Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2024
Floor Speech
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Mr. ROY. Madam Chair, this amendment that I am offering prohibits any of the funding in the MILCON-VA appropriations bill from being used to carry out what I believe are unnecessary and unscientific COVID-19 vaccine mandates at the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Now, there has been some confusion about this. Some people have said, oh, well, that is not really still going on. Well, I just got an email from the VA today saying, yes, it is.
There still are vaccine mandates that are being carried out at the VA and, to the best of my knowledge, it is the last remaining Federal vaccine mandate, and it needs to end.
Most Federal vaccine mandates ended in May of 2023, with the end of the public health emergency. The VA, though, was one of the few agencies to leave the mandate in place.
VHA Directive 1193.01, COVID-19 Vaccination Program for VHA Healthcare Personnel, outlines the policy and guidance for mandatory COVID-19 vaccination for Veterans Health Administration healthcare personnel is still in effect.
The mandate applies to EMS personnel, nurses, nursing assistants, physicians, technicians, therapists, phlebotomists, pharmacists, health professions trainees, clerical, dietary, environmental services, laundry, security, maintenance, engineering and facilities management, administrative, billing, and even volunteers.
If you want to volunteer at the VA, you better get a jab.
The COVID vax mandate is unnecessary. It hurts healthcare workers. I believe it hurts healthcare being provided to our veterans.
As of July 15, 2022, the VA had disciplined some 74 workers that we know of, some of whom were fired.
I do not believe the mandate is necessary to keep our veterans or the VA staff safe. The former CDC director has said that the vaccines can't do anything to prevent transmission.
This amendment is about ending COVID madness once and for all at the VA and making sure that anyone who wants to provide medical care to our great veterans can do so.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Madam Chair, I rise in opposition to the gentleman's amendment.
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Mr. ROY. Madam Chair, I would only respond to the gentlewoman from Florida when she said it only applies to healthcare personnel. I just rattled off an entire list of virtually every known possible human being and job that could apply at the VA, and a whole lot of them aren't, in fact, healthcare personnel.
I went through an entire list, including laundry, security, maintenance, engineering and facilities management, administrative, billing, even volunteers.
Instead, some of my colleagues have said, this doesn't apply to the VA. Like I said, we reached out to the VA and, sure enough, they replied today, yes, the vaccine mandate still applies.
Nevertheless, we get rid of the Medicaid. We get rid of the Medicare mandates. The private sector is out there. They can do what they want to do. The vaccine mandate has come and gone in terms of something that the American people believe we should tolerate.
They want to be able to move about without having the fear of losing their job, and we have people at the VA losing their job.
We have nurses that have given up their ability to practice. We have got it throughout our entire--we have members of our military that have been held up from being promoted and being able to advance. We have people at the VA. I have met with people who worked at the VA, some of whom who were facing losing their job. This should end. This madness should end.
That is what this amendment would do. It would ensure that no funding goes to continuing and perpetuating that mandate.
Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Madam Chair, I think it is important to point out that it is not just healthcare providers that work in VA healthcare facilities. Maintenance workers work in VA healthcare facilities and interact with patients and they move back and forth throughout the facility.
Cafeteria workers, other people who are not healthcare professionals work in VA facilities in and around the most sensitive patients being provided with care in the most intense healthcare environments. They can infect people with COVID. They can infect healthcare providers who work at the VA who interact with patients even more closely, and they can infect patients directly.
It is a responsible policy to ensure that where there is a severely ill patient or someone who is extremely vulnerable and has their immunity lowered--as a breast cancer survivor, I can tell you that when you go through chemotherapy, which I did not, but I have obviously spent a lot of time on understanding what breast cancer patients and people who go through chemotherapy experience, your immunity is knocked out.
So we are going to prohibit people who work in VA healthcare facilities from wearing masks to ensure that someone who has had their immunity system knocked out from being protected from an individual who might have COVID, while they are at work? That is grossly irresponsible, and it would result, potentially, in people getting sick and dying from something other than what they are being treated for at the VA.
That is the height of irresponsibility, and I can't believe that our friends on the other side of the aisle would be willing to risk the life and health of VA patients with this irresponsible policy.
We have to make sure in a healthcare setting that people who interact with patients in any way are protecting the patients from getting sick, and that is why this amendment should be defeated.
Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
Now, just a quick second before I go there. I didn't reserve my time because I thought we were trying to move things along. I am going to say, as a cancer survivor, as someone who did have chemo, and as someone who was on Neulasta to deal with a weakened immune system, I was in a hospital, and I wasn't being forced to wear masks and wasn't being forced to take any shots. If I wanted to take the flu shot, I could.
