Waiving Points of Order Against Conference Report on H.R. 2528, Military Quality of Life and Veterans Affairs Appropriations Act, 2006

WAIVING POINTS OF ORDER AGAINST CONFERENCE REPORT ON H.R. 2528, MILITARY QUALITY OF LIFE AND VETERANS AFFAIRS APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2006 -- (House of Representatives - November 18, 2005)

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Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friend the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey) for yielding me the customary 30 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, this is the first conference report that the House will consider as a military quality of life-VA appropriations bill. As we all know, as a result of the subcommittee realignment adopted earlier this year by the Appropriations Committee, military construction, Defense Department health programs and all veterans programs are now contained in this one appropriations bill. I want to express my respect and voice my praise for the work of Chairman Walsh and Ranking Member Edwards for their work on this bipartisan-supported conference report.

This final conference report is a significant improvement over the earlier House-passed bill, especially in the areas of medical care and benefits for our veterans. Veterans medical services are funded at $22.5 billion, which has long been the position on this side of the aisle as the minimum amount of funding required to meet our veterans health needs. This total is $575 million above the President's budget request and $1.7 billion more than last year.

Mr. Speaker, over the last 2 years, the funding amount needed to meet veterans medical care has increased by 18 percent, so while I welcome this increase in veterans medical services, I remain concerned about the total amount of funds that will actually be required over the coming year. I predict that we will still need to find additional funds next year to meet the fiscal year 2006 medical needs of our veterans.

Other important actions taken by the conferees are the specific targeting of $2.2 billion for specialty mental health care for our veterans and fully funding the requested amounts for posttraumatic stress disorders. In addition, this bill creates three Centers of Excellence for mental health and PTSD medical care.

Mr. Speaker, last week I was at a forum in western Massachusetts, and I met a Massachusetts father whose son had served in Iraq. He told me about the difficulty his son had attempting to reintegrate himself back into civilian life following his tour of duty. One night during a conversation, his son broke down in tears and laid his head in his father's lap and cried. The father told me at that forum that the next time he held his son's head in his lap was a couple of weeks later when he cut the rope that his son had used to hang himself in their basement.

Mr. Speaker, we need to recognize the vast need, the urgent and increasing need, for counseling services for the men and women returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. The New England Journal of Medicine reported earlier this year that one in five of the soldiers leaving the Iraq war are suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder and other mental health problems. We have to make their ability to receive counseling and support simple and seamless. We have to make sure that they do not run into bureaucratic walls or receive the runaround just when they need help the most.

I know that this is something that the chairman and ranking member think about a great deal, and I simply want to express my support for their efforts to confront this growing crisis.

Mr. Speaker, this conference report also increases the amount of funding for military construction and housing over the President's request and over the amount in the House-passed bill. Even so, at this level of funding, if will take nearly eight decades to meet the needs currently identified by the Pentagon for military housing and modern basing and training facilities.

Mr. Speaker, everyone in this Congress talks about how we support our troops and how we honor their service and sacrifice, but year after year we fail to meet the needs of our veterans, the old and the new, and we fail to provide the funds to provide our uniformed men and women the housing and training facilities that they need in order to prepare for the deadly duties we demand of them.

This is a matter of priorities. This is a statement of values and principles about whether and how we really do believe our troops and our veterans merit the very best this Nation can provide. We just cannot stand here year after year and praise the conferees for doing the best they could within the budget allocation they were given. It is the Congress that determines the amount of that budget allocation for our veterans, for our military housing and construction, for our military's quality of life. As my good friend and colleague from Illinois JESSE JACKSON, JR., said yesterday on the floor of this House, it's like a farmer saying the summer harvest is bad when he failed to plant seeds in the spring.

Mr. Speaker, like all of my House colleagues, I will be supporting this conference report, but we simply have to do better in the future.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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