New Direction for Energy Independence, National Security, and Consumer Protection Act and the Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation Tax Act of 2007

Floor Speech

NEW DIRECTION FOR ENERGY INDEPENDENCE, NATIONAL SECURITY, AND CONSUMER PROTECTION ACT AND THE RENEWABLE ENERGY AND ENERGY CONSERVATION TAX ACT OF 2007 -- (Senate - April 04, 2008)

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Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, first, I wish to commend Senator Dodd and Senator Shelby for their work on this legislation. In particular, I wish to congratulate them on the provisions already in the bill to help our servicemembers and veterans. I also wish to thank Senator Akaka, the chairman of the Committee on Veterans' Affairs, and Senator Burr, the ranking member, and their staffs, for helping to clear this amendment.

The amendment I am offering today will provide another piece of needed help to disabled veterans trying to stay in their homes. This amendment increases funding for a VA grant program that assists disabled veterans needing to adapt their homes to accommodate their disabilities. As the Presiding Officer knows, many thousands of soldiers, coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan as amputees, who are blind and who have a number of disabilities, and this amendment attempts to address some of those problems by helping them adapt their homes so they can live in those homes with their disabilities.

This amendment is supported by some of our Nation's largest veterans organizations, including the VFW, the DAV, AMVETS, Paralyzed Veterans of America, and the Vietnam Veterans of America. It is also important to note the policy changes we are advocating are contained in the independent budget, the document authored every year by many of the same organizations. It is also a policy that has the unanimous support of the majority members of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee, which endorsed this policy change in the 2007 and 2008 Views and Estimates letter to the Budget Committee; in other words, this policy in this amendment has broad support.

Veterans with certain severe service-connected disabilities are entitled to what are known as specially adapted housing grants of up to $50,000. Veterans with service-connected blindness only or with loss of use of both upper extremities may receive a grant of up to $10,000. The authors of the independent budget note increases in these amendments have been sporadic, despite the increases in real estate costs. In particular, veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are finding the current VA program does not cover the cost of adapting their homes to accommodate wheelchairs or loss of vision, to create physical therapy space or other needed changes.

This amendment increases the specialty adaptive housing grant to provide $10,000 in additional benefits for those veterans eligible for the $50,000 grant and $2,000 in additional benefits for those veterans eligible for the current $10,000 grant. So we are raising the cap on each program to $60,000 and $12,000, respectively. According to CBO, for fiscal year 2009, this amendment would cost about $6 million.

The Senate is now debating an important piece of legislation to try to bring relief to so many of the middle-income Americans who are struggling to keep their heads above water in today's economy and housing crisis. I think, given the context of this bill, certainly we can reach out to disabled veterans to adapt their homes so they can try to live as full lives as possible.

I wish to again commend Senator Dodd, Senator Shelby, and the Banking Committee for the proveteran, proservicemember provisions already in this legislation, and I ask that my colleagues support this small additional benefit. I ask for my colleagues' support on this amendment, and if it is appropriate, I ask for the yeas and nays on the amendment.

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