Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2008--Conference Report --
Floor Speech
DEPARTMENTS OF LABOR, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, AND EDUCATION, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2008--CONFERENCE REPORT -- (Senate - November 07, 2007)
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Mr. REED. Mr. President, I am pleased this afternoon to recommend the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and related agencies division of this conference report to the Senate. This is an extremely important and time-sensitive funding measure, and I urge my colleagues to adopt it without delay as part of the Labor and Health and Human Services conference report and send it to the President to be signed into law.
I am particularly honored to be presenting this measure to the Senate on behalf of the chairman of the subcommittee, Senator TIM JOHNSON. We have worked closely throughout the entire appropriations process, and the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs provisions before the Senate today are the product of a thoroughly collaborative and a cooperative effort, but the leadership was provided by Senator Johnson. I appreciate Senator Johnson's graciousness in allowing me to offer this conference report on his behalf.
I would also like to thank the ranking member of our subcommittee, Senator Hutchison, for her excellent work and cooperation in developing this conference report and the chairman and ranking member of the full committee, Chairman Byrd and Senator Cochran, for their strong support and guidance in shepherding this legislation to the floor.
The Military Construction and Veterans Affairs conference report before the Senate today is fair, balanced, and a bipartisan piece of legislation that deserves the full support of the Senate.
The Military Construction and Veterans Affairs portion of this conference report is critically important to our Nation's military forces and to our veterans. It includes $64.7 billion in total discretionary funding--$3.7 billion over the President's budget request for the Department of Veterans Affairs. This level of funding includes $37.2 billion for veterans health care, a high-water mark in the history of the Department--the largest sum of money ever appropriated for veterans health care. Indeed, it is consistent with the independent budget the veterans organizations have proposed year after year. This is the first time we could match their goal with our appropriation. We have provided $2.6 billion more than the President requested for veterans health care and $373 million more than the veterans service organizations sought in the independent budget. We have, in fact, gone beyond what the independent veterans organizations have suggested in their budget. This level of funding is a clear demonstration of the importance this Congress places on the health and welfare of our Nation's veterans.
The funding included in this conference report supports a myriad of programs crucial to America's veterans, including funding the veterans hospitals, clinics, and veterans centers, as well as cutting-edge research into critical areas of health care such as traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder. As a result of the asymmetric combat we are witnessing in Iraq and Afghanistan, this Nation is producing a new generation of veterans, and they have markedly different service-related injuries than were experienced in previous wars. Thankfully, more service men and women are surviving their war wounds, but many are surviving with catastrophic physical and mental injuries.
The nature of veterans health care for new veterans is changing dramatically, while the demand for short-term and long-term health care for veterans of previous wars is rapidly increasing as the veteran population ages. We have two currents rushing together: veterans of World War II and Korea who are now in their seventies and eighties requiring more care simply because of their age, and a new generation of veterans coming out of Afghanistan and Iraq, many of whom are sustaining neurological injuries such as traumatic brain injury or post-traumatic stress disorder. This other stream of veterans is flooding into our system, and we have to care for all of these veterans. That is why this legislation is particularly timely and particularly important.
All of the challenges to the Department of Veterans Affairs are enormous. The conference report before the Senate today addresses those challenges. With this funding, we are providing the resources for the Department to meet the needs of both aging veterans from yesterday's wars and emerging veterans from today's conflict.
The conference report also includes critically needed funding for military construction. It provides a total of $21.5 billion for military construction and an $8.4 billion increase over last year's funding level, with most of the increase directed toward implementing the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure Program.
I am particularly pleased that the conference report includes $1.1 billion for the Nation's Guard and Reserve forces--a 34.5-percent increase over the President's budget request. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have placed an unprecedented demand on the Nation's Guard and Reserve Forces. Yet the President's budget slashed construction funding for several of the Guard and Reserve components. This conference report corrects that inequity. For example, it increases funding for the Army National Guard 25 percent over the President's budget request, and for the Air Guard, the conference report more than triples the President's budget request.
Military construction may not have the glamour of the Defense Department's sophisticated weapons and other programs, but it is, nevertheless, the bedrock of the Nation's military. Our troops must have sufficient funding to provide barracks, facilities for training and maintaining their equipment, and adequate housing for their families. Without the resources provided in this legislation, these crucial facilities could not be constructed. This legislation provides funding for an impressive array of military construction projects, the vast majority of which were requested by the President. All of the major construction projects added to the President's budget by the Senate have been fully vetted, are included in the authorization bill, and are encompassed within the service's Future Years Defense Plan.
