U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

WASHINGTON : 

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office,

http://bookstore.gpo.gov. For more information, contact the GPO Customer Contact Center,

U.S. Government Printing Office. Phone 202–512–1800, or 866–512–1800 (toll-free). E-mail, gpo@custhelp.com.

i 

64–859 2011

[H.A.S.C. No. 112–3] 

HEARING 

ON

NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT 

FOR FISCAL YEAR 2012 

AND

OVERSIGHT OF PREVIOUSLY AUTHORIZED 

PROGRAMS 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON MILITARY PERSONNEL HEARING 

ON

MORALE, WELFARE, AND RECREATION 

PROGRAMS OVERVIEW 

HEARING HELD 

FEBRUARY 9, 2011 
(II) 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON MILITARY PERSONNEL 

JOE WILSON, South Carolina, Chairman 

WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina 

MIKE COFFMAN, Colorado 

TOM ROONEY, Florida 

JOE HECK, Nevada 

ALLEN B. WEST, Florida 

AUSTIN SCOTT, Georgia 

VICKY HARTZLER, Missouri 

SUSAN A. DAVIS, California 

ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania 

MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, Guam 

DAVE LOEBSACK, Iowa 

NIKI TSONGAS, Massachusetts 

CHELLIE PINGREE, Maine 

MICHAEL HIGGINS, Professional Staff Member 

DEBRA WADA, Professional Staff Member 

JAMES WEISS, Staff Assistant 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS 

2011 

Page 

HEARING: 

Wednesday, February 9, 2011, Morale, Welfare, and Recreation Programs 

Overview ............................................................................................................... 1 

APPENDIX: 

Wednesday, February 9, 2011 ................................................................................ 23 

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2011 

MORALE, WELFARE, AND RECREATION PROGRAMS OVERVIEW 

STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS 

Davis, Hon. Susan A., a Representative from California, Ranking Member, 

Subcommittee on Military Personnel ................................................................. 2 

Wilson, Hon. Joe, a Representative from South Carolina, Chairman, Subcommittee on Military Personnel ........................................................................ 1 

WITNESSES 

Gordon, Robert L., III, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, Military Community and Family Policy, Office of Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readinesss ......................................................................................... 4 

Gorman, Richard, Chief Operating Officer, U.S. Army Family and Morale, 

Welfare, and Recreation Command .................................................................... 5 

Larsen, Timothy R., Director, Personal and Family Readiness Division, Manpower and Reserve Affairs Department, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps .. 6 

Milam, Charles E., Director of Air Force Services, Headquarters, U.S. Air 

Force ...................................................................................................................... 7 

Patrick, Rogers, Acting Director, Fleet and Family Readiness Programs, Commander, Navy Installations Command .............................................................. 6 

APPENDIX 

PREPARED STATEMENTS: 

Davis, Hon. Susan A. ....................................................................................... 28 

Gordon, Robert L., III ....................................................................................... 30 

Gorman, Richard .............................................................................................. 57 

Larsen, Timothy R. ........................................................................................... 103 

Milam, Charles E. ............................................................................................ 120 

Patrick, Rogers ................................................................................................. 85 

Wilson, Hon. Joe ............................................................................................... 27 

DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD: 

Testimony of Sid L. Scruggs III, International President, Lions Clubs 

International ................................................................................................. 139 

WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING THE HEARING: 

Ms. Bordallo ...................................................................................................... 145 

Mrs. Davis ......................................................................................................... 145 
Page

IV 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING: 

Mr. Jones ........................................................................................................... 149 

Mr. Wilson ......................................................................................................... 149 
(1) 

MORALE, WELFARE, AND RECREATION PROGRAMS 

OVERVIEW 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON MILITARY PERSONNEL, Washington, DC, Wednesday, February 9, 2011. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:10 p.m., in room 

2212, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Joe Wilson (chairman 

of the subcommittee) presiding. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOE WILSON, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM SOUTH CAROLINA, CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE 

ON MILITARY PERSONNEL 

Mr. WILSON. Ladies and gentlemen, I am Congressman Joe Wilson, and I am delighted to welcome you to the first meeting of the 

Military Personnel Subcommittee of the House Armed Services 

Committee for the 112th Congress. And I am delighted we have an 

outstanding panel that we will be getting to. 

Before I begin I want to thank the staff members who helped 

make this subcommittee so important for our service members, 

military families, and veterans. And a living example of bipartisanship is to my left, and that is that Mike Higgins is remaining on 

to be the professional staff member. He has traditionally done this 

even in another Congress. And so—like the 111th—and so I am 

very grateful that Mike is available, and he is so knowledgeable on 

issues relative to what we will be discussing today. And so I am 

so happy that he has agreed to stay on. 

And of course on the majority side I am very grateful that John 

Chapla, a very distinguished VMI [Virginia Military Institute] 

graduate, is with us. And then we have Jeanette James, who has 

just been instrumental in promoting the military health issues for 

this committee. I want to thank also Craig Greene and Jim Weiss, 

and on the minority side Debra Wada. And so we have got people 

who truly are available to all of you. And I also want to thank the 

individual staff of different offices who are here. 

And as we begin today I also want to thank—we do have our 

freshmen here. In fact, he is all of one right now. But, hey, all you 

need is Colonel Allen West. And so, Colonel, I want to welcome you 

to the subcommittee. And I know that we have a number of others 

who are on their way with so much going on simultaneously. At 

least we will not be interrupted by votes. And so this is going to 

be a remarkable occasion that we actually have an orderly committee meeting. 

The Subcommittee on Military Personnel will begin the 2011 

hearing cycle with two hearings on the Department of Defense, 
2 

DOD, nonappropriated fund activities. Today we will focus on morale, welfare, and recreation, MWR, programs. Tomorrow the subcommittee will turn its attention to the commissaries and exchanges, DOD’s grocery and department stores. 

The subcommittee has always viewed the wide range of programs 

that comprise the military morale, welfare, and recreation, or 

MWR, community as essential elements within a healthy military 

community. The subcommittee remains strongly committed to supporting these programs. However, it is clear that DOD has correctly crossed over into a new era of austerity marked by an increased fiscal scrutiny of all programs in an unrelenting pursuit of 

increased budget efficiency. As the recipient of appropriated funds, 

MWR programs will be subjected to increased pressure to maintain 

effectiveness while operating more efficiently. 

While demands for increased effectiveness and efficiency are to 

be expected, I fear that misperceptions about the absence of a link 

between MWR programs and combat readiness will place these programs at a greater risk of being cut too deeply. I believe that vibrant MWR programs are critical to the health of the military community they support, and their superior combat capability is directly dependent on the strength of the military community. 

We must not allow MWR programs to become easy targets for 

the budget cutters. Certainly there will be cuts, and identifying the 

programs to be reduced will require difficult decisions. It is my 

hope that MWR managers are prepared to make those decisions 

and demonstrate the willingness to find savings. But those managers must also be prepared to fight hard to factually justify the 

programs that are truly critical to service members and their families. 

We hope to learn more about the strategy that MWR managers 

will pursue in the coming months to meet the demands of the new 

era of budget austerity. 

Next, I would like to recognize Congresswoman Susan Davis. 

And I would like to, even before she speaks, thank her for her prior 

role as the chairman of this committee. She always was a person 

who conducted the meetings fairly, in a bipartisan manner, and I 

certainly want to continue the tradition of Congresswoman Chairman Susan Davis. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Wilson can be found in the Appendix on page 27.] 

STATEMENT OF HON. SUSAN A. DAVIS, A REPRESENTATIVE 

FROM CALIFORNIA, RANKING MEMBER, SUBCOMMITTEE ON 

MILITARY PERSONNEL 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you very much, and thank you, Mr. Chairman. I certainly will look forward to serving with you, and I just 

want to say that I know that you always were very supportive of 

my role, and I intend to be supportive of yours as well. And I appreciate being here. 

And I also wanted to thank, of course, our witnesses that are 

here today and to say that I, too, am very happy to have Mike Higgins sitting here between us because he is a tremendous source, 

and I also value all the other staff members who are going to be 

continuing. All have been very active on the personnel committee 
3 

in the past and bring great skills and great aptitude in this area. 

And so it is a tremendous resource for us to have them. They really 

provide so much information, and a real good source, I think, of 

thinking about ideas, and how we go forward, and what some of 

the challenges and the problems will be. And as we know in past 

years, we will have plenty of those. So I want to thank them as 

well. 

