National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017--Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I mentioned what incredible leadership Mr. Alexander, the Senator from Tennessee, provides on these issues. I was pleased, as he was pleased, and I know the Presiding Officer was also, that last year, for the first time in 12 years, we were able to have an increase in NIH research.

The future statistics that the Senator from Tennessee talked about on Alzheimer's and other things can be disrupted. In fact, that 2050 number of twice the defense budget spent on Alzheimer's alone with tax money--if you could delay the onset of Alzheimer's by an average of 5 years, you would reduce that number by 42 percent. So those research dollars not only have the impact we want to have on families and the individuals involved in that and other diseases we are dealing with now but also have an incredible impact on taxpayers, have an incredible impact on what we can do with the rest of the health care revolution that is occurring.

The mental health effort the Senator from Michigan, Ms. Stabenow, and I were able to work on together a few years ago is about to produce at least eight States--and hopefully more--where, at the right kinds of facilities, mental health will be treated just like all other health.

This Congress is talking about doing the right things. We are making important steps in that direction.

Mr. President, I want to talk today about another thing that really impacts families--in this case, military families. I have this bill on my desk, the National Defense Authorization Act. I notice it is only on the desk of half of the Members of the Senate. Members on this side of the floor are ready to get to this bill and get this work done. Maybe there is a message on the other side of the floor that this bill is not there. We had hoped to get to it this week. We have not yet. But certainly we should get to it as soon we return to our work after the end of this week.

In the National Defense Authorization Act--I am really glad that bill includes the Military Family Stability Act, a measure that I introduced with Senator Gillibrand to provide more flexibility for military families. Today we have the most powerful military in the world, but we also recognize that our military men and women do not serve alone. The former Chief of Staff of the Army, GEN Ray Odierno, often said that the strength of our Nation is in our military, but the strength of our military is in its families. So our military families need to be understood, recognized, appreciated, helped.

Those families have changed a lot over the years. They have sacrificed much. In the last 15 years, those families have dealt with persistent conflicts somewhere in the world and the likelihood of deployment to that conflict. But more importantly, the stress that puts on those families generally is what matters to them--maybe not more importantly in the greater context of what is going on but very important to them.

More military spouses are working today than ever before. In the world we live in today, this is good news. But all too often, military spouses sacrifice their own careers to meet the needs of the spouse who is in the service. Frequent redeployments, frequent deployments, and frequent relocations really have an impact on those careers.

According to a study done by the Military Officers Association of America, 90 percent of military spouses--that is more than 600,000 men and women--are either unemployed or underemployed. More than half cite the concerns about their spouse's service and the deterrent of moving from job to job--a deterrent not only for employers but a deterrent in that they sometimes have a hard time having the kind of recognition for the skills they bring to a new State or a new location that they need.

It is unfair to our military families for the spouse to needlessly have problems that could be avoided. Clearly, if you decide to pursue a military career--and that, by necessity, means relocation from time to time--this is not going to be the same career as if you went to work and you had every likelihood that you would work there for the next several years.

These frequent and sometimes abrupt relocations take a heavy toll on students as well. Research shows that students who move at least six times between the 1st and 12th grades are 35 percent more likely to fail a grade. I am not sure that exact research applies to military families. That is an overall number of what happens when people move. But the average military family will move six to nine times during a child's time in school--three times more often than the nonmilitary family.

These relocations of military families means that we need to find a better way to deal with those challenges for working families, and the Military Family Stability Act does that. The costs of needlessly maintaining two residences so that someone can finish school or someone can complete a job are the kinds of things that this act and this inclusion in the National Defense Authorization Act gives us a chance to deal with in a different way. It would allow families to either stay at the current duty station for up to 6 months longer than they otherwise would be able to stay or to leave and go to a new location sooner.

This probably is most easily understood in the context of school. If you only have a month left in school and your family could stay there while the person serving in the military goes ahead to the next post and is responsible for their own housing during the time they are there as a single serving individual--often they are going to find space available on the post itself for one person while the family stays until that school year works out better.

A job could be the same. One person we had who came and testified-- Mia, who now lives in Rolla, MO--is married to a soldier who was being reassigned from Hawaii to Fort Leonard Wood, MO. That reassignment was supposed to occur in June, so she applied for a Ph.D. program at St. Louis University that would begin in August. She applied for a teaching position at Missouri Science and Technology at Rolla that would begin in August. Then her husband's transfer did not happen in June and it did not happen in July, but she needed to be there in August.

Under this change, moving the family household could easily occur in August and her husband could follow in October, as he did, but all of the expense of her going early was on her. She really had two options: One was to not pursue her graduate school class when it started, and the other was to not have a teaching job. Neither of those was a very good option. She went ahead and moved. Her husband essentially couch- surfed, but they had to pay for the move rather than the way that normally would have happened. This would not have to happen otherwise.

When Senator Gillibrand and I introduced this bill last year, we were also joined by Elizabeth O'Brien, who coached Division 1 college basketball for 11 years, with stints at West Point, Hofstra University, and the University of Hawaii. But she married into the Army, and because of the lack of flexibility, she gave up her coaching career.

The story she wanted to tell that day was that when she and her family were in Germany, where her husband was serving, her two children were in a German public school. They needed 2 more months to finish that year in the German public school. There really wasn't a very good transition when he was sent back to the Pentagon. There were no German public schools where they could have finished the classes in the Washington area. Basically, they wound up having to finish that year as home schoolers and then start another year the next year.

It would have been very easy for him to move on ahead, if that is what the family wanted to do, and for the family to stay in Germany for 2 months so the children could finish that school year in a way that it couldn't possibly be finished anywhere else, and then the family would move. That is the kind of thing that would happen under this legislation.

The day after we introduced this legislation, I happened to be hosting a breakfast for people who are supportive of Fort Leonard Wood and working at Fort Leonard Wood. I sat down at a table with two officers. One of their wives, a retired master sergeant, mentioned that we had proposed this legislation the day before. All three of them immediately had a story about how this would have benefited their family if at some time at a specific moment in their career, they could have stayed another 30 days or if the family could have gone forward 30 days earlier.

I am proud this bill has widespread support, including from the National Military Family Association, the Military Officers Association of America, the Military Child Education Coalition, Veterans of Foreign Wars, the American Legion, Iraq And Afghanistan Veterans of America, Blue Star Families, the National Guard Association, and the Veterans Support Foundation.

After more than a decade of active engagement around the world, frankly, at a time when military families have a lot more challenges than military families may have had at an earlier time, this is exactly what we ought to do.

We have had hearings on other issues over the last year. Over and over again, I have asked people who were testifying, representing the military, what they think about this. Usually these are admirals and general officers. In all cases, a story from their career immediately comes to mind. Universally, they say: We have to treat families different than we used to treat families because too often the failure to do that means we are losing some of our most highly skilled people, who are still willing to serve but are no longer willing to put an unnecessary burden on their spouse or their children.

The Military Family Stability Act goes a long way toward removing one of those unnecessary burdens. I am certainly pleased to see it included in the National Defense Authorization Act and look forward to dealing with this important bill at the earliest possible date.

I see Senator Isakson on the floor, and I yield to him.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source