Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2025

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORREA. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of this amendment, and I thank my fellow co-chair of the Psychedelics Advancing Therapies Caucus, Mr. Bergman, for his good work on this measure.

We have seen our Nation's veterans continue to needlessly suffer suicides, mental health, and opioid overdoses. It is crucial that the VA do everything in its power to ensure that they have safe and scientifically sound and potentially lifesaving therapies as soon as they are available and approved in the United States.

Today, Mr. Chairman, these veterans go to other countries to receive these therapies. They are cured, and then they come back. Why in God's name do we not provide these therapies here in the United States? It doesn't make sense.

These amendments will give the Department of Veterans Affairs the opportunity to continue research they have been conducting and the potential to be able to offer MDMA-assisted therapies to our veterans should they receive FDA approval.

Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues to support this amendment. Our veterans fought for this country and sacrificed much for this country, and it is our duty to give them the best therapies available for the healing of those invisible wounds.

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Mr. CORREA. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Bergman) has laid it out. We have veterans with invisible wounds that they have brought back from the battlefield.

One suicide is too many. We have MDMA therapy that is now being proven to be sometimes 90 percent effective in curing these invisible wounds. We owe it to our veterans, to our society, and to our friends and neighbors who have served to bring these therapies to them as quickly as possible.

Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues to support this measure.

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