[AMENDMENT NO. 1052]
Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, I wish to take just a minute to address 48 extraordinary hours in my life -- (Senate - June 28, 2005)
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AMENDMENT NO. 1052
Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I rise today to speak to amendment No. 1052, an amendment offered by myself, Senator Byrd, and Senator Feinstein regarding emergency supplemental funding for the Veterans Health Administration.
As my colleagues know, throughout the last 6 months I have been talking to this body about my deep concern that we were not going to have sufficient funding for our veterans, both our current veterans who are accessing the system, nor for our veterans who are now returning home in record numbers from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Throughout the budget process, I asked that we consider making sure we have additional funding. I was rejected in that request. Throughout the appropriations process, I have made it known time and time again that looking at what we know, we are not going to have sufficient funding for our veterans health care.
On the supplemental emergency bill, I offered an amendment to add an additional $1.98 billion for veterans services, and I outlined on this floor for all of my colleagues the exact numbers we were looking at as we went out and talked to our regional veterans administrations, as we heard the stories of shortfalls in every single place across this country, about service men and women who are waiting in line, about the high number of returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan who would need access to mental health care services for post-traumatic stress syndrome, and I asked that we add emergency supplemental funding because I knew, looking at the numbers, we had a shortfall.
On this floor, I was defeated on that amendment. Why? Because the Secretary of the VA, Secretary Nicholson, sent a letter to this body saying they had sufficient funds.
That was less than 3 months ago. Several weeks ago in the Veterans' Committee I asked the Secretary, when he was before us, if they had sufficient funding, and he told us they had adequate funding.
Last Thursday, to everyone's surprise, except a few of us, we were told that the VA is now over $1 billion short in funding this year. This is surprising to some, but it should be appalling to all of us.
As I told my colleagues when I was on the floor talking about the supplemental, we all know that the veterans in VA care have gone up by 88 percent. We know that medical inflation has gone up 92 percent. But the VA continued to go on a formula based on 2002 figures that did not adequately take into account our military who were going to be accessing the veterans services, nor the fact that we all know of medical inflation.
So here we are today, and it would be easy to say I told you so, but that is not going to solve the problem. So last Thursday, I called Secretary Nicholson. I said: How are you going to solve this problem? What are we going to do?
Well, he said to me that we were going to take the money out of maintenance and construction projects.
I would let every one of my colleagues know that all of them have VA facilities in their own States or in their own region that are serving our veterans today that need asbestos removal. There are new clinics that have been promised for years. There is maintenance due, long-term backlogs that have not been completed that we voted on in the 2005 appropriations bill and promised to our men and women back in our home States would be taken care of this year.
We cannot go back on that promise right now. Those veterans are waiting for that service. If we were to say, well, we have to suck it up and take the money out, that means we are just going to defer those costs until next year. If we are today basing our figures of the VA on 2002 numbers, then we know the $1.5 billion we are short this year is going to be multiplied by two or three times next year and those facilities will not be fixed.
So we have a problem. We have a big problem, and we need to address it now. I believe the best and most important way we can do that quickly is through an emergency supplemental bill passed through the House and Senate to get the VA the money they need to serve our veterans. This is an emergency.
None of our veterans who served in previous conflicts should be told that they have to wait 6 months or a year or 3 years. None of our veterans who are being served in our hospitals today should be looking at facilities that are falling down around them. None of our veterans who are coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan should be told that they do not have adequate care and we are not there for them.
I was just in Iraq 2 months ago and the first question that my soldiers from Washington State asked me is: Will my country be there for me when I get home?
The Senate has been responsible by passing a bill last year to begin to put in place those contracts, maintenance, and important facilities projections. We cannot take that away now. Our only responsible choice remaining is to pass an emergency supplemental.
I have to say I am deeply concerned about how our VA came to this, and I am frankly quite angry. Less than 3 months ago, our VA said, no problem. Our VA, 2-plus weeks ago, said no problem, and now they tell us they are well over a billion dollars short this year. In fact, what they are saying is we can fix that; we can take $600 million from construction, as I just talked about.
We cannot let them do that.
The other $400 million they are talking about coming up out of a reserve fund. I have been on this floor before talking about this. There is not a reserve fund. I asked Dr. Jonathan Perlin. He is the VA's Acting Under Secretary for Health. I asked him on April 5th: Is there a $500 million reserve?
He said to me:
No ..... I do not know where that might have been suggested, but there is no $500 million reserve that is sitting there for future projects.
So the White House's solution, the VA's solution, to take $600 million from construction and $500 million from this reserve account does not exist. Those are already part of our appropriations and there is no reserve account. So it is time for us to be responsible. It is time for us to face up to the fact that we have not been given accurate figures from this administration on veterans, and we need to act responsibly to pass an emergency supplemental.
I want to say that Senator Craig, the chair of the Committee on Veterans' Affairs, and Senator Hutchison, the chair of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Military Construction and Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies, have been responsible in the last few days by addressing this crisis. We have held a hearing this morning under Senator Craig's direction to hear from the VA what their solution was.
As I have said, that is simply unacceptable to me. It should be unacceptable to this Senate. I want to work with anyone to solve this problem. We have an amendment that is now pending. It is amendment No. 1052 to have an emergency supplemental to deal with this crisis. I know that my colleagues on the other side feel that we must address this as well, and I hope that we can work this amendment out and get it passed on the Interior appropriations, get it passed through the House and sent to the President so that our members who are serving us, both in previous conflicts and in Iraq and Afghanistan today, can look any one of us in the eye on the Fourth of July recess, when we all go home to march in parades and carry our flags, and we can say, yes, this country is there for you.
I can think of no more important issue that this body should address before the upcoming recess than this pending crisis before us. We owe it to the troops who have served us so honorably to be there for them when they come home. We cannot say to them that your clinics will not be built, that your hospitals will not be maintained, that there is a hiring freeze and you will not be seen if you show up.
We all have talked to generals who are in Iraq, and every member of this body knows that this is a 360-degree war. We have been told that time and time again. Our members in the military who are serving us in Iraq and Afghanistan do not have a front line to go behind to get some ease from this conflict. They are in this conflict every single minute of every single day that they are there, and as a result of that many of them will be facing emotional stress and post-traumatic stress syndrome when they get home.
It would be wrong of this country to tell those members who served us so well that there are no services for them when they come home. We have a responsibility not as a Republican, not as a Democrat, but as an American to be there for them. The most responsible way to do this is through this amendment with an emergency supplemental.
I think who said it best was George Washington back in 1789:
The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional as to how they perceive the veterans of earlier wars were treated and appreciated by their country.
I urge my colleagues to adopt this emergency supplemental funding, get it to the House, and get it to the White House so that we can address this crisis that has come before us. We can say a lot of stuff about the VA and why the numbers were wrong and why what we knew on this floor were not listened to and were not told to us honestly. We can spend time doing that, but I think the most important thing we can do is make sure this funding is there for our soldiers, and we do it through an emergency supplemental in a responsible way.
The President is going to address the Nation this evening. He is going to talk to us about the importance of staying the course in Iraq. Well, I would say to the President and to the Members of the Senate, when we send our troops to war, part of the cost of that is making sure we are there for them when they come home. I urge the President, when he addresses the Nation tonight, to tell us how this administration is going to be there for our soldiers when they return and work with us to pass this emergency supplemental as expeditiously as possible.
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