3% Withholding Repeal and Job Creation Act

Floor Speech

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Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I have come to the floor this afternoon to discuss the VOW to Hire Heroes Act, which is an amendment to help put our Nation's veterans back to work that we will be voting on tomorrow, on the eve of Veterans Day.

The real meaning of Veterans Day is to remind ourselves to take care of service-connected veterans and their families. That is what this amendment does.

We all realize, of course, this Chamber has had its share of disagreements and discord lately, and it is no secret that we are sharply divided on any number of economic and political issues that are facing average Americans right now. But this is one issue we should never be divided on.

I have served on the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee for over 16 years, and I can tell you that veterans have never been a partisan issue. We have all made a promise to those who signed up to serve, and we all need to keep it. That is why I have been so pleased to work to help put this amendment together in a comprehensive and bipartisan manner.

This amendment brings all ideas to the table, Democratic and Republican, Senate and House, those from the President and from Members of Congress, and it uses all those ideas to address one of the most daunting and immediate problems facing our Nation's veterans--finding work.

On this Veterans Day, after almost 10 years of war, nearly 1 million American veterans will be unemployed. It is a crisis that faces nearly 13 million other Americans. But for our veterans, many of the barriers to employment are unique.

That is because those who have worn our Nation's uniform, and particularly for those young veterans who spent the last decade being shuttled back and forth to war zones half a world away, the road home isn't always smooth. The redtape is often long, and the transition from the battlefield to the workplace is never easy.

Too often today our veterans are being left behind by their peers who didn't make the same sacrifices for their Nation at a critical time in their lives. Too often they don't realize the skills they possess and their value in the workplace is real. Too often our veterans are not finding open doors to new opportunities in their communities.

But as those who know the character and experience of our veterans understand well, that shouldn't be the case. Our veterans have the leadership ability, discipline, and technical skills to not only find work but to excel in the economy of the 21st century. That is why, 2 years ago, I began an effort to find out why, despite all the talent and drive I know our veterans possess, this problem persists.

To get to the crux of this problem, I knew I had to hear firsthand from those veterans who were struggling to find work. So I crisscrossed my home State of Washington and communities large and small, at worker retraining programs, in VA facilities, and in veterans halls. I sat down with veterans themselves to talk about the roadblocks they face. What I heard was heartbreaking and frustrating.

I heard from veterans who said they no longer write that they are a veteran on their resume because of the stigma they believe employers attach to the invisible wounds of war.

I heard from medics who return home from treating battlefield wounds and can't get a certification to be an EMT or even to drive an ambulance. I spoke with veterans who said many employers had trouble understanding the vernacular they used to describe their experiences in an interview or on their resume. I talked to veterans who told me the military spent incalculable time getting them the skills to do their job in the field but very little time teaching them how to transition the skills they have learned into the workplace when they come home. The problems were sometimes complicated and sometimes simple. Most importantly, though, they were preventable. But the more I relayed the concerns of our States' unemployed veterans to Federal Government officials for answers, the more I realized there were none.

It became clear that for too long we have invested billions of dollars in training our young men and women with the skills to protect our Nation only to ignore them once they leave the military. For too long at the end of their career we patted our veterans on the back for their service and then pushed them out into the job market--alone.

That is why in May of this year, as chairman of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee, I introduced a bipartisan veterans employment bill to ease the transition from the battlefield to the working world. It is a bill that will allow our men and women in uniform to capitalize on their service while also making sure the American people capitalize on the investment we have made in them.

For the first time it requires broad job skills training for every servicemember as they leave the military as part of the military's Transition Assistance Program. It allows servicemembers to begin the Federal employment process prior to separation in order to facilitate a truly seamless transition from the military to jobs in our government, and it requires the Department of Labor to take a hard look at what military skills and training should be translatable into the civilian sector in order to make it simpler for our veterans to get the licenses and certifications they need.

All of these are substantial steps to put our veterans to work. Today they are being combined with the other great ideas in this comprehensive amendment that is now before the Senate, including an idea championed by my House counterpart, Chairman Miller, that will ease the employment struggle of our older veterans by providing them with additional education benefits so they can train for today's high-demand jobs, and an idea that has been championed by President Obama, Senator Baucus, and many others that provides a tax credit for employers who hire veterans.

With this amendment we are taking a huge step forward in rethinking the way we treat our men and women in uniform after they leave the military. For many of us, particularly those who grew up with the Vietnam war, we are also taking steps to avoid the mistakes of the past, mistakes that I believe we stand perilously close to repeating.

Every day we read about skyrocketing suicide statistics, substantial abuse problems, and even rising homelessness among the post-9/11 generation of veterans. While there are lots of factors that contribute to those challenges, failure to give our veterans the self-confidence, the financial security, and dignity that a job provides often plays a very crucial role.

On this Veterans Day we need to redouble our efforts to avoid the mistakes that have cost our veterans dearly and have weighed on the collective conscience of this Nation. We can do that agreeing to this amendment, but also by looking back to a time when we stepped up to meet the promises we made to our veterans.

I mentioned on the Senate floor many times that my father was a veteran of World War II. But what I do not always talk about is the fact that when he came home from war, he came home to opportunity--first at college and then to a job, a job that gave him pride, a job that helped him and my mother raise seven children who have gone on to support families of their own. This is the legacy of opportunity we have to live up to for our Nation's veterans. The responsibility we have on our shoulders does not end on the battlefield. It does not end after the parades on Friday. In fact, it does not end.

I urge my colleagues to put aside our differences, to come together and meet the challenges of putting our Nation's veterans to work.

I yield the floor.

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