We have a CDC Director who said that this vaccine doesn't do anything to help the spread from other people to you. That is the whole point.
We should get rid of the vaccine mandates, but on another note of craziness from this administration, on March 16, 2023, earlier this year, the VA announced it updated the 1959 mission statement from: ``To fulfill President Lincoln's promise: `To care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan' by serving and honoring the men and women who are America's veterans.''
Now, it is a gender-neutral version: ``To fulfill President Lincoln's promise to care for those who have served in our Nation's military and for their families, caregivers, and survivors.''
That is, it upends the quote that is directly from President Lincoln.
The original mission statement is posted in roughly 50 percent of the VA's facilities. The VA has been working through replacing them over the last couple of months by a directive. It is unclear how many displays are left.
The Trump administration resisted calls to change the motto and put an additional 140 plaques at national cemeteries bearing Lincoln's quote because it is a good quote. It is a historic quote.
The fact is, we should not use taxpayer dollars to allow this administration to unilaterally change the VA's historic motto and erase the words of President Lincoln in order to appease the radical left in advancing yet another one of their cultural revisionist efforts.
The VA's mission statement, established in 1959, appropriately used the words of President Lincoln in his Second Inaugural Address delivered on March 4, 1865: ``With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the Nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan.''
That quote obviously came from the timeframe in which we were concluding the Civil War, and it came a mere month, from my recollection of history, from when Abraham Lincoln was, in fact, assassinated.
The speech was in part the basis of the Department of Veterans Affairs' creation and declared mission.
The Department wants to continue to waste hard-earned taxpayer dollars to erase history and expunge Lincoln's words by replacing the VA's mission statement, all in an attempt to earn woke brownie points.
I am thankful, of course, for the millions of men and women who have served valiantly in our Armed Forces, but changing the VA motto is just virtue signaling. We should be focused on providing the quality care and benefits veterans have earned in a timely manner.
The average wait time for new primary care appointments within the 13 South Texas Veterans Health System facilities was 50 days; veterans seeking their first appointment locally at the new Pecan Valley clinic, an average of 98 days; the VA clinic in the district I represent, Kerrville, 23 days, and that is the shortest.
This amendment, like my other amendments, is about restoring VA focus, not advancing a political agenda out of step with the majority of Americans.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Madam Chair, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment.
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Mr. ROY. Madam Chair, I will reiterate the extent to which this motto came directly from a quote from President Lincoln at his Second Inaugural Address at a particularly important and historic moment in our Nation's history. That was the point.
The literal culmination of the Civil War had occurred almost around that exact date or was occurring shortly thereafter and shortly before the President was to be assassinated, I believe in April, a month after this speech. To go back and edit this and then go around changing the VA to pull out a quote directly from Lincoln just, again, shows a lack of focus on what the VA should be focused on.
That is the point of the amendment. Can we just get back to trying to figure out how to provide care and do what we said we are going to do for millions of veterans who are tired of waiting and having technological systems that aren't working properly so they have trouble getting in and out of care and being able to use care in the private sector? There are lots of things we need to be fixing at the VA, and this is certainly not one of them.
Madam Chair, I think that I have made the point. I think the amendment should be supported. I think we should get the VA focused on what the people of this country want us to focus on, supporting the care for veterans.
Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Madam Chair, I think it is important to point out that the new motto still is reflective of President Lincoln's beliefs, and his promise is one that was developed after surveying veterans who receive care from the VA and their employees.
Perhaps we should listen to the veterans who are served by the VA and the people who work with them every single day about the need for a more inclusive motto. The more inclusive motto says, ``To fulfill President Lincoln's promise to care for those who have served in our Nation's military and for their families, caregivers, and survivors,'' making sure that the motto of the VA ensures that all patients who are served there, all employees who work there, all the surviving families who interact with the VA every single day understand that the motto applies to them and the more outdated motto that dates back to President Lincoln's time is no longer reflective of who is served at the VA.
This is 2023. It is hard to imagine that we are actually debating a motto on the floor of the House of Representatives and have a Member of Congress suggesting that that motto should remain exclusive of women instead of ensuring, as the motto voted on as a result of the surveys of VA employees and VA patients, is more reflective of who the VA treats today.
Madam Chair, I urge opposition to the gentleman's amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. ROY. Madam Chair, this amendment prohibits any of the funding in the MILCON-VA appropriations bill from being used to carry out President Biden's executive orders on climate change.
