Rep. Blake Moore to join influential congressional committee

Congressional newcomer Blake Moore has bagged another choice appointment to join the House Natural Resources Committee in the 117th Congress.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Freshman congressman Blake Moore, R-District 1, has been named to serve on the House Armed Services Committee in the 117th Congress.

That announcement came Monday from Rep. Mike Rogers, R-AL, the ranking minority member of that committee.

Rep. Blake Moore’s experience in the Indo-Pacific will make him a critical asset to the House Armed Services Committee,” Rogers said, referring to Moore’s background as a foreign service officer with the U.S. State Department in the Far East. “I’m confident he will be committed to achieving valuable reforms in the armed services community.”

“I made a promise to get appointed to this important committee as a freshman member,” Moore emphasized in response to that news, “and I’m thrilled to be able to deliver on that commitment to my constituents.”

His appointment to the House Armed Services Committee has Moore following in the footsteps of his predecessors as representatives of Utah’s 1st District in Congress. Both Reps. Rob Bishop and James V. Hansen served on that panel.

“The 1st District’s representation on the (House Armed Services) committee,” Moore explained, “is key to ensuring that tens of thousands of constituents who work at Hill Air Force Base and its several assets have the necessary resources to make vital contributions to our national defense.”

Located just south of Ogden in Davis County, Hill Air Force Base is Utah’s sixth-largest employer. More than 10,000 service members and their dependents are assigned to the base, with many of them residing in the nearby communities of Layton, Clearfield, Riverdale, Roy and Sunset.

One of the base’s tenant organizations is the Ogden Air Logistics Complex, which employs more than 16,000 civilian workers. In 2019, Hill Air Force base pumped an estimated $3.7 billion into Utah’s economy, including an annual payroll of nearly $1.5 billion and more than $800 million in local expenditures.

In addition to hosting new state-of-the-art F-35 fighters, the missions now assigned to Hill AFB include providing maintenance support for F-16 and F-22 aircraft, repairing landing gear for both Air Force and Navy planes, munitions storage, training over the nearby Utah Testing Range in the West Desert, maintenance of the U.S. arsenal of 450 Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles and, most recently, development and deployment of America’s new Ground Based Strategic Deterrent.

The GBSD is a replacement nuclear weapon system for the Minuteman III missiles that are now based in silos throughout the western United States. The new ICBM’s are being built by Northrop Grumman, an aerospace giant that recently acquired the Utah-based Orbital ATK, formerly known as the Thiokol Corporation. The project is expected to take more than a decade at a cost of up to $85 billion.

With the White House and Congress now in the hands of Democrats, one of Moore’s major challenges on the House Armed Services Committee will be to ensure that the GBSD project is not threatened by cost-cutting measures or disarmament initiatives.

I look forward to working with my colleagues,” the congressional newcomer said, “to support those in the 1st District who wake up every day to serve our nation and advocate for our national security interests at large, prioritizing pressing issues such as readiness, funding allocations and modernization efforts.”

The House Armed Services Committee has jurisdiction over the funding and oversight of the U.S. defense establishment, the armed services and military operations.

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