Veronica Escobar: “As the vice chair of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Military Personnel, and representing Fort Bliss in my home…”

“As the vice chair of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Military Personnel, and representing Fort Bliss in my home district of El Paso, Texas, I am proud to speak in support of this bill, which passed out of our committee with overwhelming bipartisan support. The bill supports a military basic pay raise of 4.6 percent and includes a targeted bonus to address the challenges of inflation. It provides additional resources to decrease out-of-pocket costs for housing and for our commissaries so they can keep their prices low. It mitigates the tragedy of suicide by supporting an increase in the number of behavioral health providers to ensure access to care for those who need it most. And, given concerns about the increasing number of vacancies of military and civilian providers across the Military Health System, this bill prohibits the Department from realigning or reducing military medical end strength until additional analysis on the impacts is complete. We also built on last year's historic reforms to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, ensuring our criminal litigators are getting the best training, resources, and experience possible to support our troops. We are also taking care of our military children. In 2021, more than 20,000 children of servicemembers who had immediate need for childcare were stuck on waitlists.…”