Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolution

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, tomorrow marks an important day in our Nation's history--the birth of the U.S. Air Force.

For 73 years, countless brave American women and men have protected our liberty and our homeland from the skies. They have embarked on air combat missions, guarded our bases and missile sites, and undertaken heroic rescues. They have flown, fought, and won in the air on behalf of our great country. This year also marks another important anniversary in my home State--the 80th year of Hill Air Force Base's service to that mission.

In 1939, Congress approved the construction of an air depot in Northern Utah. The following year, on January 12, the surrounding community came together and broke ground to create what is now known as Hill Air Force Base. Ever since then, it has played an invaluable role in building up our Air Force and supporting our air men and women throughout World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and the conflicts that we still face today.

Tucked between the beautiful Wasatch Mountains on the east and the Great Salt Lake on the west, Hill Air Force Base is today home to 22,000 U.S. military personnel. It is the largest single-site employer in the State of Utah--providing nearly $1.5 billion in jobs each year, with an overall economic impact of about $3.7 billion annually. Hill houses and ensures mission readiness for some of our best and brightest personnel, including the 75th Air Base Wing, the 388th Fighter Wing, and the 419th Reserve Fighter Wing.

It is also home to the Ogden Air Logistics Complex, which repairs and maintains some of our most cutting-edge aircraft, including the F-22 Raptor, the F-16 Fighting Falcon, the A-10 Thunderbolt II, the T-38 Talon, and, of course, the F-35A Lightening II, the most advanced fighter jet in the world.

The Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center on Hill has since 1959 been responsible for supporting the Minuteman Intercontinental Ballistic Missile program, the ground-based leg of our nuclear triad.

Just a short distance west of the base, the Utah Test and Training Range contains the largest block of special-use airspace in the continental United States. The range provides an ideal location for the testing and evaluation of weapons and training grounds for combat, ensuring that our airmen are prepared to win any conflict we enter into with decisive and conclusive airpower.

There is no question that Hill Air Force Base oversees vital national security assets for the U.S. Air Force. The Air Force and our country are better off as a result of its existence. Yet there is something even more important that makes Hill the exceptional place that it is, and that is its people. The patriotism, work ethic, and community support are unmatched anywhere else in the country--or in the world for that matter.

Every commander who serves a 2-year rotation at Hill always says the same thing--that the community's support is stronger at Hill Air Force Base than at any other base where any one of them happens to have served.

I am proud to say that, in Utah, we go above and beyond to aid our military and to support their families, as well we should. According to the 2019 ``Support of Military Families'' report, Utah ranks among the top destinations for military families transitioning to a new duty station. Two of the three highest ranking Air Force installations are in Utah--Hill Air Force Base and the Roland R. Wright Air National Guard Base in Salt Lake City.

The key reason for this has been Utah's work to improve professional license reciprocity for military spouses. Among the many challenges that military families face, one of the greatest is that spouses working in fields requiring occupational licenses often suffer huge setbacks as a result of the barriers put in place by these occupational licensing regimes in the various States.

Faced with a 50-State patchwork quilt of licensing laws, these spouses are forced to spend thousands of dollars and sometimes thousands of hours on top of those thousands of dollars just to obtain licensure every single time they move to a new State, even if they have previously acquired years or even decades of experience in licensure in another State. Oftentimes, by the time the new license in the new State and in the new duty station has been processed, it is already time for the family to move, yet again, for the next military assignment.

This isn't fair. It is not right. It is not how we ought to treat the families of our brave military men and women.

The Department of Labor estimates that 13 percent of military spouses are unemployed, and a more recent Department of Defense study put the rate even higher, at 24 percent. This, needlessly and unjustly, burdens military members and their families. In some instances, it prevents servicemembers from reenlisting, and, in others, it prevents spouses from entering their desired fields in the first place.

Thankfully, some States have already taken steps to move forward in the right direction. They have already stepped up to the plate to address this problem in a meaningful way. In fact, thanks to the diligent work of two prominent Utah lawmakers, Senator Todd Weiler and State Representative Brian Greene, my home State has been one of the first to allow licensure reciprocity for military spouses as long as they meet certain established criteria.

I commend Senator Weiler and Representative Greene for their efforts, and I am encouraged to see other States following the example set by Utah.

The Federal Government has a role to play here, too. While occupational licensing is a field that is generally controlled by the State, we have a role to play insofar as the activities of the States. The regulations imposed by the States end up impacting our military families. Military readiness and talent retention, as well as movement of our troops across the Nation and throughout the world, fall under the oversight responsibilities of Congress. We at the national level should be doing everything in our power to ensure that licensing laws are friendly and flexible and certainly not hostile to or prohibitive of the activities of military spouses and their families.

That is why I am introducing the Military Spouse Licensing Relief Act. This bill will simply ensure that, when servicemembers are relocated on military orders, their spouses can receive reciprocity for professional licenses across State lines regardless of where within the United States they might be reassigned.

In order to receive reciprocity under this bill, a license would have to be in good standing, according to the requirements of the jurisdiction that issued the license in the first place, and the spouse must still comply with the State's standards of practice, of discipline, and the fulfillment of any continuing education requirements.

As a State function, protected under principles of federalism and explicitly by the Tenth Amendment, the bill does nothing to preempt the State's rightful authority to set licensing standards within each State.

We owe a great debt of gratitude to the men and women who give so much to protect our Nation, whether on the land, the seas, or in the skies. This bill is a simple, just, constitutionally sound solution that will lessen some of the burden placed on them. It will not fix all of the problems, and it will not make easy all of the sacrifices that are made by our military spouses and their families, but it will make some of it easier. That is the least we can do.

As we commemorate the birthday of the Air Force and the anniversary of Hill Air Force Base this week, this bill's passage is the least we can do for our military and their families. We need to get this passed. I invite all of my colleagues to join me in securing its immediate passage ______

By Mr. COTTON:

S. 4609. A bill to withdraw normal trade relations treatment from, and apply certain provisions of title IV of the Trade Act of 1974 to, products of the People's Republic of China, and to expand the eligibility requirements for products of the People's Republic of China to receive normal trade relations treatment in the future, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Finance.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source