Farm, Nutrition, and Bioenergy Act of 2007
Floor Speech
FARM, NUTRITION, AND BIOENERGY ACT OF 2007 -- (Senate - November 08, 2007)
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Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I come to the floor this afternoon to talk about something that has been a priority for me and for many of my colleagues; that is, our veterans. As we all know, Sunday is Veterans Day, the day that is designated for us to thank our Nation's heroes for their service to our country. It is also a time to ask whether our country has done enough to repay our veterans for all they have given to secure our safety.
As thousands return home from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, some now from their fifth tour of duty, I wish I could say the answer to that question is yes. But, tragically, this has not yet been an issue of priority for this administration. We have too often failed to provide the care our heroes have earned. From the shameful conditions at Walter Reed and VA facilities around the country we saw earlier this year, to a lack of mental health counselors, to a benefits claims backlog of months--and I am even hearing years--our veterans have had to really struggle to get basic care. Fighting overseas takes a tremendous toll, as we know, on the lives of our troops and their families.
It is unacceptable to me that those heroes have had to fight their own Government for the treatment they have been promised. So today I wanted to come out on the floor to talk to my colleagues and to talk to President Bush about the hurdles our veterans have faced. As we approach this Veterans Day, I hope all of us, especially the President, will reaffirm our commitment to our veterans by providing the money, the attention, and the leadership they deserve.
I know from personal experience how military service affects veterans and their families and how the wounds veterans suffer from their military service will shape their lives forever.
When I was a student in college at Washington State University, I was there during the Vietnam War, and I chose to do my internship at the Seattle VA. I was 19 years old when I headed off to the Seattle VA, a time when men and women who were my own age were coming home wounded from Vietnam. Every day I got on the elevator at the VA Hospital and rode up to the seventh floor and walked into the psychiatric ward, where those big, heavy doors shut behind me. Day after day, during my entire internship, I sat and watched these young men and women, who were my age, as some of them just stared blankly, some of them screamed in anger, many of them felt cut off from their own country, and most of them felt their lives had changed forever. As a volunteer at the VA during that time, I learned how some of these veterans can easily slip through the cracks.
That experience also taught me that the doctors and the nurses who are there at the VA are really dedicated to trying to take care of these young men and women. It convinced me that the VA system is where our veterans can get the best care. Our VA system is uniquely positioned in this country to recognize and treat those specialized injuries, those medical conditions, and those mental health challenges which are caused by combat and military missions. Private medicine doesn't always have the knowledge base or the resources to deal with the unique challenges of a war. That is one reason I will continue to fight for better access to the VA, access that allows our veterans to get the care they need without the endless waits and redtape.
Rather than kicking our veterans into yet another maze of processing and another maze of paperwork, we ought to be working every single day until we get it right, to provide better access to one of the best health care systems in the country to those men and women who have answered the call.
I know from my own experience in my own family veterans are sometimes reluctant to seek attention or care they need. My own father was a veteran of World War II. He was one of the first soldiers into Okinawa. When he arrived, he was greeted with mortar. He was injured quite badly. He was put on a ship and sent to Hawaii, where he was in a hospital for weeks, recovering from those wounds. I believe he was there about 3 months. At the end of that time, he was then sent back to war.
He was a courageous young man of 19 at the time. I didn't know him, obviously. He hadn't yet married my mother. I wasn't even a thought for him. I grew up with my dad. He was a disabled veteran. He was in a wheelchair for most of my life. Yet the story I told you he never told me. How had I found out that my dad was wounded and sent to a hospital and recovered under painful circumstances and sent back to war? I found out after he died, when I found his diary. That is the typical thing I hear from veterans. They are reluctant to tell us of the heroes they are.
Those two experiences in my life, working at the VA when I was 19 and finding my dad's diary years later, help to illustrate a larger lesson that applies to many of our veterans that we need to remember in the Senate and Congress as we develop our policies, and that is often these veterans do not want to call attention to their service. Sometimes they are suffering so much they don't ask for the help they need.