Mr. Gordon and Mr. Patrick, welcome. I believe that this is your 

first opportunity to be with us before the subcommittee, and so I 

am glad that you are here. 

Mr. Gorman, Mr. Larsen, and Mr. Milam, welcome back to you 

all as well. 

Today is the first part of a 2-day set of hearings that will focus 

on morale, welfare, and recreation programs and the military resale community. We hold these hearings annually because these 

programs are important and extremely valuable to our military 

personnel and their families. 

Ten years of conflict have placed a tremendous burden not only 

on those in uniform, but also on their families, and in particular, 

we know, their children. It is important in today’s All-Volunteer 

Force that we ensure that the support they need is there for themselves and their families. And as the chairman has mentioned already, as we look at the budget climate ahead of us, we know that 

we have to ensure that the MWR and the military resale programs 

continue to provide a wholesome quality of life for those who volunteer to serve in uniform. 

We know, of course, that we also must ensure that spending resources are spent efficiently and effectively. We certainly have a responsibility to do that. But we also have to think about the service 

member and their families. 

I certainly look forward to an open and a frank discussion on 

these issues. The dedication and commitment of our MWR employees that they have displayed to our military families under the 

most challenging of conditions have been remarkable, and we are 

grateful for their contributions. 

So thank you, Mr. Chairman. I look forward to hearing from our 

witnesses. 

Thank you all for being here. 

[The prepared statement of Mrs. Davis can be found in the Appendix on page 28.] 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you very much, and, of course, we couldn’t 

proceed without recognizing and thanking Congresswoman Madeleine Bordallo for being here, and she, of course, represents the 

strategic island of Guam. What a beautiful territory. If you ever get 

a chance to visit, Hawaii looks a lot like Guam. 

And then I am very grateful we have been joined by—the freshman contingent has now doubled, thank goodness. Congresswoman 

Vicky Hartzler is here, and Congresswoman Hartzler is from Missouri and represents the extraordinary military facilities of Fort 

Leonard Wood. And so she will certainly be a great member of our 

committee, and she has already proven her dedication, we have discussed it, to the military personnel and military families in her district, and veterans. 
4 

We are grateful to have an excellent panel of witnesses. Mr. Robert L. Gordon is the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, Military Community and Family Policy, Office of the Under Secretary 

of Defense for Personnel and Readiness. 

Mr. Richard Gorman is the Chief Operating Officer of the U.S. 

Army Morale, Welfare, and Recreation Command. 

We have Mr. Rogers Patrick, who is the Acting Director of the 

Fleet Family and Readiness Programs, Commander, Navy Installations Command; Mr. Timothy R. Larsen, who is the Director of Personal and Family Readiness Programs, Manpower and Reserve Affairs Department of the U.S. Marine Corps; and Mr. Charles E. 

Milam, Director of Air Force Services, Headquarters, U.S. Air 

Force. And it is a great day for us in that Mr. Gordon and Mr. Patrick, this is the first time that they have appeared before the committee, according to Mr. Higgins, and then—and he is always correct. 

And, Mr. Larsen, Mr. Gorman, Mr. Milam, welcome back. And 

we may be joined at any time, we have a gentleman from Ohio, 

Congressman Mike Turner, to the hearing. He may be here to participate in the hearing, and I would ask for unanimous consent 

that he be permitted to do so following the members of the subcommittee. Without objection, so ordered. 

I ask unanimous consent that a statement from Lions Club International be included in the record. Without objection, so ordered. 

[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix on 

page 139.] 

Mr. WILSON. And we will begin now with our witnesses. 

STATEMENT OF ROBERT L. GORDON III, DEPUTY ASSISTANT 

SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, MILITARY COMMUNITY AND FAMILY POLICY, OFFICE OF UNDER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE 

FOR PERSONNEL AND READINESS 

Mr. GORDON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee. I am delighted to testify before you today. I am grateful 

for this committee’s strong support and will provide a quick update 

of our MWR activities. 

I am pleased to report that in 2009, the CFI [Claes Fornell International] Group, whose methodology underpins the respected 

American Customer Satisfaction Index, conducted the first DOD 

MWR customer satisfaction survey. The results indicate that MWR 

is fine, but could use work, which I don’t think is surprising. The 

results help us to target available funding in areas that provide the 

greatest benefit in terms of improving MWR customer satisfaction. 

Fitness and outdoor recreation were highlighted as areas needing 

improvement. The survey will be conducted biannually. 

Thanks to the generous support of Congress, overseas contingency operation [OCO] funding provides free Internet access, recreation, entertainment, and library programs for troops in combat. 

To remain flexible and provide child care surge capacity, we designed programs with civilian child care providers to help families 

find affordable, quality care close to home. In 2011, we will further 

expand child care for our families using local, State, and Federal 

child and youth delivery systems. Thirteen States will participate 

in the pilot. 
5 

DOD youth programs are particularly important now. About 

117,000 military children have at least one parent deployed, and 

research suggests that they experience more stress than their 

peers. We fund a popular nonmedical counseling program for children up to 18 years of age to discuss issues affecting them, including bullying, self-esteem, and coping with deployments. 

My written testimony outlines our ongoing work in greater detail. Please be assured that as we focus on efficiencies, we will take 

care of our most valuable asset, our service members and their 

families. Thank you for your support. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Gordon can be found in the Appendix on page 30.] 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Gorman. 

STATEMENT OF RICHARD GORMAN, CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER, U.S. ARMY FAMILY AND MORALE, WELFARE, AND 

RECREATION COMMAND 

Mr. GORMAN. Mr. Chairman, members of the subcommittee, I am 

privileged to appear before you today to share some of the ways we 

honor and support our soldiers for their service and their sacrifice. 

Everything we do every day is designed to support soldiers. 

Sometimes the support is direct; at other times it is indirect 

through support to their families. But all we do is always with the 

soldier at the center of our focus. Your support through the difficult 

post-9/11 period has allowed us to be successful. 

Morale, Welfare, and Recreation serve soldiers wherever they 

serve. That includes those at Camp Arifjan, as well as those at Fort 

Hood and all points in between. 

MWR programs help soldiers maintain physical fitness and alleviate combat stress by temporarily diverting a soldier’s focus from 

combat. It also increases readiness because mission accomplishment is directly linked to a soldier’s confidence that their families 

are safe, resilient, and capable of carrying on during their absence. 

Soldiers, families, and civilians are our greatest strategic asset 

and are indeed the strength of our Army. The Army has long recognized that if we do not retain the family, we simply will not retain 

the soldier. 

I am also very happy to report today that Army MWR Funds’ collective financial posture is sound and supports our soldiers and 

families today, and will into the future, with cash assets exceeding 

liabilities by a rate of 1.5 to 1. 

We have seen the huge burden of 9 years of war, and we will 

continue to care for our soldiers and their families, a top priority 

for our Army. 

On behalf of America’s Army, I want to thank you for your continued and steadfast commitment, and I look forward to your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Gorman can be found in the Appendix on page 57.] 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you very much. As an Army veteran and father of three sons currently serving in Army National Guard, 

thank you very much. 

Mr. Rogers Patrick. 
6 

STATEMENT OF ROGERS PATRICK, ACTING DIRECTOR, FLEET 

AND FAMILY READINESS PROGRAMS, COMMANDER, NAVY 

INSTALLATIONS COMMAND 

Mr. PATRICK. Chairman Wilson, Ranking Member Davis, and distinguished Military Personnel Subcommittee members, I am 

pleased to discuss the current status of the Navy’s Morale, Welfare, 

and Recreation program with you. 

The Navy has continued to make significant strides in providing 

top-quality MWR programs. During 2009, MWR remained financially sound with resources totaling $920 million. This consisted of 

426 million in appropriated fund support and 494 million in NAF 

[nonappropriated fund] program revenue generated, with a net income of $17 million. 

Results from fiscal year 2010 were also positive, and I am 

pleased to report that after a 1-year deviation from the norm in 

2009, Navy MWR has exceeded the 85 percent appropriate fund 

support metric for Category A programs and met the 65 percent 

metric for Category B programs in fiscal year 2010. 

