Making Emergency Supplemental Appropriations for the Fiscal Year Ending September 30, 2006
MAKING EMERGENCY SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS FOR THE FISCAL YEAR ENDING SEPTEMBER 30, 2006--Continued -- (Senate - May 02, 2006)
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Mr. THUNE. I rise to offer an amendment on behalf of America's veterans. My amendment provides an additional $20 million for veterans health care, offset by striking $20 million appropriated under this supplemental for the AmeriCorps Program.
Among other things, my amendment provides more funding for the implementation of the provisions of the 2004 CARES Act, or capital asset realignment for enhanced services decision, submitted by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs for enhanced VA service, as well as other actions designed to help the VA provide better and more accessible care to our Nation's veterans.
As we seek to restrain spending, we must carefully scrutinize our priorities. Our veterans must take priority over programs and some of the other priorities we are trying to address in the budget. My amendment does this with AmeriCorps. We must do everything we can in a fiscally responsible way to ensure our veterans receive the health care they require.
While we provide a generous funding of over $30 billion for VA health care for the current fiscal year, there is still room for improvement, if we can do so in a way that does not force us to spend beyond our means.
This is particularly true as we take care of those veterans who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan. Finally, this amendment is particularly important for veterans living in rural and geographically isolated areas. For example, the VA's Midwest health care network, which serves South Dakota, is the most rural and covers the largest geographic region of any veterans integrated service network in the Nation. It is therefore one of my highest priorities to ensure that veterans living in rural areas continue to see growth in the VA's ability to reach out to our rural veterans and provide adequate care for them.
For these reasons, I strongly urge my colleagues to support this amendment.
I simply say, as a member of the Committee on Veterans' Affairs, one of the debates we often have at the committee level is how, on a consistent basis, we have to borrow from the medical facilities account to fund ongoing operations, to fund veterans health care.
What this amendment simply does is, in an offset way, in a paid-for way, force us to make choices. Obviously, the budget process is always about choices, about where we are going to invest, where we are going to put our limited resources. In this era of budgetary constraint, it is important we make choices that are consistent with the priorities I believe we ought to be addressing in this country, one of which is the importance of our veterans, in making sure we are putting the appropriate funding levels in place not only to provide health care for our veterans but to make sure those facilities out there that are in need of improvement, that are in need of additional dollars for construction or rehabilitation or whatever the case may be, that there are dollars in place that would enable us to meet that very important need.
Again, I ask my colleagues to support this amendment. I believe it does reflect a priority that is important to Members of the Senate, certainly a priority that is important to members of the Committee on Veterans' Affairs, and done in a way that is offset, that is paid for, and more accurately reflects on what we ought to be spending tax dollars.
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