Department of Defense Appropriations Act -- Conference Report
Floor Speech
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE APPROPRIATIONS ACT--CONFERENCE REPORT -- (Senate - December 14, 2007)
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Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I thank Senator Levin of Michigan and Senator Warner of Virginia. This is a big piece of work and it took them a long time and a lot of patience and a lot of skill. It is voluminous and contains so much of importance for our national security defense, and I thank them and their staffs for the extraordinary job they did.
A word of disappointment before I go into more praise. Troops to Nurse Teachers is a program Senator Warner and I talked about 2 years ago. We had hoped to include it in this bill. We passed it in the Senate, and we lost it in conference. The idea, of course, is to take retired military nurses and move them into nursing faculty positions, because we have such a shortage in our Nation of nurses. For reasons I can't explain, our good idea turned into a study. Let's hope the study turns into a program that brings us more nurses, whom we desperately need.
Let me say a word about my vote on this bill. Everyone will have their own reason for supporting this bill. My reason is a young soldier named Eric Edmundson. Eric Edmundson, from North Carolina, had been in the Army about 6 or 7 years, was a victim of a traumatic brain injury in Iraq, brought out to Walter Reed, went through numerous surgeries, suffered some very debilitating and tough injuries. The VA system tried their best, sent him to Richmond without the kind of results that the family or Eric wanted to see. They told the family his only recourse was to go to a nursing home--a nursing home--at the age of 26. His father said: No way. My son is not going to a nursing home. His father, Ed Edmundson, quit his job. He and his wife started this crusade to get Eric into the best hospital they could find in America. He ended up in the Rehab Institute in Chicago, paid for by the Federal Government after a long battle. Then, after months of heroic rehabilitation, on the day of his discharge Eric Edmundson walked out of that hospital. I was there that day. I looked at the tears in the eyes of his family, his wife, saw his little baby girl, and realized that we cannot give up on these wounded warriors.
I introduced a bill and commended it to Senators LEVIN and WARNER and thanked them personally for including it in this legislation. This bill is going to mean that we make extraordinary efforts, as we should, to stand behind these veterans and give them the very best care they can possibly receive. With that kind of care, many of them can be restored to the life they deserve.
We also need to start monitoring those who come into the military service on the issue of traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder to establish cognitive tests as baselines so some of the subtleties of their injuries that aren't discovered for years can be discovered. To go to Walter Reed now to the amputation unit and find the average soldier telling you that he in Iraq has experienced at least 60 concussions that they felt--even if they didn't personally harm them; they walked away from them thinking nothing of it, it is cumulative. It can come back to haunt them. I went to barracks with Senator McCaskill and we visited units and soldiers who went through this. We know this is an ongoing concern and an ongoing obligation, and this bill recognizes it.
I salute all of those who made this possible for the passage of this bill; the inclusion of the Wounded Warriors Act, the traumatic brain injury bill I worked on. They say you get a lot done around Congress if you don't care who takes the credit. I am glad this bill passes. Even though the one I introduced with my name didn't, the major parts of it are included. My vote on behalf of this is for Ed and Beth Edmundson, who did everything in their power for their son, and to Eric Edmundson, his wife Stephanie, and his little daughter Gracie.
They are the ones who brought this to my attention and the ones I will be thinking of when I vote today.
I yield the floor.
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