Remarks

Opening Remarks

Congresswoman Escobar: Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. I want to begin by thanking Chairman Calvert and Ranking Member McCollum for their leadership on this subcommittee and, of course, also the Chairman and the Ranking Member of the committee of the whole. But I also want to recognize, as many of my colleagues have, the incredible staff. I know that this appropriation season can be really challenging on the teams that support us, and I want to publicly recognize and acknowledge their incredible devotion to the work that we do. We are only able to do this work because of their talent and their brilliance, and I'm really grateful.

As the representative for Fort Bliss, home to the historic 1st Armored Division and the ever important 32nd Army Air and Missile Defense Command, I know how crucial it is to maintain a strong national defense and ensure that our service members and their families have the resources they need and the support from Congress that they have earned.

There is much in this bill that I do support. The bill makes important investments in munitions production: Patriot and THAAD interceptors, Army modernization and defense innovation, which I find particularly exciting in this bill. Those investments matter to my district, but they also matter to our national security, and they prepare us for our future fights. Fort Bliss is home to the Army's premier army and defense missile enterprise, and the soldiers of the 32nd Army Air Missile Defense Command continue to face extraordinary operational demands across the globe, ensuring that they have the equipment, inventory and sustainment necessary to accomplish their missions is a national security imperative, and it is a top priority for my team and for me.

Likewise, investments in armored vehicles, army aviation and long range fires directly support the 1st Armored Division and Fort Bliss' role as one of the Army's premier power projection platforms. I'm also encouraged by the bill's emphasis on innovation, autonomous systems, drone and counter drone technologies, especially defense manufacturing and strengthening the industrial base. Congress is appropriately recognizing that future conflicts will be won by our ability to adapt, innovate and produce faster than our adversaries.

I've worked hard - long before I was in Congress - I've been working to ensure that El Paso is positioned as a growing center for defense, innovation, aerospace, and advanced manufacturing, and I'm so proud that this bill reflects an important reality. The future of American national security will not be built in just a handful of traditional defense hubs, it will be built in communities like El Paso as well, with the talent that we have been so proud to support and grow locally.

Unfortunately, despite those strengths, I am not able to support the bill as currently written. This bill provides more than $1 trillion for the Department of Defense while significant reductions are proposed elsewhere in the federal budget. National security is not achieved solely through military strength. A secure nation also needs a strong workforce, good schools, affordable housing, accessible health care, and effective and strong diplomacy.

Second, I remain concerned that this bill does nothing to stop the continued use of the military for nonmilitary issues. We still have National Guard personnel engaged in domestic activities that have little connection to military readiness, as well as immigration facilities at my installation of Fort Bliss that have hurt military readiness and wasted billions of taxpayer dollars. At a time when our military faces growing demands, we need our military to be focused on training and preparedness, rather than missions better suited for civilian agencies.

But the most important issue is the broader strategic backdrop against which we are being asked to fund this budget. The administration's answer nearly every international challenge has been escalation: more threats, more military pressure, more unilateral action, and in turn, more demands for increased defense spending.

I eagerly work with my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. I always look for bipartisan solutions. This is one of the most important bills that we pass. I hope we can get to a place where bipartisan support gets this bill across the finish line.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.

Amendment on Military Promotions

Congresswoman Escobar: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I - Like my colleague, Mr. Levin, I was not planning on speaking on this amendment. I was going to stay focused in this committee hearing today on my amendments. But I'm so proud of my colleagues on this side of the aisle and all of the great amendments that they brought forward: amendments meant to strengthen our national security amendments in support of our national defense.

And I am very proud to support Ms. Frankel's amendment as well. And here's in part, what inspired me to stand up and speak on this issue and this amendment. Representative Levin and Representative Aguilar, just as Miss Frankel was giving her opening remarks on this amendment, the three of us stepped out to talk to a group of high school students who are part of CHCI, an organization that uplifts Hispanic young people in our country. And it was a really lovely conversation, and when it was my opportunity to speak to these talented, brilliant, wonderful young Latinos, what I said to them was, "never forget your brilliance and your talent. How valued it is, how important it is to our country, how much your leadership matters. Don't ever let anyone make you doubt that brilliance, that talent, that leadership."

And I say that to a lot of young people, the young people who come and intern in my office, the young people I meet in this journey in Congress. I've said it to my two children over the years, over and over again.

I represent a community that is 85% Latino. I'm right on the US-Mexico border. A lot of Latino veterans, a lot of Latino active-duty service members, a lot of incredible women that I've met along the way devoted to our national defense, eager to be a part of this great mission that our United States military pursues.