Some have complained that the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs conference report should not be coupled with the Labor and Health and Human Services conference report. I will have more to say about that later, but I would like to make the point now that these two bills complement each other in many respects, and it makes perfectly good sense to link them together.
There are more than a few crossover items between the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs appropriations bill and the Labor and Health and Human Services appropriations bill. These include, to name a few, the Labor Department's Veterans Employment and Training Program, which includes the Homeless Veterans Reintegration Program; the Department of Education's Impact Aid Program, which assists school districts whose student population is swelled by military dependents; and the Traumatic Brain Injury Program directed by the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control. There are numerous programs that provide benefits to veterans and their families that are included in the Health and Human Services program. Veterans are not simply veterans. They are members of communities. They have children. They have spouses. They require the services that are included not only in the Veterans' Administration bill but particularly their families in other legislation and other appropriations included in the Health and Human Services bill.
Something else, too, I think is important to stress, and I will do that in greater detail, these veterans as young men and women committed themselves to this country, not because they anticipated collecting veterans' benefits but because they wanted to make a difference. They wanted to ensure that--mercifully and hopefully--the next generation of Americans wouldn't have to go into combat, but beyond that, that all Americans would have a chance. It was not about ensuring elaborate tax loopholes or sophisticated financial transactions; they were fighting--and, sadly, being injured and too many dying--to give people a chance in this country, an opportunity to go to school, for children to get immunizations, and for bright, talented young people to go to college. That is why I think it is also essential that these two bills are being considered together, because if we provide for our veterans, they have earned it--and we should and we must and we will--but if we neglect the rest of the country, have we truly fulfilled and measured up to what they served and sacrificed for? I don't think so.
The Senate has before it a comprehensive and vitally important conference report for funding both Departments, both areas--the Department of Labor and Health and Human Services, the Education Department, and Military Construction and Veterans Affairs. We have the opportunity--I would argue, the obligation--to send a signal to the President of this country and to the Nation that we are not willing to play favorites among appropriations bills. Funding for health care for our veterans is clearly a priority, but it does not trump our commitment to fund health care services for all Americans or education programs or job training for those who need it, including veterans who participate in many of the Department of Labor programs.
I urge my colleagues to support this conference report in its entirety and send it to the President today.
Mr. President, I yield the floor and reserve the remainder of whatever time I may have.
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Mr. REED. Mr. President, we are here today at this juncture to talk about the point of order raised against combining the MILCON bill and the Health and Human Services appropriations bill. There is a large point I will try to make, which is that these bills are complementary in many real ways. Veterans, for example, do not live alone with other veterans. They have families who require education, Pell grants, Head Start funds, and all of that is within the purview of the Health and Human Services appropriations bill. Also, they are individuals, our veterans, who have earned their rights. But I don't believe they engaged in battles for this country and wore the uniform of this country to get a pension or to get a health benefit; they did it for a broader, much larger, much more noble purpose, and that was to build a decent and just America. Part of that is making sure children have immunizations, making sure children can go to good schools and disadvantaged children can enjoy health through the title I program; making sure talented young people can go to college with a Pell grant or a Stafford loan; the CDC can protect all of us from disease, and the NIH can use their resources to research breakthroughs in medicine and health care to benefit all of us. It is that vision of a decent, humane, and just America that ultimately compelled millions of Americans to wear the uniform of this country and defend it.
So the notion that we can arbitrarily or not arbitrarily separate these bills, I don't think it accords with one of the major functions of all of us as citizens, as soldiers, as Senators--to serve the greater good--and we are doing that, I think, with these two appropriations bills.
There is another point I think which is interesting to me. These bills have passed the Senate overwhelmingly. They would, I think, if they were separated, pass overwhelmingly. But it seems to me we are now in a situation where we can't combine them because the President has said: Don't put them together because I will sign one and veto the other, which presents my colleagues in the Senate a very interesting situation: After voting for the underlying bills overwhelmingly, do they support the President's veto? I hope we can avoid that.
