Daniel Kahikina Akaka Department of Veterans Affairs Community-Based Outpatient Clinic

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. CASE. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to join my colleagues, including my colleagues kindly speaking here today from Maryland and Illinois, in strong support of House passage of S. 1760, introduced by my colleague Senator Mazie Hirono, and passed unanimously by the Senate.

This critical measure, companion legislation to H.R. 3406, which I co-introduced in the House with its principal sponsor, my colleague and partner, Congressman Kaiali'i Kahele, will designate the new community- based outpatient clinic of the Department of Veterans Affairs, now literally rising out of the ground at Kalaeloa in Hawaii, and known to date as the Advanced Leeward Outpatient Healthcare Access, or ALOHA project, as the Daniel Kahikina Akaka Department of Veterans Affairs Community-Based Outpatient Clinic.

Daniel K. Akaka was many things throughout his long and full 93 years of life: teacher, Member of this House from 1977 to 1991, the first U.S. Senator of Native Hawaiian ancestry from 1991 to 2012, beloved mentor to generations, and on and on. Of all of these, he was a deeply proud veteran, having served in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the Second World War, deploying to the Western Pacific in support of the critical island-hopping campaign, which won the Pacific war.

Senator Akaka carried his pride and passion and commitment to our Nation's veterans into his work in Congress. As member and chair of the U.S. Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs, he produced an unmatched record of progress on healthcare, compensation, and other benefits for veterans, including crafting the new veterans' GI Bill in Congress to ensure more education benefits for veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan.

In this Asian-Pacific Heritage Month, it is fitting to recognize his work focusing on specific issues affecting our Asian-American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander veterans.

The importance of the ALOHA project to our veteran `ohana, or family, throughout Hawaii and the Pacific cannot be overstated. On its projected completion in late 2023, it will bring our VA healthcare system to our veterans, relieving significant and growing pressure in Hawaii on that system, increasing healthcare access for Hawaii's over 110,000 veterans and more, and alleviating significant and growing logistical and capacity challenges at Tripler Army Medical Center and the Spark M. Matsunaga Medical Center.

I cannot think of a more deserving and appropriate individual to grace this facility and those who work and are healed there with his name and his still living, breathing spirit, than Daniel Kahikina Akaka.

Mr. Speaker, I urge adoption of this measure so that it may be sent directly to the President for his consideration and enactment.

``Mahalo nui loa.'' ``Thank you very much.''

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source