Lawmakers push for barracks hearing

Substandard housing
Clinton, Levin, Feingold weigh in.


Lawmakers push for barracks hearing
By Matthew Cox - Staff writer
Posted : Wednesday Apr 30, 2008 16:29:11 EDT

Presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., today called for a congressional hearing to discuss on-post housing in response to recent controversy over soldiers at Fort Bragg, N.C., being housed in rundown, Korean War-era barracks.

Clinton and other lawmakers began expressing their concern about Army barracks conditions after a video surfaced on the Internet that showed paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division returning from a 15-month combat deployment in Afghanistan to barracks with peeling paint, mold and filthy restroom facilities.

“Less than 15 months after the revelations of substandard living conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, this news from Fort Bragg is particularly disturbing,” Clinton wrote in a recent press release. “After asking our men and women in uniform to sacrifice so much on 15-month deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, it is the least we can do to ensure that they can return home to clean and livable conditions.”

In an April 30 letter to Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Clinton requested a hearing to evaluate on-post housing conditions at Bragg and other installations.

“If adequate on-post housing is not available at Fort Bragg or elsewhere for returning troops, then we should not only speed up construction of new barracks, but we should also look at temporary options to ensure that returning service members can find off-post housing using a basic allowance for housing (BAH) or other appropriate means,” she wrote.


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/04/army_lawmakersreact_043008w/