Donald Norcross

The hearing will come to order. The Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee meets today to review the Army and Marine Corps ground modernization program for fiscal year 2022 budget request.

Welcome. I would like to call this hearing to order.

I understand that. So we had a 1-week shutdown. Not good at all.

So that is the good news. The bad news is certainly much longer than we ever anticipated.

Thank you, Chairman. Appreciate it.

I personally, and I think a lot of my colleagues, continue to believe that waivers such as these should be thoroughly vetted, rare, short, and only granted in exceptional emergency circumstances.

It's time to wake up. I have nothing against the folks on the other side of the aisle, this is a moral obligation to make sure people can live.

It's great to have a Committee that's absolutely focused on survival.

$7.50 an hour in the wealthiest nation in the world that incrementally and predictably would raise it.

I appreciate the expansion on your answer on that.

The idea that mental health is so important, and so many people who have not really been challenged by it are now seeing it across the board, and we have to get that to them, that's why this legislation is so important.

There was a letter circulated today by my colleague Joe Courtney about increasing the funding to the Department of Labor

The idea we believe, even without police, that they'll do the right thing is simply not happening across the board

I urge my colleagues to support the National Apprenticeship Reauthorization Act so we can make sure we put America back to work. {time} 1545

So assuming that, maybe not immediately, that we are going to be back in the same situation, what does that new Afghanistan look like in terms of troops?

The single source you have identified as a major concern.

So is it the production capacity or the amount of stockpiled material that is the bigger issue?

I want to mention my constituent Lawrence Bass, who lost his life there at Lake City in an explosion 3 years ago.

Doesn't that increase some of the risk?

There is greater risk in not doing so.

For those who are focused more on the economy than the people you represent, I just want to say one thing. There is an old saying. Those with the most toys or money when they die win. It doesn't matter how much money you have if you die.

If we were in a war, would we talk about the debt? No, we would do what we have to do as a country. And we are in a war except it is the virus.

It is unacceptable, that we can find money to bail out billionaires, and millionaires, and corporations, and we cannot invest in our students right now and in their future.

Just a reflection, that when we look at our children, who are our future, this is why it is so important that when we do open, we open the right way.

Would you be in favor of predictable ways of bringing up that percentage?