The Department of War's new task force to ensure all U.S. service members have access to safe and dignified housing is "fantastic news" for troops who have long asked for better living conditions, Kingsley Wilson, the department's press secretary, told Newsmax on Thursday.
"This is something that our service members have been asking for for decades," Wilson said on "National Report." "It's not a problem that this administration created, but it's a problem that this administration inherited and is going to fix."
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth on Wednesday announced that a "barracks task force" is being created to address the living conditions for the members of the U.S. military.
He said the task force will be responsible for creating a department-wide barracks investment plan within 30 days, adding that President Donald Trump's budget, which was signed into law this past summer, allocated over $1 billion as initial funding for this initiative.
Wilson said Hegseth is "committed to getting back to basics," emphasizing a renewed focus on military standards, discipline, and quality of life.
"There is absolutely no reason that our men and women in uniform, who put so much on the line for us every single day, should be living in barracks that have subpar living standards," she said.
"This is just us fulfilling that promise and continuing to put our warfighters first."
The initiative, Wilson added, will be a "whole-of-government and whole-of-department effort" aimed at improving everything from barracks to the permanent change-of-station process for relocating troops.
"Across the board, we want to make the quality of life for our service members and their families top notch. It's what they deserve," she said.
Wilson noted that the Pentagon's new $1 trillion budget, passed under the Trump administration, will help fund the overhaul.
"We have the funding to make this a reality and to make the lives of our service members better," she said.
"Thanks to President Trump and the one big, beautiful bill getting across the finish line, the Pentagon now has a $1 trillion budget."
Wilson added that the department is also cutting what she described as "waste, fraud, and abuse," redirecting funds from diversity and climate initiatives toward essential needs.
"All of that wokeness has gone to the wayside, and we are now able to repurpose those funds and put them toward things that actually matter, like making our barracks clean, safe, and worthy of our warfighter standards," Wilson said.
She also criticized Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and congressional Democrats over the ongoing government shutdown, saying a funding lapse would unfairly harm military families.
"It's frankly disgraceful that Chuck Schumer and the Democrats have decided to play politics with our service members' lives," she said.
"Many of these service members live paycheck to paycheck … It is absolutely preposterous that the Democrats won't fund the government."
Wilson added that the department's top concern is ensuring troops receive their pay on time.
"We have warfighters all over the world who are doing tough jobs, and they deserve to be paid for those jobs," she said. "It has to stop."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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