Navy Installations Command’s unique organizational structure of 

bundling quality-of-life programs to include MWR, fleet and family 

support centers, the galleys, and housing for both families and 

bachelors into a single organization has enabled us to partner with 

our public-private venture housing corporate partners through 

neighborhood community centers. This quality-of-life model has 

lowered our program overhead costs and streamlined our communications processes. With support from the Congress, our President, 

and the Secretary of Defense, the Navy has funded more than 30 

new child development centers, which will increase our current capacity by 7,000 spaces and reduce our waiting time for services to 

no more than 3 months. 

MWR programs provide sailors with a firsthand demonstration of 

the Navy’s commitment to their quality of life. MWR offers some 

of the best recreation programs and developmental outlets for our 

sailors’ family members. Whatever the need, wherever the location, 

our patrons know they can count on MWR to deliver on our promise of high-quality facilities, services, and programs. Thank you. 

I would like to submit the rest of my statement for the record, 

and I stand by to answer your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Patrick can be found in the Appendix on page 85.] 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you very much, Mr. Patrick. 

We now have Mr. Timothy R. Larsen. 

STATEMENT OF TIMOTHY R. LARSEN, DIRECTOR, PERSONAL 

AND FAMILY READINESS DIVISION, MANPOWER AND RESERVE AFFAIRS DEPARTMENT, HEADQUARTERS, U.S. MARINE CORPS 

Mr. LARSEN. Chairman Wilson, Ranking Member Davis, distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to represent the Marine Corps and to provide a report on 

our MWR and family readiness programs. 

We thank the Congress, especially this subcommittee, for your 

continued support and your recognition that these are critical programs to resiliency and readiness of marines and their families. 
7 

We have been engaged in a multiyear effort to transition marine 

and family programs, and this includes the establishment of family 

readiness officers, the redesign of our Exceptional Family Member 

and School Liaison programs, and numerous quality-of-life improvements at remote and isolated commands. Feedback from marines and families has been very positive, and we have built the requirement into our fiscal year 2010 baseline budget, with an increase of about $110 million. 

The current effort of program transitions as outlined by General 

Amos in his planning guidance is focused on enhancing the resiliency of marines and families. The Commandant’s planning guidance also tasked us with ensuring that marines and their families 

have access to quality facilities and support programs as well as 

the resources necessary to provide a quality standard of living. His 

guidance also directs that we review and improve Family Readiness and Transition Assistance programs, and we move to more 

fully integrate behavioral health efforts within the Marine Corps. 

We appreciate the support from Congress as well as our partnership with the OSD [Office of the Secretary of Defense] and the 

work that we do with sister services, all of which help us and contribute to our ability to provide and deliver quality services and 

programs for our marines and sailors. And on behalf of marines 

and families, I thank the subcommittee for your oversight and continued support of Marine Corps programs and look forward to your 

questions. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Larsen can be found in the Appendix on page 103.] 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you very much, Mr. Larsen, and we now 

have Mr. Charles E. Milam. 

STATEMENT OF CHARLES E. MILAM, DIRECTOR OF AIR FORCE 

SERVICES, HEADQUARTERS, U.S. AIR FORCE 

Mr. MILAM. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and fellow Military Personnel Subcommittee members, for the opportunity today to 

present the status of Air Force MWR programs. We appreciate the 

leadership and support for the readiness and quality of life for our 

airmen and their families. The men and women of Air Force Services are making remarkable contributions to ongoing overseas contingency operations and humanitarian efforts. We will not lose 

sight of our core function to provide mission-ready airmen; however, in order to focus on the mission, we must provide support for 

our airmen and their families; simply put, caring for people. 

In my 25 years in Air Force Services, our scope of operations has 

never been bigger. Our MWR team nearly 48,000 strong now provides the most robust Caring for People programs in recent history. 

We have stretched our traditional MWR model to forge a stronger 

Air Force community, evolving and expanding our services to meet 

the constantly changing needs of our airmen and their families. 

Beyond our traditional combat support and community service 

roles, we are enhancing our efforts in warrior and survivor care, 

family readiness and resiliency, food transformation, nonmedical 

counseling services, outreach programs, inclusive recreation, dignified transfers, and much more. 
8 

Last year’s Year of the Air Force Family reemphasizes our commitment to a strong sense of Air Force community, and Air Force 

Services has key roles in our enduring road map for expanded programs and services in health and wellness, airmen and family support, education and development, and airmen and family housing. 

As we build these better programs, though, we must also be vigilant about budget pressures to use fund troop dollars for purposes 

that ought to be supported with appropriated funds. 

As the spouse of an Air Force officer who is currently deployed 

to Afghanistan and the father of two young children, I fully understand the challenges that we face and certainly the importance of 

taking care of our airmen and their families. 

Thank you again for the opportunity to be here, and I look forward to working with this subcommittee. And I welcome any questions you may have. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Milam can be found in the Appendix on page 120.] 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you very much, Mr. Milam, and thank you 

for your family’s service, too. And you certainly have a good perspective of how important military families are. 

Continuing the tradition of Congresswoman Susan Davis, we will 

have the 5-minute rule, and Mr. Higgins is going to be the master 

of this. And so he is the final arbiter. 

And I want to thank all of you for being here. My interest, obviously, as a Member of Congress, and I am very grateful I represent 

Fort Jackson. I am almost as fortunate as Congresswoman 

Hartzler. And I represent Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort, Parris Island, Beaufort Naval Hospital, and I have—also as a family 

member I am very grateful. I have got three sons who served in 

the Army National Guard, I have got a son who is a doctor in the 

Navy, and I have got a nephew who is currently in the Air Force. 

So we are a joint service family. 

I certainly think it is a reasonable expectation that budget pressures on installation commanders and other managers would require a reduction in appropriated funding for MWR programs. 

Those cuts could take the form of an across-the-board reduction 

against all MWR programs being diminished in effectiveness. But 

I hope and suggest that there may be a more strategic prospective 

that protects the funding levels for critical programs while eliminating programs that are not as important to the welfare of military families, and service members and veterans. 

Mr. Gordon, is there a DOD-wide plan to review all MWR programs to prioritize which programs should receive appropriated 

funds and which programs that do not match up? 

Mr. GORDON. I think the services have done a very good job assessing their programs to getting a sense of the state of those programs now and the degree to which they provide effective quality 

of life for our service members and their families. 

One thing, I think, to note is that we have to be much more 

sharply focused on what families and service members want, first 

of all. And I had mentioned in my statement about the customer 

satisfaction survey. That helps to a great degree because we now 

know the points of emphasis for our families and our service mem-
9 

bers, what they consider important in terms of morale, welfare, and 

recreation, and will use that. 

But as important, maybe even more important, is our leadership, 

and we have the right leadership in place to make those sorts of 

assessments. You see some of it before you here. But that leadership has been very, very focused on ensuring the top priority for 

the human element of what we do in the Defense Department. As 

we all know, we are about machines and people, and as we usher 

in this 21st century, we have been at war now for 10 years, this 

notion of focusing on our human element, our service members, 

their families, because in terms of retention, in terms of readiness, 

it is absolutely essential. 

So with the customer satisfaction survey, with the assessment 

that the services have done in terms of morale, welfare, and recreation activities, and then with the success of those programs. 

I was in the Army for 26 years, and a dependent as well, who 

lived overseas in the American Augsburg Youth Activities Association. So I have seen the transition. I was just at Fort Campbell, 

and the services that are provided today are just outstanding. So 

with respect to leadership, with respect to assessment of programs, 

and with respect to the infrastructure in place, I think we are in 

good shape. 

Mr. WILSON. I appreciate using the word ‘‘respect.’’ Another way 

to phrase respect, too, is respect for family members, and so that 

is what you are doing. 

Mr. GORDON. Absolutely. 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you. 

And actually for all other panel members, have there been funding reductions already? What is the effect? For each member. You 

can begin, Mr. Milam. 

Mr. MILAM. We haven’t seen the exact numbers yet, but we are 

working some cut drills just to anticipate some reductions. We are 

focusing on certainly the warfighter first and some of our key warrior and survivor care programs for our wounded warriors, our 

mortuary affairs operations, child care. We just completed a Caring 

for People Survey with over 100,000 responses from the total force 

to include Guard and Reserve, and civilians, and family members. 

That gives us a good indication of where we need to prioritize our 

resources. 

So without really seeing the specific cuts, we can’t identify the 

exact cuts that will take place, but we are working the drills as we 

speak. 

Mr. WILSON. Mr. Gorman. 

Mr. GORMAN. Yes, sir. Thank you. 

We acknowledge the environment we are in and the need to be 

ever more fiscally conscious. 