I think we should send these bills together to the President today. We can do that. We can expedite the funding of the VA at record levels. We can fulfill our obligations to citizens across this country in many different ways by supporting this procedural approach of combining the bills, voting for the bills, and sending them to the President.
But the premise I think is we will separate them if this point of order is sustained, and then we will see the VA bill probably signed but then have to come back and negotiate a way for a bill we all support--the Health and Human Services bill. I don't think that is the right approach. The fastest way to get this legislation, with respect to veterans, to the President is to vote against this point of order, send it to the President, he can sign it, and next week we can celebrate Veterans Day with the largest veterans appropriations bill that we have ever passed. I think that is the route we should pursue. I don't think we should allow the President to dictate the terms.
One of the interesting things about the President's approach--particularly as we have talked time and time again about Iraq--is that: Well, the Congress can't tell me how to run policy; all they can do is fund or not fund the war. Well, here we are making a very bold, very assertive statement about funding the Veterans' administration, Military Construction, and Health and Human Services. But he says: Well, you can't do that. You can't tell me that either because I will veto one and I would not accept a package, even though it is a package of funding. Again, I think we have to--and we should--assert our will, particularly when it comes to the underlying legislation that passed this body with extraordinary--extraordinary margins. This would be, I think, a different debate if we had taken a bill that was popular and combined it with a bill that could not pass this body, or barely pass this body. Both of these bills have commanded I think strong support, and they should go forward and be signed by the President.
But there is another issue here, too, and it goes back to the initial point I made about there is a complementarity between these two bills, and it is a very direct and, I believe, powerful one. We have, for example, within the Health and Human Services bill, $228 million for the Veterans Employment and Training Program. It is in the Department of Labor. But if you are a veteran and you are looking for the training you need and employment opportunities because you have served your country honorably and well--and if we don't pass that Health and Human Services bill, that money will not be there. We have in the Department of Labor $23.6 million for the Homeless Veterans Reintegration Program. In fact, I dare say, there is too little attention being paid to homeless veterans. There was a report today that one in four homeless individuals are veterans of the military. That is a shocking and shameful statistic for this country. We have in this bill one of several programs--very small, but they help veterans. That is in the labor portion of the bill; that is not in the veterans' portion of the bill. Funding for the Department of Education, $1.26 billion to impact aid payments. Those payments are targeted to school systems that serve military installations, large populations not only of veterans, but of Active-Duty soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines. So we are saying: Great, we are going to give the veterans what they deserve, but for those veterans and Active-Duty personnel, we can't vote in this bill for $1.26 billion in impact aid. We can't provide their children the kind of school systems in adjoining neighborhoods to military posts that we think is adequate--not only adequate but we hope excellent.
So these bills are not distinguished in some respects. They serve the veteran population and the military population, and to suggest they are totally opposed and diametric is, I think, wrong.
In the area of health care funding, we went a long way in the Veterans' Administration bill to put significant resources into the veterans health care program.
In fact, for the first time, it exceeds the independent budget which veterans organizations present to us each year, when it comes to veterans health care, the largest increase in veterans health care, the largest appropriation we have ever given.
One of the areas we asked them to look at is traumatic brain injury, post-traumatic stress. We understand now because of the nature of combat and conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq, there are thousands of young men and women coming back with traumatic brain injuries. They did surveys of returning brigades of some of our Army units and estimated that perhaps 20 percent of the troops might have some indication of traumatic brain injury--slight to moderate. Over time, this is an increasingly more difficult problem for the VA system. Of course, we have asked them to treat these individuals. But in the Health Resources and Service Administration--in the other appropriations bill, we have $9.5 million for the traumatic brain injury program.
We have billions of dollars for the National Institutes of Health, for their research, which will be extremely important if we want to understand the phenomenon of traumatic brain injury. Of course, if we don't move that bill today, this bill, along with the Veterans' Administration bill, at least temporarily we lose these funds.
So I think there is a synergy between the two bills. I think it goes back to not just the complementary programs; it goes back to what our veterans and our soldiers today are serving for--not self-aggrandizement, not a pension, or to get the benefits they have earned alone but for something bigger. Those men and women are not out there putting time in so when they get to be 40 or have 20-plus years of military service they get the pension. They are risking their lives so this country lives up to its highest ideals. If we cannot provide and pass a robust appropriations bill and get it signed by the President on Health and Human Services, we are not living up to our obligations and our ideals.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
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