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Today's hearing is on the Air Force and Space Force fiscal year 2024 budget request for military construction and family housing.
It is a great pleasure to be here today with Dr. Ravi Chaudhary, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Energy, Installations, and Environment; Mr. Bruce Hollywood, Assistant Chief Operations Officer, United States Space Force; and Brigadier General Brian Hartless, Air Force Director of Civil Engineers, Deputy Chief of Staff for Logistics, Engineering and Force Protection.
Our ability to project air power in the Pacific is critically important, and we need to ensure we have the necessary infrastructure to do so, whether it be maintenance hangars, training facilities, or runways. Additionally, our Guardians need adequate facilities to work in and childcare options that meet the needs of their demanding, 24 hour a day schedules.
The work agents and officers of U.S. Customs and Border Protection do every day has immense importance to both our national and economic security.
Put simply, their collective job is to keep bad things and people from entering the country illegally.
However, our agents and officers' jobs are made harder by the President's fundamentally unserious budget request for CBP.
Unfortunately, the Fiscal Year 24 request is full of inexplicable gimmicks, and I'll explain those later.
For example, the President proposes $174 million dollars for additional surveillance towers, but fails to provide adequate funding to maintain the ones we already have in the field.
The subcommittee will come to order.
Today, we welcome testimony from the Honorable Pete Buttigieg, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation. Thank you for appearing before us today and for your service.
Mr. Secretary, I appreciated our recent phone conversation about your visit to the FAA's Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center and the Will Rogers World Airport in Oklahoma City a few weeks ago. I'm glad you were able to see firsthand some of the critical transportation assets there are in Oklahoma. I look forward to discussing what more we can do in Oklahoma, given our unique geography, DOT facilities, and opportunities with other federal entities, like the Department of Defense.
