Daniel J. Harvey, Jr. and Adam Lambert Improving Servicemember Transition to Reduce Veteran Suicide Act

Floor Speech

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Mrs. KIGGANS. Mr. Speaker, in closing, just to reiterate some of the statements and points that have been made by my fellow veteran colleagues, it is hard to transition out of the military.

We wake up every day with a mission, and that is a great mission--to defend our great Nation. We are part of a team, and it gets us out of bed in the morning. There is no better, no higher calling than that.

The day that that stops and the day that you are not a part of that team, and you might not know what is next ahead in life, and there is a lot of transition with a lot unknown, it is hard. We have to do better for our servicemen and -women that are transitioning out.

We are so thankful for the service of the two young Marines that we spoke about today, but even one veteran suicide is too many.

I know that even in my district in Hampton Roads, Virginia, when we take ships out of commission, we put them in the yards, or we put people on medical hold, we have seen suicides there as well.

Again, taking those servicemembers out of their role, their mission of defending the country every day and putting them in a holding pen, is very hard on their mental health. When we transition them out of the service, there is no more challenging time than that.

This is the least we can do. It is a step in the right direction, but education is a powerful tool. It is one of the tools we have here in Congress.

Mandating that this education be given to our servicemen and -women who are often young people transitioning out who have great lives ahead, long lives ahead, and just helping them to know what resources are available to them, especially for mental health, can be such a challenging time.

I urge all of my colleagues here to support this bill. I look forward to supporting it myself, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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