Hire More Heroes Act of 2015--Continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I am proud to join my colleague from Washington State, a very distinguished and dedicated colleague, and others such as she who are championing this cause of defending Planned Parenthood. I am proud to stand with Planned Parenthood in advocating and championing the cause of women's health care in this country.

Planned Parenthood needs no defense and, indeed, this body should not be spending valuable time and energy in this attack on women's health care that is epitomized by an effort to defund Planned Parenthood.

Let's be very clear. Planned Parenthood provides countless women across this country with STD testing, breast cancer screening, funding research in strengthening women's health care, and contraception. None of these activities is involved in abortion. They are entirely unrelated to abortion. They are about women's health care. The effort to defund Planned Parenthood is, in fact, an attack on women's health care.

Planned Parenthood should need no defense from any of us because its activities immensely benefit women who depend on it and rely on its professionals for basic screening, testing, and other activities that protect them from the ravages of cancer and other kinds of diseases that will cost more to this Nation if we deny Planned Parenthood that funding.

Planned Parenthood is under attack. It is under siege from a sensationalistic and disingenuous kind of publicity that is based on undercover videos. People are offended by them, and Planned Parenthood has in fact spoken to the merits of them. I encourage Planned Parenthood to continue speaking to those videos. Another was released just yesterday.

Planned Parenthood needs no defense from us because the American people support it. American women do because they know the reality, which is different from what is depicted in those videos. The reality is that Planned Parenthood provides funding for women's health care. So the funding of women's health care by defunding Planned Parenthood should not be the goal or the effect of anything we do in this body.

I am proud to stand and urge my colleagues to reject this attack from the most extreme members of the anti-choice movement, which seeks to undermine critical access to health care through Planned Parenthood. My hope is that congressional opinion, like American public opinion, will continue to be, as we are, on the side of Planned Parenthood.

I yield the floor.

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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I thank the chairman of the Committee on Veterans' Affairs, who has correctly and appropriately stated what our goal is in seeking the transfer of funding--a goal that will be fulfilled by the bill coming to us from the House. It is, in fact, coming to us from the House, but as Chairman Isakson has very correctly stated, it is the result of an initiative that he--and I have been very proud to join him in this effort--initiated with the VA Secretary at our meeting last week. And the leadership of the House has joined in that effort.

I am proud and honored to be his partner in this effort, which is absolutely necessary to continue the VA's health care programs. This transfer of $3.4 billion is required by the fact that the community and care programs of the VA will in effect exhaust their revenue streams unless we enable the VA to use some of this Choice funding in this effort. It is necessary to permit VA programs and veterans to have access to money that is there. It is for the same purpose as the community and care programs. They are, in fact, identical programs in terms of their basic efforts and goals.

The meeting we had--that Chairman Isakson had last week--was very productive and important in reaching a consensus, a bipartisan consensus, and I urge my Democratic colleagues on this side of the aisle to join this effort to enable VA programs to go forward and to make sure we continue to keep faith with our veterans. We should leave no veteran behind when it comes to health care. We must make sure that we fulfill our obligation to all of our veterans in mental health care, in physical health care, in primary health care, and all the specialties that are served by this program.

I thank my very good friend from Georgia for his leadership in this effort. I am proud to be his partner in serving this goal.

I yield the floor, and I thank the Chair.

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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I thank our friend from Arizona, the distinguished cosponsor with me of the Clay Hunt Suicide Prevention for American Veterans Act, for his great work in this area as well as on health care generally for our veterans. He has raised one of the most profoundly important as well as intelligent questions about accountability--accountability for the debacle and delays in health care and cooking the books that led to the Choice program, but also accountability for the cost overruns in the construction of the Aurora, CO, facility--$1 billion at least over budget, and months, if not years, of delays, as well as in other construction facilities.

I would just say to my friend from Arizona that the chairman and I are focused on the accountability issue, and we are working together in a bipartisan way on a legislative measure that will meet the test of constitutionality as well as effectiveness in holding accountable past and future officials at the VA for these kinds of mismanagement and in other areas. So I thank him for raising this issue.

I apologize to my colleague from Missouri for delaying him from taking the floor.

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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I thank my colleague for his support, and I appreciate the comments made by Senator Isakson and Senator McCain. We had bipartisan support for this initiative to make sure our veterans continue to receive health care that is necessary because funds will be terminated at the end of August if we fail to act. It is, in effect, a short-term fix that is necessary because of the present structure of funding within the VA. I think we can take this step and leave for another day the question of how long the Choice Program should be extended, if it should be extended at all.

My hope is that accountability and funding will focus on making the VA even better than it is. The reason for accountability is to make sure VA hospitals and providers are giving our veterans world-class, first-class health care.

I welcome the focus of the Senator from Missouri on what the VA does well. I hope it does everything well that it is doing. From primary care, to women's health care, to all of the clinics that are, to the initiatives it is taking in telemedicine, the VA ought to be providing the best health care available in the world to our veterans. They need it and deserve it. We need to make sure we keep faith with those veterans.

I am proud we are taking this step on a bipartisan basis to address the short-term challenge of $3.4 billion that must be transferred from the Choice Program to other accounts in the VA and to make sure the money is available to provide this funding and keep health care going for our veterans.

I yield the floor.

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