And I know all of you on the other side of the aisle: you are good people, and I know you value these incredible service members and leaders in our military. I know you do. This is an important moment for us as members of Congress to hold accountable a cabinet member that is telling military leaders who do not look like him that they don't have value in the hierarchy of the United States military. I think every person in this room knows that that is wrong. That is wrong. What he's doing. And we were elected to stand up for what is right. Holding him accountable on this is the right thing to do. So I asked my colleagues to join us to send a message. We deserve an explanation. And those military leaders deserve our advocacy.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.

Amendment on Military Readiness Impact

Congresswoman Escobar: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I rise to offer an amendment that directs the Department of Defense to assess the readiness impacts associated with the use of military installations to support immigration detention or processing activities. When we were here, two weeks ago, debating the DHS appropriations bill, I shared with all of you the incredible deficiencies and serious concerns that exist at Camp East Montana, which is the world's largest detention facility for immigrants. It's in my district. It's at the Fort Bliss military installation. And I shared with you all the GAO report that had been released, really, the day before our committee markup that explicitly outlined many of those deficiencies. And I asked that we prohibit the use of military installations for immigration detention.

I shared with you all that I expressed those same concerns and objections under the prior administration. In fact, I had many press conferences in front of Fort Bliss during the Biden administration calling on the Biden administration to stop using Fort Bliss for HHS facilities for unaccompanied minors. I worked with the administration to seek to expand shelter space for unaccompanied minors, so that we could get those kids off of the installation and allow the installation to focus on its mission.

And I'm not asking in this amendment that we prohibit the use of military installations for immigration detention. I made that pitch. I made my arguments, and I lost in this committee. But here's what I am asking for instead. And I do hope we can get this amendment passed, and I hope you will support it. This amendment essentially is asking the Department to provide Congress with a comprehensive assessment of the costs, resource requirements, and readiness implications associated with having facilities like this on the installation.

I think we have a right to know. I think we have an obligation to know as members of Congress, and then together, we can chart a path forward with potentially some guardrails around this. I want you to know this amendment - I hope you've all heard the pride that is in my voice and in my actions when I speak about Fort Bliss and our military installation. I'm proud of the way my community has supported and uplifted our military installation. We've we've taxed ourselves as a community to build roads and schools to support our military installation. We offer specific workforce programs for spouses of our military personnel. We pride ourselves on welcoming and creating a community where veterans can retire.

So my motivation comes from a place of wanting to ensure our military installations focus on their mission, and that we hold administrations accountable - Democratic administrations and Republican administrations - on the use of our military installations. So this this report will give us some, I think, very useful information. And when we get the report, if if I have your support, then let's talk about next steps: what could or should it look like when our installations utilized by an administration for purposes other than the national defense.

With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back. I ask for everyone's support.

WEXMAC Amendment

Congresswoman Escobar: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I rise to offer an amendment to ensure that the Department of Defense's Worldwide Expeditionary Multiple Award Contract, or WEXMAC, is reserved for military missions, for which it was created. Last week - or I'm sorry, not last week, two weeks ago, going back to the DHS markup that we had two weeks ago when I again talked about this GAO report about Camp East Montana - the largest immigration detention facility in the world, which is in my district, $1.3 billion of American taxpayer dollars.

The GAO report exposed a number of deficiencies. The failure for the of the private contractor to meet federal standards. And one of my amendments, which I'm very grateful, was adopted by this committee and made it into the bill, was about pursuing - instructing ICE to pursue the tens of millions of dollars that were wasted by the private contractor.

Just to refresh everyone's memory: the private contractor was charging the American government for three meals a day, every single day, at a 5,000 bed facility, when there wasn't a single detainee held inside the facility. Tens of millions of dollars of waste.

Well, part of the problem identified in the GAO report was the use of WEXMAC. This military procurement tool is intended for rapid deployment for - really essentially, it's an important tool for the United States military. DHS has their own procurement tool. DHS should be using their procurement tool. That procurement tool that DHS normally uses, analyzes experience, analyzes cost, takes a whole host of things into consideration before awarding something like a $1.3 billion bid.

But because WEXMAC was used, it defers to a low bid, the lowest bidder. And in this case, the lowest bidder, which was $1.3 billion, the lowest bidder had zero experience in immigration detention. Can you imagine that the federal government used a DoD contracting tool to award a low bid, which 1.3 billion isn't really a low bid if you asked me, but we used a DoD procurement tool that should be reserved for for the military.

So I'm asking that we prohibit the use of this tool for purposes that are outside of military purposes. DHS has purchased warehouses in my district, three warehouses, and I recently asked ICE, "Will these warehouses that are going to be used for immigration detention? How are you going to contract that? I'm assuming you're going to use a private contractor." The answer was yes. "How are you going to find the contractor for this, for these warehouses?" WEXMAC.

We keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again. These are costly mistakes. And we're using a tool that wasn't intended for this purpose. Let's use WEXMAC, but let's allow this tool to be retained by the DoD for DoD purposes. I ask for your support. I yield back.