Veterans Day

Floor Speech

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, this morning, I woke up in Chicago, got dressed, came downstairs, met a staffer, went off to a breakfast, out to the airport, and then here to work in Washington on Capitol Hill. It was a fairly normal day for Members of the Senate and Congress. We move about and don't think twice about restrictions on our movement or problems that we might have in getting from place to place except for traffic, perhaps a delayed airplane. But for 6,800 veterans, they woke up this morning in a hospital bed at home or went from that bed to a wheelchair and will stay in that house today and every day.

There are 6,800 seriously disabled veterans who are not in veterans hospitals or in nursing homes but at home--at home with someone who loves them very much.

Yesterday, in Chicago, I had a press conference with a young man named Yuriy Zmysly. Yuriy Zmysly is a veteran of both Iraq and Afghanistan, who came home, and during the course of a surgery at a Veterans Hospital, after he was home, had a serious complication--a denial of oxygen to his brain--and he has become a quadriplegic. Yuriy has no family, but he had a devoted and loving young woman in his life--Aimee. After he faced quadriplegia, Aimee said she wanted to marry him. So Aimee married Yuriy during his struggle with this health issue and now has given her life to him every day, every minute, every hour. She is a caregiver who is there for her husband, a veteran.

Mr. President, repeat that story 6,800 times, and you will find husbands and wives, parents, brothers and sisters, who are giving their lives every single day to disabled veterans who are at home surviving because of the love and concern of people like Aimee Zmysly.

I think of Ed and Marybeth Edmondson, whose son Eric was the victim of a traumatic brain injury in Iraq. Ed quit his job, his wife gave hers up, and they moved in the house to take care of Eric and his wife and little baby. That is their life, their commitment to them.

I tell you these stories this week as we celebrate Veterans Day because I believe these caregivers deserve something special from us, from the American people, and from our government. That is why I picked up a bill introduced by Senator Hillary Clinton that provides a helping hand for caregivers such as those I have just described.

It isn't a lot, but it could make a big difference. It says we will offer them the very basics in training so that these home caregivers, these family caregivers, know what to do--how to change dressings on wounds, how to administer an intravenous formula or prescription, how to give an injection, how to move a patient from a bed to a chair and back again.

It provides also a monthly stipend for them--not a lot of money but something to help them get by because, for most of them, this is their life, this veteran they are working for every day to keep alive and as comfortable and happy as that person can be. It gives them 2 weeks of respite so they can take off and put themselves back together after all of the stress and strain, fiscally and mentally, of caring for this person they love.

I was so glad that Danny Akaka, who is chairman of the Senate Veterans' Committee, not only considered this bill but made it his own, added good things to it and reported it out of his committee and brings it to the floor where it sits on our calendar of business, a bill to help veterans caregivers, some 7,000 veterans caregivers who give each day to these veterans we treasure so much for their service to our country.

Sadly, this bill has been sitting on the calendar for weeks because one Senator objects to it. That is the way the Senate works--one Senator. This Senator's objection has held up this bill and held up our effort to provide a helping hand to these veterans caregivers. I would say to that Senator or any Senator, if you object to it, vote against it. If you want to offer an amendment, offer an amendment. But for the thousands of people who give this care, who sacrifice so much each day for these veterans who gave our country so much, we owe them a vote. I hope this week, even this short week before Veterans Day, we can move this bill for veterans caregivers across America, to give them a helping hand.

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