At Hearing, Warren Calls for Accountability for Poor Barracks Conditions, Adds That We Need Higher Wages for Military Child Care Workers

At Hearing, Warren Calls for Accountability for Poor Barracks Conditions, Adds That We Need Higher Wages for Military Child Care Workers

"We owe (service members) everything…if we don't address these issues, we put our military readiness, retention, and recruitment at risk."

Washington, D.C. - At a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Personnel, Ranking Member Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) delivered opening remarks calling for improving the quality of military barracks, better pay for child care workers so military families can have the child care support they need, and tracking the impact of Republicans' health care cuts for service members and their families.

Senator Warren called attention to the disastrous conditions of military barracks, including mold, broken sewage pipes, and broken air conditioning. She warned that efforts to privatize barracks risk limiting the military's ability to hold private housing providers accountable for poor living conditions and called for DoD and Congress to prohibit housing companies from forcing service members into non-disclosure agreements as a condition of getting compensated for poor living conditions. She also highlighted that Congress has actually allocated money to improve barracks, but DoD has repeatedly chosen to divert those funds to immigration enforcement instead without justifying to Congress why upgrading barracks was no longer a priority.

"I don't think anyone here would want to spend an extra year or even an extra month breathing in black mold just because this administration didn't think their health was important enough," said Senator Warren.

Senator Warren also called for improving the quality of and access to child care for military families, pointing out that thousands of military families are on the waiting list for DoD child care facilities. One of the main reasons for the shortage of child care workers is the low pay that comes with the job. Senator Warren called out the Air Force, Army, and Navy for blowing past Congress' deadline for them to update their pay scales and called on them to do it as soon as possible.

"Military families need [child care] to do their jobs…[w]e need to do better by our military families and our civilian child care workers," said Senator Warren.

Finally, Senator Warren called for a stronger health care system for service members and their families, calling out Republicans' health care cuts in the One Big Beautiful Bill. The law's nearly $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts threaten to limit military families' access to health care, as nearby hospitals come under significant financial strain and may be forced to close down or reduce services.

"It shouldn't be too much to provide [service members with] housing that doesn't have black mold, child care that doesn't have a 7,000-kid waitlist, and doctors appointments that aren't months away. And these aren't just nice to have: if we don't address these issues, we put our military readiness, retention, and recruitment at risk," concluded Senator Warren.

Transcript: Opening Statement at Hearing to Receive Testimony from the Senior Enlisted Leaders on Servicemember and Family Quality of Life
Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Personnel
February 11, 2026

As Prepared for Delivery

Senator Elizabeth Warren: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm glad that we are taking this time to dig into important quality-of-life issues for our enlisted troops.

Enlisted service members make up over 80 percent of our active-duty forces. They fill critical jobs across the services - from intelligence and cyber specialists to engineers to infantrymen - all crucial to upholding our national security. But far too often these patriotic men and women have to deal with quality-of-life issues that make it harder for them to effectively do their jobs.

One big area of concern: the quality of our barracks. We require service members who enlist to live in barracks during basic training and initial job training. The very minimum we owe them is housing that is safe. Instead, we've seen health and safety problems for decades. A 2023 report by the Government Accountability Office was a real wakeup call. The GAO found mold-covered walls, sewage pipes that were cracking and overflowing, and rooms heating up to over 90 degrees because their air conditioning units were broken. Several years later, we continue to hear horror stories about living conditions. Navy Secretary John Phelan was so "appalled" by barracks he visited in Guam that he initially thought the buildings he was visiting were condemned. Troops in other services also continue to report that it can take months to address maintenance requests at their barracks.

We need real solutions here, and we need them now. One of the proposed solutions is turning responsibility for these barracks over to private companies instead. I am concerned that we haven't learned our lessons from years of this committee's investigations into privatized military family housing, which exposed significant failures. Military family housing is still plagued by reports of unsafe living conditions like mold, lead paint, pest infestations, and more. I sent a letter to Secretary Hegseth last year raising concerns about this. DoD's response indicated that it's poised to make the same mistakes in privatizing barracks, like granting fifty-year leases to companies with questionable accountability and oversight.

We've also seen private companies try to take advantage of military families by forcing them to sign non-disclosure agreements in order to receive compensation for things like damaged property from mold or reimbursement for other financial burdens they faced due to terrible living conditions. DoD and Congress need to act, so that any companies responsible for privatized barracks don't try to muzzle troops living there too.

And bottom line: we need to invest more in barracks. Congress actually provided funding to DoD to modernize and repair barracks, but under the Trump administration, DoD has repeatedly diverted this money to support border operations instead. In their notifications to Congress, they haven't bothered to explain why they thought it was appropriate to take money away from rehabilitating barracks, leaving troops in horrible living conditions. I don't think anyone here would want to spend an extra year or even an extra month breathing in black mold just because this administration didn't think their health was important enough.

Another quality-of-life challenge? Child care. Military families need it to do their jobs, but I am deeply concerned that military families continue to face big challenges in getting care for their babies. Getting child care is already hard enough for parents around this country, and it can be even more difficult for military parents dealing with nontraditional, changing hours and abrupt deployments and relocations. At the end of last year, there were over 7,800 children from military families waiting for slots to open up at DoD child care facilities.

DoD is known for its high-quality child care, but there are clearly not enough slots. One of the key problems is that DoD can't attract and retain child care providers with its decades-old pay scale. So in the FY 2025 National Defense Authorization Act, Congress mandated that DoD update its child development program compensation model by April 2025. But the Air Force, Army, and Navy all blew the deadline, and 10 months later, still aren't done. That's making it harder for moms and dads in the military to do their jobs.

Even as DoD has been hemorrhaging child care staff, the Trump Administration has made it even harder to replace and retain those workers. It's slashed DoD's total civilian workforce by 8 percent. Last year, this subcommittee received testimony about the severe impacts of the civilian hiring freeze reducing child care staffing and increasing waitlists. Although DoD has since provided some exceptions to the hiring freeze for child care workers, I've continued to hear about challenges with hiring. We need to do better by our military families and our civilian child care workers.

And here's a third problem: health care. Service members can't show up and protect us if they're not healthy. But one of the biggest challenges that service members and their families face is making sure that they can access the health care they need. A 2023 Blue Star Families survey found that four in ten active-duty family respondents had family members who needed specialty care and had to wait over two months for an appointment. President Trump's and Republicans' cuts to Medicaid in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act threaten to make it even harder for military families to access these types of care.

Military families with special needs or lower incomes rely on Medicaid for supplemental benefits they can't get through TRICARE. And as hospitals across the country are forced to reduce services or close their doors because of the Medicaid cuts, it could make it harder for military families to access the care they rely on in the communities surrounding their bases.

Every day, patriotic men and women enlist so they can protect our country. We owe them everything. It shouldn't be too much to provide housing that doesn't have black mold, child care that doesn't have a 7,000-kid waitlist, and doctors appointments that aren't months away. And these aren't just nice to have: if we don't address these issues, we put our military readiness, retention, and recruitment at risk.

I look forward to hearing the testimony of the witnesses here today and thank them for their time.

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