Veterans Cemetery Benefit Correction Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. TAKANO. Mr. Speaker, I thank Ranking Member Walz for yielding me the time and his steadfast leadership on the Veterans' Affairs Committee. He has been tireless in his support of veterans and their families. I am, likewise, inspired by the gentleman from Texas' service to our country. I thank him for his service.

Mr. Speaker, the bill before us today is the culmination of years of ongoing discussion about how to guarantee veterans have timely access to quality care. It streamlines existing programs that allow veterans to get care in the community, creates a process for aligning VA facilities to meet the changing needs of the veteran population, and it expands the Caregiver Support Program to all veterans.

It should come as no surprise that I have serious concerns with this bill. I voted against it when it was reported out of committee to signal that it is not a perfect bill and that there are still improvements to be made.

One of my biggest concerns has to do with funding. In that regard, I share the concern of the ranking member. While previous funding for Choice came from emergency mandatory funding, moving forward, the program will receive discretionary funding and could break the budget caps that trigger sequestration.

That is why I offered an amendment at the Rules Committee last night that guaranteed that moving community care funding to the discretionary side wouldn't count against the bipartisan budget caps we agreed to just a few short months ago. It would help guarantee that we continue to keep our promises to veterans by funding the full range of supports and benefits that they are owed.

Unfortunately, that amendment was not made in order for us to consider on the floor today. Without this critical amendment, I am concerned we will be facing difficult choices, and I fear that veterans will ultimately pay the price, and I mean that in a literal sense.

I have concerns about the process that brought us here today. I think this bill needs a greater emphasis on building the VA's capacity, its internal capacity, to provide veterans the specialized care that many of them need. We need to do more to recruit and retain the best providers to care for our veterans.

I wish that there were more guardrails in place as we begin asset realignment, and I wish that we had a strong VA leadership in place before moving forward with sweeping reforms. But, at the end of the day, Mr. Speaker, I realize we can't keep doing emergency patches to fund community care. We can't continue to look veterans in the eye when we don't offer caregiver support services just because they served in an era before 9/11. That is why I will reluctantly vote in favor of this bill today.

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Mr. TAKANO. I will reluctantly vote for this bill today.

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