National Defense Authorization Bill

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I am very concerned about section 563 in the Senate-passed fiscal year 2017 National Defense Authorization Act related to access by institutions of higher education, IHE, to military installations purportedly for advising and support services.

The provision opens the floodgates to military bases and servicemembers for for-profit college recruiters. It guts the President's Principles of Excellence Executive order meant to protect servicemembers from aggressive or abusive recruiting practices on military installations by requiring that an IHE be granted access to a military installation if it has entered into a memorandum of understanding with the Department of Defense, DOD, and has been approved to provide services by the installation's educational service officer. Regardless of other factors which may be of concern to DOD-- investigations and lawsuits, infractions of the MOU, etc.--if an IHE convinces a base's educational service officer to grant them access, there is nothing DOD can do to stop it.

In addition, the provision provides preferential treatment to IHE's that enroll large proportions of servicemembers. Providing access to installations based on how many servicemembers an IHE enrolls instead of the actual needs of the servicemembers at those installations does nothing to help improve services for enrolled servicemembers. Instead, it further entrenches the big for-profit players whose business models rely heavily on servicemembers. Those institutions will be able to tout their statutorily guaranteed increased access to military installations when recruiting.

Finally, as passed in the Senate, section 563 does not limit advising and support services to an IHE's currently enrolled students. There have been well-documented cases of IHE's using access to military bases gained under the guise of offering advising and other services for recruitment. The Senate-passed language does not limit an IHE's contact with servicemembers, once on base, to students it currently enrolls. This creates the opportunity for IHE's to clandestinely or openly use their access to recruit other servicemembers to their programs.

Because of the potential harm this provision in the Senate-passed bill will cause to servicemembers--giving near unrestricted access to for-profit college recruiters at a time when most major companies are under State or Federal investigations or lawsuits--I joined Senator Brown, along with Senators Warren, Blumenthal, Murray, Franken, Carper, Markey, Murphy, Reed, Boxer, Heinrich, and Sanders, to introduce an amendment to remove section 563 from the bill. Military and veterans groups including the Air Force Sergeants Association, Association of the United States Navy, Blue Star Families, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, Military Officers Association of America, Student Veterans of America, Veterans Education Success, and Vietnam Veterans of America submitted a letter in opposition to the provision. The attorneys general of California, Maine, Connecticut, Maryland, District of Columbia, Massachusetts, Hawaii, Minnesota, New York, Iowa, and Pennsylvania also wrote of their opposition.

Not only is the provision harmful, but it is unnecessary. IHE's already have the ability to gain access to military installations for certain legitimate educational activities. I will work with others who are opposed to this provision to get it removed in conference.

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