At the same time, we are blessed by the Army leadership’s commitment to the Army Family Covenant. You are aware that General Casey came out of Iraq in April of 2007 to become our 36th 

Chief of Staff; believed at that point that the Army was out of balance and over the next 6 months put us to work to create the Army 

Family Covenant. The commitment to funding that is steadfast. In 2007, our family and MWR programs were funded about $749 

million, and on the first of October 2007, the beginning of fiscal 
10 

year 2008, that commitment was doubled to 1.4 million, most of 

which initially in OCO, and in 2009 and beyond has been transferred into the base. So we are confident that the resources remain 

in place at least for as far as we can see. 

At the same time, we also accept the responsibility to develop 

what General Casey calls a cost culture where we turn a new page 

in our approach to fiscal management, where it is not about executing dollars, but it is about what we get for the money we spend 

in terms of the value we provide our service members and their 

families in exchange or in turn for their magnificent service. 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you. 

Either one. 

Mr. PATRICK. Yes, sir. The two points I would like to make for 

Navy, listening to the customer, we have been using CFI, the same 

contractor, for about 8 or 9 years now. So we have got some pretty 

good empirical data. We have been using it to shape our programs 

all along. 

Once we focus on which programs are the most important, we 

are switching gears and looking at standardization, and trying to 

deliver the program consistently across our bases, and using the 

best practices of the bases we know do it exceedingly well, and try 

and economize in that fashion. 

Mr. LARSEN. Sir, currently in this year, next year’s budget, we 

have not taken any reductions in the appropriated funds. But last 

year as we did the POM [program objective memorandum], we did 

take some reductions through the POM process. 

What the Marine Corps has done and put in place for the future, 

as we go through developing the budget through the POM process, 

they have a prioritized list of programs, and these family programs 

are on that prioritized list, and before any reductions are recommended or projected in those areas, there has to be a decision 

made by the leadership of the Marine Corps on whether or not they 

will take that. 

We are doing an assessment of our programs top to bottom. 

There is about 100 programs. We are looking at all of those programs. We are getting input from commanders as they rack and 

stack those programs as far as from their perspective. We are getting input from family members. We are also getting input from 

marines. And we are looking at usage data. Before we decide we 

are going to reduce the funding in the programs, we want to see 

what the impact is going to be on mission and on the importance 

of those programs to the marines and families. 

Mr. WILSON. I thank all of you, and we have just been joined by 

Congressman Austin Scott. Congressman Scott also represents very 

significant facilities in the State of Georgia. We want to congratulate him, too. A great honor. He was elected the president of the 

freshman class of the 112th Congress, one of the largest freshman 

classes in the history of our Nation. So the president of the class 

is pretty important, but he is even more important than usual. So 

congratulations. 

And we go to Congresswoman Susan Davis. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you very much. 

In many ways I think you answered one of my first questions 

about the viability of the programs, because one of the concerns 
11 

that I think we have is that there are some individuals, and I am 

sure some Members of Congress as well, perhaps some new Members, who would question whether or not we need to have commissaries and exchanges for our military families, and whether or 

not it wouldn’t be fine for people to go shop in local community 

stores. 

I think the issue that sometimes gets lost is that the nonappropriated funding that comes from these activities impacts the 

programs that you have all been just talking about. So I wonder 

if there is—perhaps one of the ways of helping us as well as we 

look to those programs and which ones have greater viability perhaps than others is what would it look like if, in fact, we didn’t 

have that kind of nonappropriated funding, we didn’t have those 

resources? Is there a way that you would talk about that so that 

people would understand how important they are? 

Mr. GORDON. Right. You know, we build a sense of community 

with those programs first. It is a military community that has been 

at war for a long period of time. Sixty to seventy percent, depending on the service, of our service members and their families live 

off post. These programs bring them back together when we are 

talking about our commissaries and our exchanges. It is a place of 

meeting not only for our Active Duty, but for our Guard and Reserve and our retired service members. So that sense of community 

is absolutely essential. 

But there is the effectiveness issue as well in terms of the 31.5 

percent savings, in terms of a benefit for our commissaries, the fact 

that we have 923 child development centers where we can have our 

180,000 of our 200,000 children who need that have a place to go. 

So it is a workforce issue as well. 

I think it is an ecosystem that we have built. And within that 

ecosystem we have the efficiency, and we have the effectiveness, 

and we have the equity, and with this team, I would argue, we 

have the innovation to be able to build that sense of community to 

sustain readiness and retention. 

Mrs. DAVIS. I don’t know if anybody else wanted to comment further. Yes, Mr. Larsen. 

Mr. LARSEN. Yes, ma’am. 

To have these programs is part of the—I think they are critical. 

They are essential to the way we run the other programs. The nonappropriated fund programs support the other family programs 

that—some of which we get some appropriated funds for; some of 

them, depending on what category they are in, we share the funding between appropriated and nonappropriated funds. But as part 

of the nonpaid compensation that we get for the service members, 

it is critical for them. 

We provide a savings and a value in the exchanges that they are 

able to buy things at about 27 percent less than in retailers outside 

the gates. So there is a real value to that, especially the young family members. The young service members with families really realize that benefit. We have programs in place like ‘‘My Cost Is Your 

Cost,’’ where we sell things at cost, whether diapers, formula, baby 

food, some of those other items like that, milk and eggs, milk and 

bread and things like that, to really help defray some of the cost 

of living that some of these young families are experiencing. 
12 

The dividend that we realize from that funds these programs, 

and to take that away or to remove the appropriated funding from 

that would really restrict the ability to generate the nonappropriated funds, and it would cause us to have to put more 

money back into the programs. 

So the connection between the appropriated, nonappropriated 

funding for these programs is very important. It is critical to our 

ability to provide these services. 

Mr. GORMAN. I would just add, and I concur with everything said, that from a financial perspective, we earn about $200 million 

a year on our garrisons in nonappropriated funds to be used to support families. About 75 percent of that money is provided by the 

dividend from the Army and Air Force exchange system. So the 

continued viability of both the commissary and the exchange system is critical. 

I would also add that the lion’s share of our appropriated funds 

are spent in recreation, but even more so in Army Community 

Services, which provides counseling and family services, and our 

Child and Youth Services program. 

The survey of Army families, just completed this past summer, 

indicates that over 60 percent of our families are pleased with the 

way the Army is treating them after 9 years of war. And I think 

that really speaks for itself. 

Our leadership, General Casey and Lieutenant General Lynch, 

the Commander of the Army Installation Management Command, 

frequently say that our Army is not going to break because of its 

soldiers, but it might break because of its families. So therefore, we 

need to stay resolute in our commitment to funding those things 

that help them feel good about who they are, what they do, and 

where they serve. Thank you. 

Mr. MILAM. I would just echo everything that has been said, and 

certainly the dividend stream from AAFES [Army and Air Force 

Exchange Service] has an enormous impact on the quality-of-life 

programs and construction projects that we have in the Air Force. 

Taking that away or impacting that in any way would have a huge 

impact on quality-of-life programs. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you. 

And Congressman Allen West. 

Mr. WEST. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And it really is an honor 

to sit here before each and every one of you. And having done 22 

years of Active Duty service myself, coming from a father who 

served in World War II, a mother who did civilian service for 25 

years with the Marine Corps district headquarters in Atlanta, an 

older brother who served in Vietnam, a nephew who is a captain 

serving in Fort Knox right now, and also a wife who is a military 

dependent—her father served two tours in Vietnam, two of her 

brothers served in the Air Force—and, of course, both of my daughters, who are 17 and 14 now, born out at Fort Riley, Kansas, spent 

time in Fort Riley, Fort Leavenworth, Camp Lejeune, and then also 

Fort Hood, Texas. So what you are talking about here is very near 

and dear to my heart, because my two daughters have been beneficiaries of the great Army Morale, Welfare, and Recreation pro-
13 

grams. And also I spent 3 years working for the Installation Management Command [IMCOM] after I retired. So please give my regards to all of my friends at IMCOM out there at San Antonio 

Texas. 

But one of the things I would like to bring up a question. This 

past Saturday I had the opportunity of attending a Navy League 

event down at Fort Lauderdale, and the Chief of Staff of the Army 

USSOUTHCOM—I mean, USSOUTHCOM [United States Southern Command] was there, Major General Ayala. We just talked 

about commissaries, and one of the things he brought up is the 

amount of soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, and coastguardsmen 

we have in and around that headquarters. And he asked if they 

could get the opportunity of having a commissary built there for 

them, because there is something about a commissary system. It is 

not just about people going to a Walmart, or Costco, or whatever. 

