Stephanie Bice Asks Army Official About The Status Of Childcare Services For Military Personnel

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During a House Appropriations Committee hearing prior to the congressional recess, Rep. Stephanie Bice (R-OK) questioned Master Chief Petty Officer James M. Honea of the Navy about childcare services for service members.

Transcript

00:00Thank you Mr. Chairman and thank you gentlemen for being with us this afternoon. I keep hearing

00:09the phrase from my military friends on time and on target. Well my time is only five minutes so if

00:15you could keep your answers fairly short that would be really helpful. To be respectful of my

00:19colleagues who still have questions they'd like to ask. Master Chief I want to start with you.

00:24My colleague and I, Chrissy Humlihan, worked to extend parental leave for our

00:30service members and we realized that sometimes it is a challenge for our

00:35service members to be able to take that leave within a one-year time frame. We

00:39are looking to extend that to a two-year time frame. Could you talk a little bit

00:43about the benefit that your service members could have by extending that

00:47time and how it would be easier for you to manage the workflow?

00:51Congresswoman, I appreciate the question but I really appreciate your

00:55willingness to engage into this conversation because I do believe that

01:00if we could expand that to two years or at least have some conversation we could

01:04figure out how to get there it would be extremely beneficial. It's it's very

01:08challenging for someone to execute parental leave on top of their normal leave

01:14that they accrue their year all with inside that one year. So that flexibility

01:20would be helpful. It would be extremely helpful. There you go. I'll be succinct.

01:22Thank you. Thank you. Everyone agree with that that the two-year time frame would

01:26be helpful to being able to manage that workflow. I see a lot of heads nodding.

01:31Thank you for that. I want to say Chief Master Flossie thank you for the phone

01:37call. We had a great conversation. We talked a lot about infrastructure and one of

01:41the things that you alerted me to was that you have a lot of buildings that are

01:47currently vacant. Twelve hundred to be exact. Is that correct? And my

01:53understanding is that the DOD demolition budget is seventy five million dollars

01:57for all of the branches. Is that correct? Ma'am that sounds accurate. Do all of the

02:03branches have maybe not Space Force since they're fairly new but do all of you have

02:08buildings that are currently vacant that you would like to have as part of a

02:11demolition project that cannot because the funding is not there? Sergeant Major? We do

02:17Congresswoman. Yes ma'am. Yes. I think that we need to highlight that because what

02:22happens is it was mentioned earlier there's a ten-to-one return on

02:25investment for demolishing these buildings. It's taking I believe resources away

02:32from your branches to be able to upkeep these facilities so that you can

02:38actually perform your missions and so I want to encourage our folks that we're

02:43when we're looking at our appropriations package to potentially increase that so

02:47that we can raise some of these buildings take the workload off of your

02:51plates and allow us to continue to really focus on the mission at hand. Let me

02:58pivot slightly Chief Master Sergeant Flossie and or Master Chief Honey you

03:05talked a little bit about child care and that's something that I know I've been

03:09interested in. I had the opportunity to do a bipartisan sort of swap with my

03:16colleague Sarah Jacobs from San Diego and there were two things that really were

03:22eye-opening to me in visiting her district and that is it's expensive to

03:27live in San Diego if you're a service member and there was virtually no child

03:30care opportunities for those service members that are living on on base. Can

03:35you talk a little bit about you talked that you mentioned in your testimony that

03:38the you have the highest number of you know sort of individuals that are using

03:44child care services on naval installations currently. We need to continue to work at

03:49that but is there something different that you've done to get those numbers up and

03:52then if Chief Master Flossie wants to expand on that. Congresswoman yes one of

04:00the things that we've done to really draw down on our our wait list besides

04:05building the facilities and staffing them is that we really are encouraging the

04:10use of fee assistance and allowing our service members to find adequate child care

04:15in the community so that we're not continually fighting with the with the local

04:19community for the same staffing. That is that's quickly alleviated a lot of our

04:26our wait list and it's helped us solve this problem much quicker.

04:29Perfect. Chief Master. Thank you ma'am. Similar similar in the Air Force we we have first of

04:36all improved staffing which which is really one of our constraints sometimes

04:40it's not a capacity problem with infrastructure it's it's staffing and we've

04:44gone from 72 percent to 86 percent staffed across the Air Force in the last three

04:48fiscal years and doing no small part to some of the reimbursement incentives

04:53that we're able to offer now all employees it used to be direct care only

04:57but we have a hundred percent reimbursement rate for child care for the for a

05:00dependent of one of our employees in child care facility so that's great and I

05:04think we were implementing that across all services now. The community-based

05:08child care fee assistance we've got 7.8 thousand children enrolled in those

05:12community-based fee assistance which is a great force multiplier for us and it's

05:17win-win for our local communities where we can we can help with the local economy

05:22by by supporting the local economies in which our airmen live and work and it

05:27also that that fee assistance and to the tune for the Air Force is around 33

05:31million dollars last year so providing that incentive provides our airmen the

05:36ability to seek quality care that's equivalent to on base when we do have

05:41constraints with our CDC's been really helpful we have over 400 homes in the

05:45family child care program and our our Air Force offsets the fees and

05:51certification process for service members families to get certified to watch

05:56children in their own home so another win-win with spousal employment as well

06:01as child care for your own family primary care provider keeping their family in and

06:05and it helps with our 24 7 mission for our airmen that work off three hours thank

06:10you for that I appreciate your succinct comments and with that mr.

06:14chairman I yield thank you

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