I was gratified to have offered a similar amendment and to see it adopted on the floor of the House with respect to the National Defense Authorization Act, the NDAA. We believe that the United States military should have a singular focus, and that is also true for the Veterans Administration. It should have a singular focus--ensuring our veterans have the care they need, not advancing the climate fetish that is making us beholden to China for our energy needs, undermining our national security, and undermining the very reason veterans put their lives on the line to defend this country.
In August 2021, the VA put forward a ``climate action plan,'' which includes indoctrinating VA employees with so-called climate literacy, pushing renewable energy consumption, sustainable buildings, and greenhouse gas emissions at VA facilities.
Now, VA is transitioning its fleet of over 22,000 vehicles to zero- emission vehicles. Mind you, our American public, who want to go about carrying out their jobs and their livelihoods, can't even afford vehicles anymore because we are clamping down on the ability of them to go purchase vehicles because we are limiting the production of the internal combustion engine so we can have battery-powered automobiles that are being produced with lithium and cobalt and things being mined in Africa while children are being exploited and the Chinese Communist Party is being empowered, all while China, by the way, has 1,100 coal- fired plants compared to our 250. They are building two a week while we are basically doing nothing to advance anything with respect to reliable energy.
Instead, we are putting all of our eggs in the unreliable energy basket, which makes us beholden to China, the Chinese Communist Party, and our enemies around the globe rather than exporting liquefied natural gas and making us stronger.
Again, the Veterans Administration ought to reflect the American people and our strength by focusing on its core mission--providing healthcare and benefits that are necessary for those who have served to defend our country.
My Democratic colleagues apparently think you can power a VA hospital on wind and solar alone. Of course, you cannot. It is not possible.
Anybody who looks at it looks at the data and sees on a windless, cloudy day, how are you powering a VA hospital? You are powering it with fossil fuels. You are powering it with what little nuclear power we have, given that we have been unable to build a nuclear plant, by far the most reliable non-CO
My colleagues on the other side of the aisle go around ballyhooing about carbon dioxide, and the one reliable energy that you can do has been prevented by regulatory morass through the better part of my lifetime of 50 years.
Instead, they go around producing wind and solar, which as more information comes out about how horrific it has been for the planet, how horrific it is for children throughout this world mining those minerals, how empowering it is for our enemies, and here we are trying to turn the VA into essentially a promotion of the climate agenda for the radical left.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Madam Chair, I claim the time in opposition.
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Mr. ROY. Madam Chair, I just reiterate the extent to which we are turning over our national security to our enemies. Eighty percent of the solar panels installed in the United States come from Chinese firms. Seven of the top 10 wind technology turbine manufacturers are Chinese firms. China controls 77 percent of EV battery manufacturing.
The fact is, our national security is dependent upon our ability to produce and export liquefied natural gas and being able to use the God- given minerals that we have in this country, oil and gas, to be able to power the world.
There are almost a billion people on this planet who really have no access to electricity, some 3 billion who don't have access to reliable electricity and energy, and all we are doing is constraining the ability of the world to produce the energy necessary for human flourishing.
We are all committed to trying to help improve the environment. Governor DeSantis in Florida has made enormous strides in improving the Everglades in Florida and received notoriety for doing so.
In Texas, we have the most wind production of any State in the country, but you have to beg the question as to whether that is a good thing or a bad thing if you don't have enough fossil fuels to back up the wind and the solar.
My colleagues on the other side of the aisle want to live in unicorn land and pretend that you don't need energy to power up the buildings in which we live in order to make us able to exist on this planet and actually have human flourishing in the face of weather and the conditions that we have to live through.
Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Madam Chair, it is astonishing to me that our friends on the other side of the aisle are fossil fuel warriors. I mean, that is what this is all about. This is about Big Oil and fossil fuel supporters and making sure that the coffers continue to be filled.
It is absolutely irresponsible. It is essential that we make sure that we are preparing and aggressively pursuing and making sure that we can stave off and mitigate the effects of global warming and climate change. These are not risks that are somewhere in the distant future. They are happening right now.
Madam Chair, in my own district, in neighborhoods in south Florida, during the king tides in particular, you have sunny day flooding because the sea level rise is nearly unstoppable at this point. That is costing us precious resources that we should be spending on other quality-of-life issues. Yet, the gentleman's amendment would further prevent us from being able to mitigate the effects of global warming and climate change. It is dangerous.
In particular, as it relates to our military, it puts our national security at risk and the health of our servicemembers at risk. We need to make sure that we can continue to aggressively pursue protecting our national security interests, which is why, on both sides, no matter who is in charge of the Department of Defense, the Department continues to pursue policies that will ensure that we can mitigate against global warming and climate change. They understand the risk to our servicemembers and to our safety.
Madam Chair, I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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