It is a camaraderie that a commissary allows you to have, and then 

also when you think about a lot of the retirees there. 

So one of the things I want to ask is if you could do that assessment of looking at having a commissary system down there for the 

United States Southern Command, because I think it is very important. I think that when you look at the cost-benefit analysis, 

you will see that you could generate a lot of funds with the retired 

community down there. 

My real question is this: I saw how the Army on-post housing 

transformed when we went to the privatized system, and that was 

a great system because you were able to do a lot of things as far 

as the repairs and the responsiveness to the servicing of those 

quarters. And so I would ask is that something that we have 

shared across all of our services to look at how we can improve the 

responsiveness of our on-base, on-post installation housing? 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. GORDON. Thank you, sir, and thank you for your family’s 

service as well. 

I am going to let the services answer about how much they are 

sharing among themselves, but we are trying to institute more programs actually at the Department of Defense where we are actually bringing together the services to exchange information, and 

ideas and best practices. We have a service-to-service meeting now 

where the Deputy M&RAs [Assistant Secretaries for Manpower 

and Reserve Affairs] come together. A real success story, for example, is the Army Spouse Employment program, where the Army 

talked about that program, and we are looking at making that program purple now and expanding that to all military spouses in 

terms of availability for jobs. 

So I think with this new leadership, we are much more apt to 

get together to start to exchange ideas and best practices that are 

working. But let me defer to the services in terms of specifically 

housing. 

Mr. LARSEN. Well, I don’t think most of us on this panel don’t 

really do housing, but I will just give you a couple of points that 

I might be aware of. 

As a former installation commander, I was a little familiar with 

some of the issues with housing, but I would offer that all of the 

services have taken advantage of the PPV [public-private ventures] 
14 

and be able to do public-private ventures and improve the housing 

on the bases. If you go around and look across the board, when we 

have town hall meetings and we meet with service members, they 

routinely are very appreciative of what the services have done for 

them as far as the housing is concerned. And so I think we made 

huge progress in that area. 

We are doing similar things in lots of other areas to see if we 

can get joint ventures with private companies to help us do different activities on our installations. So I think, in that regard, it 

does have some applicability to the members of the panel here. And 

so we are working together on a lot of these things. We have several efforts that are ongoing to share information. Actually, on a 

routine basis, the exchanges and commissaries are working together to try to improve the quality of services we provide to service members. 

Mr. MILAM. The Air Force has undergone similar privatization on 

the installations, which, of course, more and more Air Force personnel and families have moved off base as a result of that. 

One of our challenges from a quality-of-life and an MWR standpoint is how do we reach those families? And it almost becomes the 

model of the Guard and Reserve where we have our military living 

out in communities, and where we have less focus on the bricksand-mortar piece of the installation on the base. 

What we do know through several surveys is at the end of the 

day, our military members are going home if they live off base. 

They are not hanging out at the clubs like they used to back in the 

day. They are going back where their families live. And we also realize that that sense of community is established in the neighborhoods that you live in, where you go to church, where your kids go 

to school. So what we are challenged with as we look through our 

programs and our efficiency drills is how we reach them and continue to support them with our MWR programs. 

Mr. WEST. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back to you. 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you very much. 

We next go to Congresswoman Madeleine Bordallo. 

Ms. BORDALLO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I am very pleased 

to be on this personnel committee again. I was with you last time, 

and, of course, Mrs. Davis. 

I have a couple of very important questions for Guam. The first 

question is for Secretary Gordon or Mr. Patrick, and it is regarding 

a contracting issue for MWR services on Guam. I understand that 

your office may not be the contracting authority, but it will certainly impact the quality of MWR services on Guam and the relationship between MWR services and our local business community. 

I understand that there may be a sole sourcing of the MWR service contract to an off-island firm when local companies that are 

HUBZone [Historically Underutilized Business Zone] certified are 

willing to do the work and are, in fact, currently performing this 

contract. I further understand that the contract may be solesourced because of time constraints or personnel shortages at the 

contracting authority, which I believe is FISC [Fleet and Industrial 

Supply Center] in Pearl Harbor. 

This is simply unacceptable to me, gentlemen, and I have long 

stated that all contracts out in Guam should be competitively 
15 

awarded. So can I get your commitment to work with our local 

MWR folks and the Joint Region Marianas to address this matter? 

I want to ensure that we have fair competition for this contract. 

The people of Guam are very concerned about it, and there will be 

other contracts that will be implemented in the future. 

So, Mr. Gordon, could I get your answer on that? 

Mr. GORDON. Thank you very much, and I will certainly look into 

it. Competition is important. 

Ms. BORDALLO. Very good. 

Mr. GORDON. I will take this for the record as well to dig into 

it. I will look into it. 

[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix on 

page 145.] 

Ms. BORDALLO. Very good. Because this was a competitive 

awarded contract, and now all of a sudden it is sole-sourced. 

And the second question I have—Mr. Chairman, do I have time 

for a second? 

Mr. WILSON. Yes. 

Ms. BORDALLO. Good. 

The military on Guam has a strategically important footprint 

and perform critically important missions for our country every 

day. MWR plays an important role in sustaining the readiness of 

the force, and to that extent I am wondering what more proactive 

efforts can be taken to work with the airlines that fly in and out 

of Guam to provide improved discounted offers for morale leave? I 

do know that Continental Airlines offers some discounted ticket 

prices, but service members on the bases still have a difficult time 

taking advantage of Guam’s location and proximity to other Asian 

destinations because of the general high fares out there. So is this 

something that could be looked into further? And, Mr. Gordon, you 

or anyone else that could answer that. 

Mr. GORDON. I think there is a larger issue here, too, and I am 

glad that you brought that up. And the question is how we are 

partnering with our nonprofit and our commercial sectors given 

this new fiscal austerity that we are going to witness. So that is 

certainly worth looking into. 

At the same time, I think the good news story is we are looking 

and reaching out for those sorts of partnerships. A perfect example 

is our child care arena where we are working with 13 States, for 

example, to do something about the shortage of roughly about 

37,000 slots for child care. And it is these sorts of partnerships 

where we can once again reduce, for example, costs for our service 

members and their families, and at the same time get some efficiencies as a result that are worth looking into. So I will certainly 

do that as well. 

Ms. BORDALLO. Good. 

I think I have just a couple of seconds left here. This question, 

the third one, is for Mr. Milam with the Air Force. In your testimony you discussed the Food Transformation Initiative in the Air 

Force. Can you discuss to what extent appropriate sustainability 

practices are utilized in this initiative? Are you looking at providing food sources that within a 150-mile radius as is generally accepted sustainability practice? 
16 

Mr. MILAM. Ma’am, let me preface my response by explaining 

why we started Food Transformation, why we got into this. We are 

challenged, we have a platform, a food service delivery platform, in 

the Air Force that is over 60 years old. It has a 32 percent utilization rate, it costs over $20 per plate to feed an airman, and, quite 

frankly, has the lowest customer satisfaction rate out of any of our 

MWR programs, about 67 percent. That is a D. That is not acceptable. So we are taking a hard look at transforming, how we do— 

how we deliver food in the Air Force. 

To certainly improve the quality, the variety and the availability, 

we have contracted with ARAMARK Corporation, and we started 

out at six test locations that we have out there. The feedback that 

we have so far has been very positive. Across the board we are 

looking at about a 22 percent increase in utilization. In fact, last 

week I was at MacDill Air Force Base at Tampa, and, speaking 

with the personnel down there, they had an average customer rate 

of about 350 to 400. They are up to 1,300 customers per day. One 

of the problems they have is the throughput of bringing those people through, but the quality has certainly improved. 

We are delivering this Food Transformation effort through the 

contract, through a delivery order focusing on both the appropriated fund, the flight line feeding, as well as some NAF functions 

that they have out there. So there is a benefit certainly to the military as is the contractor. 

Overall there will be a savings with this initiative of about 25 

percent for appropriated funds. So we are not only saving money, 

but we are improving the quality, the availability, and the variety 

of food. On average, we have increased food service at these locations from 66 hours per week to 112 hours per week. 

This is a model that we want to adapt across the board. There 

is currently a GAO [Government Accountability Office] review, and 

I think they are going to report out to Congress around April time 

frame. We would like to continue our Food Transformation effort 

at other locations in the Air Force. 

