon followed. The Supreme Court has through june 2020 to issue a ruling. Well hear argument first this morning in case 18587, the