Political Quotes

“I thank the ranking member for yielding. Within this en bloc includes an amendment that highlights a very troubling breakdown within the Department of Defense, how they collect and process their personnel data. Our brave men and women who are deployed overseas rely on the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act to give them assurance that they won't need to worry about a foreclosure on their house, a lease being terminated, or outstanding credit card debt. We ask significant sacrifices from our troops, and this is a needed helping hand at a time when they are rightfully focused on serving their Nation. In order to provide these protections, financial institutions are required by law to consult the Department of Defense's data system to validate servicemembers' deployment. This system is called the Defense Manpower Data Center, or DMDC. I've heard from a number of stakeholders that the DMDC is riddled with inaccuracies because each service feeds their own data into the database, with no standardization between services, and much of it was originally entered by hand, with little-to-no quality assurance. Obviously this creates a significant problem. We need our financial institutions to have accurate data so that troops can get the benefits provided by law. I'm extremely concerned about the reliability of this data for the purposes of SCRA compliance and, for that matter, any other personnel process affected by the DOD.…”