That is why I am so devoted to making sure we have a VA system that is ready and able and capable of taking care of all the men and women who served our country--all of our veterans. Sadly, as we both know, we are now 5 1/2 -plus years into the war in Iraq. Today we know that the VA is struggling to provide some of the basic services for our veterans. It is surprising to me it took President Bush nearly 3 months to announce his head of the VA to lead this beleaguered system. For 3 months, our VA has been languishing without strong leadership to address the challenges they have. His lack of leadership on that critical appointment sent a signal to me, and to a lot of people, that he is not focused on that cost of war and he is not focused on our aging veterans who are now going into the system, who are facing long waiting lines and not getting appointments. It underscores to me his failure to count our veterans as a part of the cost of this war.
This week we learned the year of 2007 will go down as the deadliest year of the war in Iraq; this year, right now, the deadliest year of the war in Iraq. I know my heart and the heart of the Presiding Officer go out to the families of nearly 4,000 brave Americans who have made the ultimate sacrifice in this war and to the tens of thousands more who have returned with physical and mental illness.
The physical wounds our veterans have suffered in Iraq and Afghanistan are horrendous. I have worked, along with the Presiding Officer, as a member of the Veterans' Affairs Committee to help shine a light on the mental wounds so many of our veterans are suffering from this war. As he and I know, these injuries are very deep and very personal and they can be very devastating, both to that servicemember and to his family.
This problem is still not getting the attention it needs from this administration. We all know our troops are under tremendous strain. In the past, we were always able to give our servicemembers a break in service to allow them time off from the frontlines to recover from their physical or psychological or emotional demands. We also know some of them are now serving in their third and fourth and even fifth tours in this war in Iraq. All of that increases the likelihood they will suffer post-traumatic stress disorder or other mental health conditions when they come home. In fact, according to our VA's own numbers, fully a third of all our returning Iraq veterans suffer from a mental health condition.
That is an astounding statistic, one-third of the men and women who have gone to Iraq and Afghanistan come home with mental health conditions that need treatment and support. But I also know that statistic is probably too low. That is because many of our veterans today do not seek care, either because of the stigma of mental health problems or because they live in a community where they do not know whom to ask. Today the VA is not reaching out and trying to find these men and women, to bring them in, to give them the support and services they need. I have talked to one too many veterans myself who has told me: I didn't know that I could get care at the VA. I didn't know whom I could call.
We have a lot of work to do. Earlier this year, I went to Camp Murray and spoke with some of the National Guard members who told me they did not want to be labeled with PTSD or traumatic brain injury. They had gone to Iraq and come home and they were deathly afraid of having that label on them because they thought it would hurt their career. One soldier even told me that to be labeled with a mental trauma, ``jeopardizes his life outside the service.''
Clearly, this administration and every American needs to work to change that perception, because a soldier who is at home and doesn't seek the needed care is an explosive timebomb in his family and his community. More than that, we owe them the support and care they deserve. That is part of our job, to make sure these soldiers aren't lost when they come home.
We have a lot of work to do as well to ensure that when our servicemembers do try to get care, they do not have to struggle to navigate this horrendous system they are thrown into to get the treatment they need. So far we have not seen that happening. Last year, a VA official revealed some of the clinics in this country do not provide mental health care or substance abuse care. Or, if they do, and this was a VA official himself who said this, ``waiting lists render that care virtually inaccessible.'' In other words, that VA official was saying, because the care is not there, we are denying the servicemembers the treatment they need.
I held a hearing on the issue of mental health care in Tacoma, WA, my home State, a few months ago. Dan Purcell--he is an Iraq veteran--spoke to me and summed up the frustration I think is felt by so many of the servicemembers I have taken the time to talk to. He said to me he felt like he was being ``treated as a tool that could be casually discarded when broken or found to be no longer useful.''
Can you imagine? A young man who went to serve his country in Iraq, served all of us, fought for our safety and security--no matter how we feel about this war--felt like he was discarded when he came home. That is not how any of us want the men and women who serve this country to feel.
I think it is shameful our veterans today, across this country, are forced to fight to get the mental health care they need. A lot of them struggle to even see a doctor, and they are forced to wait months or even years to get their claims processed.
Across the country, veterans who have health problems are given different ratings and different benefits. In 2003, the administration, surprisingly, closed the door to VA health care for new Priority 8 veterans. Some veterans tell me it feels like the VA is fighting them instead of fighting for them. That is unconscionable.