Ms. BORDALLO. Good. Thank you very much. 

I yield back, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you. 

Congresswoman Vicky Hartzler. 

Mrs. HARTZLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is an honor to be 

on this subcommittee. I am glad to be here today, and I am proud 

to represent Missouri’s Fourth Congressional District, not only Fort 

Leonard Wood, but also the Missouri National Guard headquarters 

and Whiteman Air Force Base. 

And as a former family consumer sciences teacher, child development is very important to me, and the family is very important, so 

I appreciate all of your priority and what you do to make family 

a priority in the armed services. 

Mr. Milam, in looking at some data that was provided for us 

ahead of time regarding the childcare facilities, I just wanted to 

ask a question a little bit about the percentage rate for Category 

B funding. I know that at Whiteman Air Force Base we are very 

pleased with the stellar, brand new childcare facility there, the 

Susie Skelton Child Care Center. It is just absolutely beautiful, 

and I know it is very well received there on base. But from the 
17 

data that I look at, it looks like that the Air Force overall has only 

a 56 percent investment in child care, and I just wondered what 

your thoughts were, given how important it is. The Air Force seems 

to be a little out of step with providing services, contributing less 

funds, than the other services are to this category. So what are 

your thoughts on that, and what is the Air Force doing? 

Mr. MILAM. The fees are matching, where we get 50 percent appropriated fund support, and then the parent fees are matched 50/ 

50. So we are a little bit above, I believe, the OSD requirement for 

that. 

Certainly child care is very important in the military, and I have 

two children age 5 and 6 who are in the program, so I fully understand that. When we survey our parents, certainly the most important thing for them is the availability of child care. So if someone 

gave me more money, I think one of the first things I would do is 

look at the availability in increased spaces, not only spaces in a 

physical structure on the installation, but perhaps providing additional childcare subsidies for our Guard and our Reserve units that 

are out there. 

I believe our fees are fair, they are in line with the new DOD 

fees, with the nine-tier structure, and the support that we currently provide in the APF [appropriated funds] meets the standard. 

So what we are focusing on now, ma’am, is to ensure that we can 

deliver more child care, availability of child care, to our airmen and 

their families. That is the piece that will reduce the stress on our 

families is having child care. Now, certainly the cost of child care 

is a factor when we survey our families, but it is not the factor. 

Mrs. HARTZLER. So I need a little clarity. I am just new here. I 

thought the goal was 65 percent, and it is 56 percent. So you are 

saying that you are not below the goal? 

Mr. MILAM. The matching fee is 50/50. The goal to Category B 

activities is 65 percent. We are meeting that. Yes, ma’am. 

Mrs. HARTZLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you very much. 

We now have Congressman Austin Scott. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And Mr. Gordon and Mr. Milam, I represent Robins Air Force 

Base in Georgia. And we are blessed in Georgia with many bases 

and certainly want to work with you to maintain that. 

And my question really gets back to the MWR and any changes 

that are made. What guidance is the DOD going to give to the base 

commanders with regard to those changes, or are the individual 

commanders going to be allowed to work with their personnel and 

determine what changes should be made to accommodate those 

budget-related issues? 

Mr. GORDON. From the DOD perspective, ensuring a consistency, 

first of all, that we are meeting basically category A, or category 

B, or category C, very important, but that consistency in policy as 

well. At the same time—and I then will let Mr. Milam discuss the 

Air Force—commanders have a great responsibility, and they are 

on the ground and really do understand the needs and requirements of their families and their service members. 

I recently visited both Fort Carson and Fort Campbell, and one 

of the instrumental aspects in terms of providing care is also an 
18 

outreach to community. It is not just about what is going on, as we 

all know, on that post or base, but how well the command integrates with the community, because, once again, most of our service members and their families live off post. They live off base. So 

those commanders and that sort of assessment is absolutely instrumental. 

At the same time I do think we have the policies in place to ensure a consistency across the force, and we have an emphasis basically on our service members and their families in terms of the 

overall platform of morale, welfare, and recreation and its importance to readiness and recruitment. 

With that, I will turn it over to the Air Force, and we can get 

more specific. 

Mr. MILAM. Certainly the programs that we look at as far as the 

efficiencies at the Air Force strategic level, there is not one size 

that fits all that I have found across our installations. In many respects when we have an issue with child care at one base, we may 

not have that at another base, or a recreation program may be vibrant at one location and not the other. So it is difficult to say, let 

us trim these programs across the board. That is not a fair assessment. What we have to do is look at the installation specifically. 

And I think the installation commander certainly has the authority 

to make his or her own changes. 

Food transformation, for example, is a very, very positive impact 

on the airmen, but the current dining facility at Robins may certainly fit the needs or may be suitable for those airmen that we 

have today. 

So, again, whatever changes we make in the Air Force may not 

be a blanket change across the Air Force. I think the installation 

commander will still have the authority to make those changes. 

Mr. SCOTT. If I could just follow up with that. I do believe that 

the local base commanders in working with their people should be 

allowed the flexibility there, and I appreciate that and hope that 

we continue to pursue that. And just what a member of the Navy 

on the west coast desires as far as recreational facilities may be 

very different from what a member of the Air Force in central 

Georgia desires. And I think that if those decisions are left to the 

local base commander instead of coming out of Washington, I think 

that is the best way to serve our men and women in uniform on 

those bases. Thank you. 

I yield back, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. WILSON. We are very fortunate. We have just been joined— 

I don’t know if he is ready—by Congressman Dr. Joe Heck from the 

Republic of Nevada. So we are very grateful to have—Congressman, if you would like to ask questions, we are doing—and this is 

the hearing in regard to morale, welfare, and recreation programs, 

and if you would like to ask any questions, we would be happy to 

hear from you. 

Dr. HECK. I will waive the motion. 

Mr. WILSON. And actually you have come right at the time as we 

prepare to adjourn. But it is really very appropriate that you came, 

because I was going to mention as we conclude how much I appreciate the freshmen participating. So thank you very much, and I 

hope that you find your experience on this committee, serving on 
19 

the Armed Services Committee, rewarding. I know that as Congresswoman Davis was chairman, she certainly made sure that everybody had the opportunity to participate. 

And so I thank all of you. And Colonel West was here earlier. 

So a point that was made, Mr. Gordon, by you, and that is that 

your programs, as described so well today, are instrumental for a 

sense of community, which is the military. And then Colonel West 

was pointing out camaraderie, and to me I think of people serving 

in the military as part of the military family, and it is a military 

family that is providing for young people in families opportunity for 

young people to serve to the highest and fulfill to the highest of 

their ability. So I want to thank you for letting that occur. 

And we do have time for Mrs. Davis to ask another question as 

we get ready to conclude. And then, Dr. Heck, if you do want to 

participate, we would be happy for a question, but it is your call. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And, Dr. Heck, surely this might give you a little breathing space 

if you had a question. One or two here really. This goes to you, Mr. 

Gordon. 

One of the concerns I hear frequently, in fact I just heard it the 

other day when I was meeting with a number of sailors at 32nd 

Street in San Diego, has to do with special needs children and the 

families, the challenges that they face. During the National Defense Authorization Act review and our passage of that for 2010, 

we had a requirement in the bill that established the Office of 

Community Support for Military Families with Special Needs 

under the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness. 

I understand that this may not be directly in your lane; however, 

I want to ask you a little bit about any of your involvement in that, 

because it does feel as if those two departments, at least, would 

possibly be working together and developing that program. 

What has been your involvement, and where are we? 

Mr. GORDON. Good question. And the office does come under 

Military Community and Family Policy. It is run by Dr. Rebecca 

Posante. Where we are is we have staffed up. We have staffed up 

the office. She has her full complement basically of staff members. 

Let me preface, moving on, by saying before I came to this job, 

I was in the nonprofit community where we were very focused on 

youth with disabilities. And so I don’t come to this with a degree 

of naivete ́ about what we need to do in this area, because prior to 

this very focused on how we empower youths with disabilities, how 

we make people aware of their needs and what they can do in our 

society in terms of making it very productive, but also their needs 

in terms of, you know, key aspects based on what the disability is. 

And so in terms of special needs, we have got an office now with 

the kind of leadership that can focus on those key areas for our 

service members who have families with special needs. 

So I would say first we have staffed up with the right people. I 

would say, second, we are going to start conducting, and we are engaged in this now, a survey of what those needs might be and how 

we might best address them. 

