National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008

Floor Speech

NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2008 -- (Senate - October 01, 2007)

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Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I wanted to take this opportunity to say a few words about an amendment I have offered, No. 2905, that is cosponsored by Senators SUNUNU, KERRY, HARKIN, and BROWN. This amendment addresses a problem that is huge, that is going to continue to grow in coming years, and is something the Congress must address. All across our country, veterans of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan are going to come home with what we believe to be very high levels of post-traumatic stress disorder as well as traumatic brain injury. These are the signature injuries of the war in Iraq. I worry very much that we are not yet prepared to address this serious problem which not only impacts the returning soldiers, it impacts their wives, their kids, and their communities.

The amendment I have offered would develop a pilot program for State-based outreach to assist servicemembers and their families. The concern I have is that those who return home with TBI or PTSD are not going to get the care they need unless somebody makes contact with them and makes them aware of services and help that might be available. We can have all of the money we want allocated to addressing TBI or PTSD, but unless somebody goes out and brings those people into the system, that money is not going to do any good. I worry about that, especially for those returning soldiers who are in the National Guard who are not part of the active duty, who do not have a military infrastructure in front of them. I worry about soldiers coming home to small towns in Vermont and all across this country who suddenly find that their world is very different than the world they left, that they have nightmares, cold sweats, panic attacks when they go through a tunnel, and they don't know how to address those very serious symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

What this amendment does uniquely is create an outreach effort by which trained personnel from the National Guard or elsewhere are literally going to knock on doors and chat with the individual returning soldier and his or her family and get a sense of what is going on in the family, letting those veterans understand that what they are experiencing is something being experienced by tens of thousands of other soldiers, and there is nothing to be ashamed of about the kinds of problems that individual is having.

The essence of this program is its nature as an outreach effort, not to sit back but to aggressively go out, knock on doors, have dialog, and bring people into the system which might be able to help them.

This amendment is supported by the National Guard Association of the United States. They have pointed out that this amendment, with its unique emphasis on outreach, is a perfect compliment to the reintegration and readjustment policies laid out by the Yellow Ribbon Program in the previously adopted Chambliss amendment to the Defense authorization bill.

This is a very strong amendment. I look forward to having support on both sides of the aisle. If we are serious about addressing the problems of PTSD and TBI, we have to be aggressive in outreach. That is what this amendment does.

I yield the floor.

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