Prohibiting Federal Funding of Planned Parenthood Federation of America--Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I wish to address the status of VA health care and the Department's current budget shortfall.

I am grudgingly supporting the bill before this body to extend highway funding for 3 months and to provide budget transfer authority to VA because, without it, highway contracts in Vermont and all across the country will be halted and VA will be unable to provide health care services to our veterans. These initiatives are too important not to support, but I want to be on record as saying this is a very dangerous path to be treading down--playing politics with the VA's funding. It is disingenuous and is a disservice to the brave men and women who have served our country.

On July 31, 2014, 1 year ago tomorrow, the Senate passed the Veterans Access, Choice, and Accountability Act to address the crisis at the Department of Veterans Affairs. As chairman of the Veterans' Affairs Committee, one of my top priorities during the negotiation of that legislation was to ensure VA had the resources needed to prevent a similar crisis in the future.

I believed then--and I believe now--that, overall, the Department of Veterans Affairs provides high-quality health care; health care that veterans consistently give high satisfaction scores. But the crisis at VA last year was real--too many veterans were waiting far too long for care. And some VA employees were manipulating data to make it appear these wait times did not exist.

At the time, we took serious, important steps to address the crisis. We gave the Department tools to hold staff accountable, provided funding for veterans who had trouble accessing care at VA to get that care in the private sector, and gave VA resources to ramp up capacity--to hire health care providers and make improvements to the agency's crumbling infrastructure. The bill we passed last year was to ensure that a similar crisis wouldn't happen again.

But here we are, 1 year later, facing another crisis in VA health care. But this crisis is different. This is a funding crisis. A crisis Congress could have prevented.

Given the increased demand for care and volume of veteran patients, I hoped Congress would have understood the need at VA and provided the funding needed by the Department. But that hasn't happened. Instead, this Republican-led Congress underfunded VA by $1 billion in their budget resolution. And they have continued the bad policies of the Budget Control Act, subjecting VA to funding caps that hamstring the Department's ability to provide needed care.

And let me be clear about something here: these caps are arbitrary spending cuts and have nothing to with how much money VA actually needs to operate. And, despite common misconception, VA is subject to these caps just like every other Federal Department. I believe we must lift these caps. Lift them so VA has the money it needs to take care of veterans, period.

And if we are unwilling to lift the budget caps, we should at least be providing this funding through an emergency appropriation. We should be acknowledging that the caps mean we are coming up short--that Congress has insufficiently funded VA, tying their hands so they are left unable to pay for the health care services veterans want and need.

But instead, we are considering transferring money from one bucket at VA to another. The bill we are considering today will move money from the Choice Program to the general operating budget. Congress created the Veterans Choice Program to address a specific problem. And we provided $10 billion to fix that problem. And now, instead of lifting the budget caps or providing emergency funding for VA, we are just going to use the Choice Program as a piggy bank. We are simply robbing Peter to pay Paul. This approach is a short-term fix, keeping VA's doors open for the next 60 days. But is does nothing to address the long-term budget shortfall VA will face next year, and the year after that. And I worry, if we fail to act responsibly now, we'll be right back here in 2016 and again in 2017, when we will no longer have the luxury of being able to raid billions from the Choice Program, and our veterans will be no better off.

Not only is this method of funding VA irresponsible, my Republican colleagues are using this funding crisis to jam bad policies down our throats without careful consideration or a real debate. With just days to go before we adjourn for the August recess, and with our colleagues from the House having already skipped town, we are being backed into a corner--told the only way to get VA the money they need is to pass a bad piece of legislation filled with unrelated policies.

Last week, during a markup of legislation in the Veterans' Affairs Committee, Chairman Isakson stated multiple times that he wanted new policies to go through regular order, to be considered by the committee in a legislative hearing before being voted on by committee members and certainly before being voted on by the full Senate. He also stated numerous times that we should not be passing legislation without paying for it.

The Congressional Budget Office score of the bill appears to show the legislation is paid for. However, the reality is there are $1.2 billion in lost revenues included in the VA title of the bill that are being swept under the rug. These enormous, unnecessary costs are being covered up by offsets intended to pay for transfers from the general fund to the highway trust fund. These are not savings or revenue that will actually pay for the lost revenues in the VA title. They are savings and revenue intended to make much-needed repairs to roads and bridges. And I fully support those funds being used the way they were intended. But what I do not support is that we are turning a blind eye to $1.2 billion in costs in the VA title of this bill that have nothing at all to do with the funding shortfall at VA. So what are these policies that are so important that they should not be considered through regular order and take money out of critical transportation infrastructure projects?

They are anti-veteran, anti-small business provisions that threaten to strip veterans of their access to affordable health care and treat them as second-class citizens in the workplace while putting new administrative burdens on small business owners.

If Members really believe these unrelated policies are necessary, we should spend time on them. We should use the committee process that Senator Isakson talked about just last week in the Veterans' Affairs Committee markup to consider them through regular order. We should debate them on the Senate floor. But we should not link these politically motivated provisions to must-pass legislation to provide critical health care services to millions of veterans who need it.

It used to be the case that Congress kept veterans above politics. Despite fierce debate over going to war, we all agreed that when servicemembers came home from war, we would take care of them.

It is sad to say, that is no longer the case. Today, powerful political contributors like the Koch brothers are using veterans to push forward anti-worker, anti-union legislation under the guise of caring for veterans. They want to strip away the rights and protections of workers and will use any means necessary to accomplish those goals, even if it means using VA employees who serve veterans every day--and many of whom are veterans themselves--as the target.

Congress should stand up and be honest with the American people about the reason for the VA budget crisis--that members of this Chamber would rather stand here trying to score political points. They would rather use veterans as pawns to promote their anti-worker, anti-union, anti-health care agenda, even if it means closing hospitals and local clinics.

Let us not do that, instead let us say to the brave men and women who have served our country in uniform that we will put aside our differences and give VA the funding they need. Just as our veterans promised to fight for our country, we promised to take care of them when they came home. They fulfilled their promise to us. It is time for us to fulfil our promise to them.

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