One of the issues for our service members and their families is 

education, it is a perfect example, where our children are going 

with special needs and whether they are getting the quality care 
20 

that they need, and if there are alternative ways of doing that better. So that is one of the things that we are going to look at. 

But I am happy to say that we have got the staff in place, we 

are coming up with a blueprint for action, and we look forward to 

working with the services and Congress on that. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Great. I am glad to hear that, that it is moving 

along. In some ways the establishment of that office was also because we knew it is pretty difficult to answer all the needs of all 

the families out there, but if we have one particular place, that can 

be helpful. Did the DOD then provide the $50 million that was directed in 

the law to that office? Is the money there, and is it being utilized? 

Mr. GORDON. Good question. I have to take that for the record, 

too, to make sure that it is. We have gotten what we need at this 

point in time to really get a good start. Whether the full funding 

was provided, let me take that for the record and get back to you. 

[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix on 

page 145.] 

Mrs. DAVIS. Great. Thank you. 

I also wanted to mention we know that there was an Army family conference just recently, and they highlighted at that conference 

a number of needs. The high suicide rate, the lengths of deployment, short dwell time, to lack of PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] screening and rising divorce rates are some of the top areas 

within the Army. So I am wondering, Mr. Patrick, and Mr. Larsen, 

and Mr. Milam, if you have also identified, say, the top three or 

four concerns within your service, what they are. 

Mr. MILAM. Yes, ma’am. We have a similar annual conference, 

it is our Caring for People conference, and last year we had a special group for the special needs families. They have identified several challenges. 

I am proud to say that we now have a trained Exceptional Family Member program coordinator at all of our installations. We 

hired 35 full time, those with installations that had 175 or more 

special needs families; and those that had less, it became an additional duty at the Airman and Family Readiness Centers. 

Beginning next month we will have a robust respite program for 

special needs families, up to 20 hours of care per week to give those 

families a break. And this is all about reducing the stress on those 

families, as you mentioned, and how we can do that. 

But having those Exceptional Family Member program coordinators at the installation now takes some of the burden away from 

the families when they move from base to base. They can go to that 

single point of contact and have all of their personnel-related questions, their medical-related questions, and get pointed in the right 

direction, where before they never really had those services. So we 

have come a long way in the Air Force with a long way to go. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Anybody else want to comment quickly? I think my 

time is up. 

Mr. LARSEN. Yes, ma’am, very quickly. 

The Exceptional Family Member program in the Marine Corps 

has been one of the priorities of the previous Commandant, and the 

passion for that program is shared by the current Commandant 

and his wife. The enrollment in the program is up by about 43 per-
21 

cent over what it was. If you look at 2001, we had about 4,500 people that were enrolled in the Exceptional Family Member program. 

Today there are not quite 10,000. So there is a significant increase. 

We think there is still room to grow based on the propensity of 

some of these conditions that could be as much as about 16,000, so 

there is still room to continue to grow. 

We have case workers, 1 per 225. We have respite care that is 

provided to all the members—the service members, families that 

are in the program, 40 hours a month for respite care. So we are 

doing a number of things to help address those needs. 

Additionally, on the issue of suicide, and dwell time and some of 

those other factors, they have a significant impact on the readiness 

of the force and the ability for us to regenerate and be resilient. 

If you look at the Marine Corps this year, and we don’t have a silver bullet, and we don’t know the answer, but our suicide rate— 

our suicide rate is down, and the numbers are down from 62 last 

year to 39 this past year. So it is significantly reduced. Why? Because the leadership has been focused on it. The commanders are 

involved. We have done training of the individual marines. There 

is peer-to-peer training and different things that we have done. We 

have put things in place to really try to get—to make an impact 

on that serious situation, and I think we are making progress. We 

are not advertising that we have solved suicide or anything like 

that, but because of the engaged leadership of—the senior leadership of the Marine Corps, we have made an impact in some of 

those areas. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you. 

Congressman Joe Heck. 

Dr. HECK. Thank you, Mr. Chair. My apologies to you, and the 

committee members and the panel for my tardiness, but I am 

quickly becoming well versed in conflicting subcommittee meetings. 

Mr. Gorman, my question is for you, hello, thank you for being 

here. I quickly glanced through your packet, and I saw that you 

mentioned—I don’t know if you did in your testimony again, but in 

the writing about the Army OneSource Program. From someone 

whose family has used it, having been a deployed service member 

and relied on Army OneSource for simple things like finding a 

plumber when I wasn’t home to fix a problem, I think that is a 

great program. I also saw that you refer to the Army Community 

Covenant program, excellent program. I am actually going to be 

participating in a covenant signing this weekend in Pinellas Park, 

Florida. 

What I didn’t see in there, and I hope this in your lane, the 

Strong Bonds program. 

Mr. GORMAN. It touches us. Strong Bonds is actually a chaplains’ 

program. We are their number one assist, if you will. Three of our 

four Armed Forces recreation centers, in Garmisch, Germany; in 

Seoul, Korea; and at the Haleakala in Honolulu, Hawaii, are the 

major sources of where those events are held. 

General Chiarelli, the Vice Chief of Staff in the Army, at the 

Army Family Action Plan meeting 3 years ago, I guess it was, and 

in that process we always asked the delegates—we just finished 
22 

this year’s program 2 weeks ago—give us five things that are working and five that are not. From one year to the next, behavioral 

counseling, or lack of it, went from being the most significant issue 

to not even on the list. General Chiarelli tied that to two reasons: 

One, through the graces of the OSD, we have the military family 

life consultants and Strong Bonds. It attempts to get in a collegial 

way at those at greatest risk for marital problems. The entire 

Army is focused on suicide reduction through a wide range of resiliency programs. 

So I couldn’t say enough for Strong Bonds. We don’t per se operate the program, but we are in support in a big way. 

Dr. HECK. And I appreciate it. It is a phenomenal program, and 

it goes exactly to the points that you mentioned about trying to reintegrate deployed family members as well as decreasing some of 

the suicide risks. 

Do you see, if possible, a bigger role for your organization in trying to reach out and provide more of those programs in a more 

timely, cost-effective manner? 

Mr. GORMAN. I see our role like our overarching challenge to ever 

be more efficient with the dollars we are blessed to have; to help 

the chaplains use each dollar more effectively for the purpose that 

they have got them, which is to identify the challenges our young 

men and women and their families feel and help address them. 

Dr. HECK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank you, Mr. Gorman. 

I yield back. 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you, Dr. Heck, for your being so proactive 

and involved. This is great. 

I would like to thank all of our panelists for being here today, 

the witnesses. And we appreciate all that you do for our service 

members, military families, and veterans. And at this time we 

shall be adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 3:24 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 
A P P E N D I X 

FEBRUARY 9, 2011 

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD 

FEBRUARY 9, 2011 

(27) 
28 
29 
30 
31 
32 
33 
34 
35 
36 
37 
38 
39 
40 
41 
42 
43 
44 
45 
46 
47 
48 
49 
50 
51 
52 
53 
54 
55 
56 
57 
58 
59 
60 
61 
62 
63 
64 
65 
66 
67 
68 
69 
70 
71 
72 
73 
74 
75 
76 
77 
78 
79 
80 
81 
82 
83 
84 
85 
86 
87 
88 
89 
90 
91 
92 
93 
94 
95 
96 
97 
98 
99 
100 
101 
102 
103 
104 
105 
106 
107 
108 
109 
110 
111 
112 
113 
114 
115 
116 
117 
118 
119 
120 
121 
122 
123 
124 
125 
126 
127 
128 
129 
130 
131 
132 
133 
134 
135 

DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD 

FEBRUARY 9, 2011 

(139) 
140 
141 
142 
WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING 

THE HEARING 

FEBRUARY 9, 2011 

(145) 

RESPONSE TO QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MRS. DAVIS 

Mr. GORDON. Although Section 563 (c) of the NDAA 2010 authorized $50M for the 

programs for Fiscal Year 2010 appropriations did not follow. However, the Department took the following actions to comply with the NDAA: 

• Provided the Services bridge funding in FY 2010 and FY 2011 to establish case 

managers (120) within the Exceptional Family Member Program (EFMP) 

• Drafted a new policy for the Exceptional Family Member Program (EFMP). The 

policy will include elements regarding the assignment of members with families 

with special needs and support such families. We anticipate a draft will be 

ready for review by the Military Departments Service review in Spring 2011. 

