Veterans Tax Credit

Floor Speech

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Mr. COONS. Madam President, I rise today, on the eve of Veterans Day, to speak on behalf of those who have fought for our country only to return home to find that their fight must continue, this time their fight for a job, for employment. I rise today to offer my support on the floor for the VOW to Hire Heroes Act, which I believe is now before this body.

I am a cosponsor of this bill, because as a nation we must do more to appreciate, to support the service of our returning heroes, and to help them to fully recover from their service abroad by returning to meaningful employment in the civilian sector.

We have not had as many servicemembers coming home from military service abroad in a long time. Unfortunately, so many of them come home to a bitterly slow recovery from the great recession. The employment rate among all veterans from service in Iraq or Afghanistan is now 30 percent higher than the national unemployment rate. It is at roughly 12.1 percent. That means nearly a quarter million veterans who are unemployed.

This bill is about equipping them, equipping them effectively to return home to full employment. We have a tremendous asset in the highly trained, highly skilled, highly motivated veterans we have deployed overseas in the service of freedom and who are now returning home seeking service in employment with America's businesses.

We are talking about men and women who are real leaders, tested leaders who have learned something useful about managing people through some of the most difficult situations imaginable, folks in whom we invest hundreds of millions of dollars every year, year in and year out, in training them and equipping them--billions of dollars in equipping them to the highest service levels when we send them overseas. We should invest comparably in making sure that that training, that equipment, is relevant as they return home.

This summer I hosted a roundtable in Delaware on veterans jobs. Nineteen participants came from a wide range of sectors: from the military, from labor, from businesses, from all sorts of different civilian support organizations that work with our returning veterans. As we had a long and productive conversation, the message was loud and clear: We can and should incentivize private businesses to hire veterans. We can help connect the private sector--these businesses across America--with veterans whom they want to hire. And we can and should do a better job of helping returning veterans transition to civilian service.

In Delaware and across the country, we have had some great programs in the past: Helmets to Hard Hats, for example, one with which I became familiar in my previous service in county government, that connected folks in the building trades who wanted to welcome into their ranks veterans returning from recent service, with those who have served our country honorably overseas and are now home fighting for jobs.

There is also the Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve, or ESGR, with which I regularly communicated as county executive and continue to offer my support as Senator, that helps make sure those who serve overseas in the Guard and Reserve know that their employers understand and respect their legal obligations and their moral obligations to provide employment opportunities comparable to those they had before they deployed.

We also had participating in this important conversation this summer Delaware companies that have made a public pledge to hiring veterans, Summit Aviation in Middletown, JPMorgan Chase, with a very large presence in Delaware, which has made a very real and sustained commitment to hiring returning veterans.

We have a jobs crisis in America. Today, Delaware's veterans unemployment rate is 8 percent. While that is good compared to the national average, 8 percent should not be a good number. In my view, this Congress could have no higher priority than helping Americans get back to work and in that priority helping America's veterans get back to work.

The bill we are on today is the fourth major jobs bill full of ideas, many of which originally came from the other side of the aisle for job creation that we have introduced and considered--the American Jobs Act, a bill that would put public safety workers and teachers back to work and sustain their public service role; a bill that would invest in the infrastructure bank and public dollars for infrastructure all over this country--and all of these bills have been blocked--not defeated but blocked, prevented through filibuster from even coming to the floor. If ever there were a jobs bill that has earned bipartisan support, it is the one this body will vote on later today. Today, we have an opportunity to make it easier for our veterans to find jobs, and I am encouraged by very real signs that this bill may pass, so that all of us can go home tomorrow to our States, participate in Veterans Day ceremonies, having voted for a bill designed to help so many of America's service men and women ease their path back to full employment in the civilian economy. I believe we owe them nothing less.

This bill offers tax credits to businesses in the private sector that would hire veterans. It guarantees servicemembers access to training designed to facilitate their transition to civilian life, and allows them full use of the skills they have gained in service to our Nation, and it cuts through some of the bureaucratic redtape that has made it difficult for veterans to get access to Federal resources.

I am proud to be a cosponsor of this bill, just as I was proud to cosponsor with Senator Murray of Washington the hiring heroes act this spring. We owe it to America to work more aggressively together, across the aisle, in confronting this ongoing jobs crisis. I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of the VOW to Hire Heroes Act today.

OBTAINING PERMANENT RESIDENCY

Madam President, I also wish to take another few minutes to discuss a bill that I hope will pass the Senate later today on a similar topic. It is a small bill addressing a complicated issue, but it will make a big difference in the lives of many of our servicemembers.

When an American marries a foreign national, an immigrant, and that immigrant decides he or she wants to become an American citizen, they begin a process of obtaining permanent residency, of applying for and seeking a green card. Before the 2-year mark in that process, the couple must fill out a form together and appear for an in-person interview. You have a 90-day window to file that paperwork and another 90 days to appear for this in-person interview together. Here is the problem. What if you are in the military and deployed abroad. What if the American in this couple is in a war zone and cannot make it back to the United States in that limited, tightly defined 90-day window for an in-person interview. You might miss your opportunity for you and your spouse to have the interview and secure his or her green card in this United States.

Our soldiers, in my view, have enough to worry about without adding this to the list. The bill we will offer later today is a simple fix. My colleague, Senator Graham of South Carolina, and I have introduced a bill that Congresswoman ZOEY LOFGREN introduced in the House earlier this year. It would give our servicemembers the flexibility to wait until after their deployments have concluded in order to conduct these in-person interviews. That measure passed the House of Representatives 426 to 0. It is my hope it will also pass this Senate unanimously tonight.

We are blessed in this Nation to be served by volunteers, by men and women who go to the other side of the world to serve us in the interest of freedom. The two bills I have spoken of here on the floor today are things that we can and should do together across the aisle to advance their interests in having the enjoyment of liberty for which they sacrificed so much.

I yield the floor.

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