Executive Session
Floor Speech
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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I am proud of the fact that 1 out of every 10 persons who wears the uniform of the U.S. military calls Texas home. It is no surprise that with more than a dozen military installations in the State, many servicemembers choose to live in Texas when they return to civilian life. We have the second highest veteran population of all of the States, with an estimated 1.6 million veterans living in Texas.
As you might suppose, in having the honor of representing these 1.6 million veterans, I talk to them quite a bit and hear from them often. I hear about the challenges they face when they transition back to civilian life. Whether the challenges are the big ones or the little ones, whether the challenges are of navigating complicated trails of paperwork, getting the timely healthcare they need, or finding employment when they return to civilian life, I am eager to help them identify solutions.
Over the last few years, we have made some major progress. In the last Congress, for example, we passed the historic VA MISSION Act, which modernized the veterans' appeals process and the electronic health records system. The bill reformed GI benefits, improved accountability within the VA Administration, and provided the largest funding increase in history for veterans' care and services.
We have also passed other bills to help veterans transition from military service. For example, our Jobs for Our Heroes Act made it easy for veterans to get commercial driver's licenses. Believe it or not, it is hard for the private sector to find the truckdrivers it needs. After somebody has driven a large vehicle in the military as part of his daily duties, you can imagine that his transitioning to a commercial driver's license would be a relatively simple thing. Given the paperwork and the bureaucracy and the challenges of one's applying for a commercial driver's license, we were able to pass legislation to facilitate that transition.
We also passed the American Law Enforcement Heroes Act, which ensures that veterans get hired by local law enforcement agencies. If you think about that, it is a skill set that many learn in the military, whether they served in the military police or otherwise. If you talk to one of your local police departments, one of the things the department is short on is the number of people who work for local law enforcement. That is also true for Federal law enforcement agencies, particularly for the Border Patrol. Many military servicemembers come out of the military with the very skills that are needed most by the police agencies that work to keep our communities safe.
To improve the educational opportunities that are available to these men and women, in the last Congress, we passed a bipartisan bill called the Harry W. Colmery Veterans Educational Assistance Act, also known as the Forever GI Bill. President Trump signed it into law in August of 2017. With a stroke of a pen, he enhanced and expanded education benefits for veterans, servicemembers, and their families.
The Forever GI Bill made much needed updates for veterans who face school closures while they are enrolled. It expanded work study activities. It also created a scholarship program for students who pursue degrees in science, technology, engineering, and math, the so- called STEM fields.
It established the Edith Nourse Rogers STEM Scholarship, which provides student veterans with an additional 9 months of GI bill eligibility to ensure they have the time and the financial assistance they need in order to complete their studies in some of our most needed fields. We later learned that there is an issue, though, that prevents many students from taking full advantage of that program. The current law mandates that students must be enrolled in a STEM program for more than 128 credit hours, but the Department of Veterans Affairs found that there are only three States in which the average STEM degree exceeds that minimum. That places many students in an unfair position of either picking from a limited list of schools or forgoing the scholarship money, which can provide up to $30,000 in financial assistance. That is a Hobson's choice for our veterans, and it is time for Congress to fix that error.
To ensure that all veterans who want to take advantage of the Nourse scholarship are able to, on a bipartisan basis with several of my colleagues, I recently introduced legislation called the Veteran STEM Scholarship Improvement Act, which would lower the 128 credit hour requirement to the more common 120 credit hour requirement. Now, changing a number from an eight to a zero may not seem like a big deal, but for the veterans who have been frustrated by this impediment that prevents them from using the benefits they were promised, it can be life-changing. This would ensure that Texas's veterans who are interested in pursuing STEM programs that are offered in their communities are able to do so while they receive their GI benefits.
I just want to say a word about the GI bill because it is personal to me and my family. My dad, who was a B-17 pilot in the Army Air Corps and was stationed at Molesworth Air Force base in England, flew a total of 26 bombing missions over the English Channel into the industrial heartland of Germany to try to end that terrible, terrible war. Unfortunately, he was shot down and was captured as a prisoner of war on his 26th mission, and he served the last 4 months of World War II as a prisoner of war. Thankfully, he survived that experience.
To my point here, when he came back to Corpus Christi, TX, he took advantage of the GI bill so he could continue his education. He received a 2-year associate of arts degree from, as it was called then, the Del Mar Community College. He also met my mother at about that time, and they married. Lo and behold, he ended up deciding, I think I want to go to dental school. So, after he had been shot out of the sky by German anti-aircraft guns, maybe a nice, placid dentist's life sounded pretty good, and that is what he chose.
It was thanks to the GI bill that the whole generation of that so- called ``greatest generation'' was able to come back from the war and get the tools and the education they needed in order to contribute to our country and help make our economy and our country as strong as we inherited it and welcome it today.
Even for this next greatest generation of veterans who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan and for those who still serve today, it is important for us to keep this opportunity of the modern GI bill benefits when they take off the uniform as Active-Duty servicemembers and transition to civilian life.
I thank my colleagues--particularly Senators Rubio, Cruz, Manchin, and Sinema--for supporting the STEM bill I described a little earlier. The House passed the legislation this last month, and I hope the Senate will do the same soon so we can get this bill to the President's desk for his signature.
In addition to this legislation, I am eager to vote on the final passage of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020. Last month, the Senate passed our version of the bill with broad, bipartisan support. As a matter of fact, only eight Senators voted against it. It is hard to find many things that are that bipartisan in the Senate or in Washington, DC, today.
In addition to investing in military modernization and in providing the largest pay raise in a decade for our troops, this legislation also included other provisions to support our veterans.
A bill I introduced with Senator Baldwin, of Wisconsin, called the HAVEN Act, was included as a provision of the NDAA. This bill would shield VA and Department of Defense disability benefits in bankruptcy proceedings in the same way Social Security disability is exempted. Veterans shouldn't be penalized for receiving disability compensation that they are rightly due.
I hope this provision will be included in the final version, which will follow the conference committee on the national defense authorization bill. The House passed its version of the NDAA last week, and I hope the conference committee will quickly iron out the differences between the two bills so we can approve this legislation.
Like all of my colleagues, I am grateful for the dedicated service and sacrifice of millions of men and women across our country who defend our freedoms. I want to make sure, as we all do, that their transitioning to civilian life after their military service is as smooth as possible.
By improving access to healthcare, employment, and education, the Senate is working hard to support America's veterans, and we are demonstrating in a country that has an all-volunteer military that we will keep our commitments to our military members while they wear the uniform and keep our commitments to our veterans when they transition to civilian life. This is an important part of our continuing to recruit and retain the best and brightest to serve in the U.S. military.
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