• Initiated three research studies: 

— Availability and accessibility of services for children with autism (due in 

spring 2011). 

— Availability and accessibility of Medicaid to military families with special 

needs (anticipated completion September 2011) 

— Benchmark study to assist in establishing community support programs for 

military families with special needs (anticipated completion November 2011). 

• Developed professional materials to communicate the EFMP to military families. Materials to be disseminated to all military installation family centers in 

Spring 2011. These professional materials include materials with the EFMP 

joint logo such as a pop-up banner, table cloth, outdoor banner, notebooks and 

lapel pins. 

• Developed electronic learning modules, which will be available to families with 

special needs and to providers on DoD and Military Department websites. The 

eLearning modules will educate families on the benefits and services available 

to them and the member with special needs. Anticipate summer 2011 completion. 

• Initiated a Functional Analysis of the EFMP including a study of the Military 

Departments’ databases and case management systems as a first step in developing a joint database/case management system. The Functional Analysis will 

be conducted during FY 2011 to examine existing systems and project future 

needs for sharing information. This is a long term project to assist in the development of a joint database. The final outcome will network EFMP community 

support, personnel activities and military health systems to provide information 

as needed for assignments and for community support. 

We are working with the Military Departments to validate the level of EFMP 

staffing necessary to meet the intention of the law for individualized services, and 

to ensure that the Military Departments have adequate funding for these positions 

beginning in FY 2012. [See page 20.] 

RESPONSE TO QUESTION SUBMITTED BY MS. BORDALLO 

Mr. GORDON. The Department of Defense will ensure fair competition and opportunity to all qualified firms. The Department of Navy responded in detail to Congresswoman Bordallo on February 9, 2011 regarding her concern for federal contracting opportunities for companies on Guam in general and about a Morale Welfare and Recreation (MWR) contract currently being performed by a local company 

in particular. [See page 15.] 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING 

FEBRUARY 9, 2011 

(149) 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. WILSON 

Mr. WILSON. Each year, the Department of Defense spends billions of dollars to 

provide services to military personnel and their families through the Defense Health 

Program. Included in these services are caregivers who look after the children of 

military personnel and provide other family related services. Background checks for 

service providers, and a system of ensuring the accuracy and timeliness of those 

checks, should be an integral part of this system to guarantee the safety and security of the children and families these programs serve. 

What is the Department doing to ensure that individuals participating in 

childcare programs under the Defense Health Program are qualified service providers who have undergone a thorough and current background investigation? 

Mr. GORDON. As background, child development programs operate under policies 

established by the Office of Military Community and Family Policy. Therefore, 

childcare providers do not fall under the Defense Health Program. The Department 

of Defense (DOD) is committed to ensuring the safety of children left in our care. 

It is our policy that employees and contractors in our Child Development Centers 

are required to undergo extensive background investigations. 

Mr. WILSON. Does the Department require that contractors providing childcare 

services to military personnel subject caregivers to a background check? 

Mr. GORDON. Yes, all contractors, as well as employees, providing childcare services are required to undergo background checks. 

Mr. WILSON. If so, what procedures are in place to ensure this requirement is adhered to? 

Mr. GORDON. A higher headquarters Service representative inspects for compliance during the annual unannounced certification inspection. 

Mr. WILSON. As part of the background check, what information and databases 

are required to be checked? 

Mr. GORDON. All child care employees undergo a Child Care National Agency 

Check with Inquiries (CNACI) as a condition of employment. The CNACI requires 

a search of virtually all federal law enforcement records, including those maintained 

by the FBI, DOD, the State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Office 

of Personnel Management (OPM), Customs and Immigration Enforcement, and the 

Treasury Department. It also includes a search of local law enforcement records and 

Military Installation records and a check of state criminal history records for all 

states in which the subject of the investigation has resided during the preceding 10 

years. 

Mr. WILSON. How often are these background checks required to be updated? 

Mr. GORDON. Background checks are re-accomplished every five years. Each Service ensures compliance with the background check policy during the annual certification inspection conducted by the Service higher headquarters staff. 

Mr. WILSON. Under what procedures does the Office of Military Community and 

Family Policy examine childcare service contract applicants? 

Mr. GORDON. MC&FP relies on the Contracting Officer’s Representative (COR) of 

the Service that functions as the Executive Agent of the contract to perform these 

duties. 

Mr. WILSON. Have any no-bid contracts been awarded for childcare services in the 

past two years? If so, please provide the Committee with details on these contract 

awards to include: the procedure and criteria under which that contract was awarded; whether the contract is still in place; and a copy of the signed contract. 

Mr. GORDON. We are unaware of any ‘‘no-bid’’ contracts that have been awarded 

for childcare services in the past two years. 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. JONES 

Mr. JONES. The Department has a very active program to assist family members 

who are moving from base to base. I think we can expect continued high levels of 

relocations considering the number of moves due to BRAC, returns from the Middle 

East and transitions out of the military. Can you provide me with an overview of 

your plans to support all of this increased mobility? I am interested in your internet 

outreach program such as adding training and coordinating with the Defense Per-
150 

sonal Property Program so that the relocation personnel can better assist families 

in the use of the Move Dot Mil portal. 

Mr. GORDON. The Department has robust ‘‘high-tech/high-touch’’ programs to assist Service members and their families who are relocating from base to base. We 

have over 300 Relocation Personnel Specialists who are located in Family Support 

Centers worldwide to provide personal, high-touch assistance to members and families. The services provided include counseling on: 

• Financial Management • Moving/Renting • Household Goods • Education/Schools • Special Needs Family Members • Stresses of moving and how to recognize them • Spouse Employment Assistance • Cultural adaptation • Community orientation 

Additionally, the Military Departments have active sponsorship programs that facilitate the adaptation of members and their families undergoing a Permanent 

Change of Station (PCS) move into new working and living environments, to minimize the anxiety associated with a PCS, and to afford members and their families 

the greatest opportunity for a successful and productive tour of duty at their new 

location. Sponsors at the new location provide personalized outreach, information, 

and assistance to relocating members and their families. 

The two high-touch programs above are augmented by three web-based, high-tech 

applications available on the MC&FP MilitaryHOMEFRONT website (www. 

militaryhomefront.dod.mil): 

1. The MilitaryHOMEFRONT website offers a ‘‘Plan My Move’’ application that 

is available 24/7 for members and families who are relocating to a new installation. The application includes a customizable calendar and other tools, including pre- and post-move checklists to assist members and families with planning 

and tracking the many elements involved with a PCS move. 

2. MilitaryINSTALLATIONS provides information on the new installation to include phone numbers and contact lists base wide. Both ‘‘Plan My Move’’ and 

MilitaryINSTALLATIONS refer users to the Move Dot Mil portal to establish 

their move of household goods. 

3. The eSponsorship Application and Training (eSAT) is designed to support military service members assigned the responsibility of unit sponsorship. The application contains online training, tools, and resources for sponsors and links 

to all Department websites supporting the PCS process, including Military 

OneSource. eSAT contains a downloadable checklist of the sponsor’s duties and 

a printable certificate of completion of training. 

Mr. JONES. The Air Force has taken several measures to improve the quality of 

food offered at on-base establishments. I have heard good things about your initiative to improve dining operations on base. How is this ‘‘Food Transformation Initiative’’ going and should it be accelerated? 

Mr. MILAM. Food Transformation is having a positive impact on our Air Force 

Food Service capabilities. Meals served at our dining facilities at the six pilot base 

locations have increased 22% since we implemented Food Transformation in October 

2010. Results from the Air Force Caring for People survey conducted in December 

2010 show customer satisfaction has increased at our locations where we have implemented Food Transformation. Using the nationally recognized American Customer Satisfaction Index (ASCI) as the measurement tool, Food Transformation locations scored a 76 in customer satisfaction, as compared to a score of 68 overall 

for Air Force dining facility programs. 

The Air Force continues to refine and improve our Food Transformation initiative. 

We are proud of the progress made to date, but realize we must continue to dedicate 

our time and full attention to this transformational initiative. Maintaining our current implementation schedule is a key to our long-term success. Our second portfolio 

of bases is scheduled for implementation in October 2011, with semi-annual implementation of Food Transformation to our bases envisioned for the following outyears. At the present time, we do not plan to accelerate implementations until we 

have garnered more experience in our transformed food service operations, and fully 

understand and have implemented solutions to the lessons we have learned from 

our current implementations. 

Æ