When this war ends--and we all pray it will be soon--when the news fades and the conflicts become another page in our history books, we have to be here to make sure the commitment to our veterans does not fade along with that.
I wished to come to the floor this afternoon to highlight, on Veterans Day, how important it is that we recognize the men and women who serve us; how important our job is to make sure we provide the care. But I am not here just to say what they should do. I think it is important to talk about what we should do.
I think there are three clear areas where we can do a much better job, where we can improve. First of all, I believe we can work to make sure the mental health care needs of our veterans are met. We need to work to make sure the VA does all it can to raise the awareness of post-traumatic stress disorder and combat-related stress. We have to do everything we can to make sure they hire more counselors to help treat everyone, from the 20-year-old veteran returning from Iraq to the Vietnam veteran who is still struggling with his legacy of war.
We need to make sure all the employees throughout our VA system understand PTSD, so it isn't the receptionist who answers the phone who, when a veteran says to her: I can't get to sleep at night or I am having nightmares or I can't remember where my keys are or my kids don't understand me anymore, says: Well, let me see if I can get you an appointment. We have one 3 months from now. We need everyone, including the people who answer the phone, to understand post-traumatic stress syndrome and make sure we are reaching out and finding these veterans and getting them the care they need.
Next, we need to work with the VA to clear up that horrendous backlog of complaints our veterans are facing so they can finally get timely care. I hope the President signs legislation soon to ensure the Department of Defense and the VA are working with the same disability rating system and that records are not lost between those two systems.
We have worked hard in the Senate to address that issue, since the Walter Reed scandal broke. That legislation is within the Defense authorization. I hope we can get it to the President soon, that he signs it, and that the VA and DOD finally break apart those barriers that tell them they cannot talk to each other or will not talk to each other, and they can figure out a disability system that does not put our veterans into some kind of chaos between two bureaucratic systems.
Finally, most important, we, Congress, have to provide enough money so our veterans do get the quality health care they deserve. The Senate has approved a bill that provides about $4 billion more than the President asked us for that is going to take some important steps. It is going to improve the conditions at our VA facilities around the country--such as we saw at Walter Reed. That was symbolic of what is happening in our country, and we have to put the resources into these VA facilities so our veterans do not face these dilapidated conditions. We have to invest in new ways to treat military health ailments such as PTSD and traumatic brain injury. We don't know the best care for our veterans yet. We don't know all the outcomes of PTSD and all the treatments available, and our VA has to have the dollars to do that research so we can provide the best care possible.
That bill provides funding for better prosthetics for thousands of troops who have lost limbs in battle. I know the Presiding Officer and I have both talked with veterans and I have to tell you, the veterans coming home today who lose a limb in this war, they want to be able to climb Mount Rainier. They want to be able to run in a marathon. They want to be able to get up and be part of our society, our communities, and their families. We owe that to them, and better research on prosthetics and the capability of providing that to them is incredibly important. We provide for the research and the dollars in this bill to do that.
It is so frustrating to me that this administration has ignored these problems for so long. We, in the Democratic-controlled Congress, came in this year and we have taken action so now I hope the President supports this critical bill and proves his commitment to veterans as well.
The men and women in uniform have answered the President's call to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan without hesitation or complaint. They have left their loved ones for years. They have put their own lives on the line. Some have come home without limbs; others have returned with mental scars. Some, thankfully, have escaped without any injury. But everyone, to a person, has earned the respect and the best care possible when they come home. If we do not care for our servicemembers now, we will be weakening our military for decades to come.
President Bush has been more than willing to use our veterans as props when he argues in favor of this misguided war. I think it is time to turn that lipservice into reality and give our veterans the care they need and they deserve. We owe it to our country to ensure we are there to support our servicemembers, to support our veterans, and to support their families every single step of the way.
Mr. President, I know, as you do, that this country is willing to do that, unlike in some of our previous conflicts.
I did not support the war, but I support the men and women who serve in it, and I will work every day to make sure we do our job to care for them when they come home, and I know all Americans feel the way I do. The men and women who serve us are part of the cost of war, and may we never forget that.
I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
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