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Today’s hearing, titled “Protecting the Rights of Those Who Protect Us,”  will examine how well the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act, commonly referred to as USERRA, as well as the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, legislation enacted last year to replace the venerable Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Civil Relief Act, are operating to protect our servicemembers called to active duty.

These two major federal statutes are designed to protect the legal, financial, and job rights of active duty, Guard, and reserve members of our armed forces that could be adversely affected by their service.

Both of these laws are particularly important to our nation’s Reserve and Guard members, more than 153,000 of whom have been called to active duty in the war on terrorism. 

It is worth noting that many of these brave men and women are also first responders in their civilian jobs – including police, fire fighters and emergency medical personnel.  We must ensure that the laws designed to protect them are complete, effective and perhaps most important, faithfully executed and enforced.

With thousands of reserve and Guard members returning from active duty every month, we need to be certain that USERRA is doing the job Congress intended to ensure that servicemembers’ civilian careers are not harmed as a result of their military service.

In July of last year, the Benefits Subcommittee held an oversight hearing on private sector USERRA compliance, looking at how well the law was understood and enforced.  Today’s hearing will focus more closely on compliance by the public sector, including local, State and Federal government agencies.  We will hear about some instances where servicemembers had difficulty enforcing their USERRA rights and will examine legislative proposals to further strengthen USERRA.

The Committee will also examine the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act to determine how well it is protecting the legal and financial rights of our military personnel.  This legislation, which I was proud to sponsor, along with my good friend and colleague Lane Evans, was approved by Congress and signed by President Bush last year.  The Act, which restated and expanded the Soldiers and Sailors Civil Relief Act, is designed to help ensure that U.S. military personnel called to active duty and therefore unable to be present at civil, financial or legal proceedings, are not disadvantaged. 

Among the most notable new protections added were automatic 90-day stays for civil and administrative proceedings, protections for servicemembers and their families from housing evictions, the right of servicemembers and their spouses to terminate housing and automobile leases, protection from repossessions of automobiles, and limits on credit interest rates while on active duty.

Unfortunately, as one of our witnesses today has experienced, some property management companies have tried to find a loophole in the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act to eliminate one of the very protections we specifically included in the law just last year.  The Committee will examine how best to close even the smallest potential loopholes that could harm our servicemembers and their families, as well as consider legislation to further extend the reach of the law to cover additional hardships on servicemembers and their families caused by activation or relocation.

We have a number of important witnesses for our hearing, including a panel of private citizens who have personally experienced violations of their rights under SCRA and USERRA, two panels of senior Federal officials responsible for policy and enforcement regarding these laws, and a panel of representatives from interested organizations. 

We welcome all of them and thank them for the time and effort spent in preparing their testimony.