Jackie Speier

We are talking about IGs.

Thank you, Inspector General. Thank you all for your presentations.

I guess we missed that.

How do you decide whether to make the results of an investigation public and what format do you use (i.e. website, news release)?

What kind of training does your Service provide Commanders about their relationship with their respective IG?

What was your total appropriated budget for FY20 and FY21? What were your budget requests for these years?

Since 2012, of more than 8,000 reprisal complaints made to the DOD or Service IGs, only 273 were substantiated. Why are so few reprisal allegations substantiated?

What this suggests to me is that the DOD IG is woefully understaffed, and, in fact, when you have the Air Force and the Navy with more staff than the DOD Inspector General, I would suggest we have a problem.

I would like for you to give us some written response.

Who/how is legal advice provided to the Service IGs?

Have you implemented the GAO recommendations from 2019 to better protect the identity of whistleblowers? If not, when will you implement these recommendations, and why has implementation been delayed?

What capability does the LCS provide to SOUTHCOM that is not present in other available vessels in the fleet?

The overall lack of federal funding for restoration efforts for the San Francisco Bay... threatens to drown the Bay's wetlands.

I have a very different view of the littoral combat ship than my colleague, and I would like to drill down on this a little bit.

A recent article in Defense News says that each LCS costs about $70 million a year to operate.

I would much rather see us spending some of that money there than on ships that don't float.

This bill... would help address water quality improvement, wetland and estuary restoration, endangered species recovery, and adaptation to climate change.

How much are taxpayers spending for each LCS deployment in the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility, and what is the typical duration of such a deployment?

How much have LCS deployments increased over the past 3 years in the SOUTHCOM areas of responsibility?

Despite the impending threats, federal efforts for bay restoration and pollution mitigation have failed to meet the enormous need.

The Freedom class is, in my view and in the view of many, terribly unreliable, with the Little Rock, Detroit, and Sioux City all recently experiencing major propulsion failures.

I think it's really important for us to recognize that we were looking at this issue long before January 6th.

The terrible thing is we've got demagogues on both sides and, sorry, Mr. Gaetz is the best example of the demagogue problem that we have today.

There's that old adage, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig.

We have got to do more, to make it safe, to go to school, to go to church, to go to the grocery store.