Military Construction and Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2014

Floor Speech

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Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. Madam Chairman, I thank the chairman for the generous introduction.

I rise in support of this, the first of 12 appropriations bills that I hope to bring to the floor under regular order. Although we received the President's budget nearly 2 months beyond the deadline, I have every intention of drafting and considering all 12 appropriations measures in a timely fashion and in the traditional open process that allows all Members to have their say in how taxpayer dollars should be spent.

As we kick off the appropriations season on the floor today, we face some of the most challenging circumstances in recent memory--a tardy Presidential budget, a divided Congress, the ham-handed cuts of sequestration, and historically low funding levels.

Given our tight budget, my committee has and will continue to prioritize funding in areas of the highest national need--our security and enforcement of law. However, virtually all areas of the government will face cuts this year, including critical national security programs.

Clearly, this is an austere budget year, to put it mildly. Our top line number is severely low and billions apart from the Senate's number. It is my sincere hope that there will soon be a budget compromise that will undo the harmful sequestration law and give us a single common top line allocation that we can work with the Senate to pass all of the funding of the government.

In spite of all this, I want to reiterate my commitment to regular order. This is not a pie-in-the-sky endeavor. It's what our Founding Fathers wanted and directed in the Constitution. Under regular order, each of my esteemed colleagues in this body will have their chance to put their stamp on this bill, to have their voices heard and represented on these must-pass bills.

We have a lot of work to do in a very limited amount of time, so I suggest we get down to it. Today, we are considering the Military Construction and VA bill, a truly bipartisan effort that this entire body can and should support.

This bill funds critical Department of Defense infrastructure that gives our men and women in uniform the quality of life they deserve, including hospitals, schools, and family housing. This bill also includes $63.1 billion to provide our veterans with the benefits and care they've earned for their service.

Notably, we support medical treatment for 6.5 million veterans, including funding for traumatic brain injury treatment, suicide prevention, and important mental health care programs.

This bill also addresses two of the VA's biggest problems, Madam Chairman--the disgraceful disability claims backlog and the lack of a seamless coordinated Department of Defense-Veterans electronic health record system.

The bill includes funding that will jump-start efforts to clean up the backlog and force DOD and VA to get moving on a system that should have been in place years ago.

But this is not the easiest of budget times. While most of the funding in this bill is not subject to sequestration, we could not in good conscience let a single dollar in this bill go to waste. Every nickel and dime appropriated was carefully assessed to ensure these funds are used properly, efficiently and responsibly.

We took the difficult but responsible step to reduce military construction funding to offset the increases in VA spending, but we made these reductions without affecting military readiness or effectiveness. To make sure that our careful work in this bill does not go to waste, we've implemented strict oversight protocols, and we have included certain benchmarks to help guarantee that disability claims are not piling up again and that we aren't throwing away precious taxpayer dollars as we try to get this DOD-VA electronic health records system up and running.

Before concluding, Madam Chairman, I would like to spend a half-minute here thanking the chairman of the MilCon Subcommittee on our committee, John Culberson, for his time and attention to this bill and for his dedication and perseverance, as well as to thank the work of the ranking member, Mr. Bishop. These two gentlemen of the House, dedicated appropriators, have spent untold hours working with each other to try to come to agreement on the items in this bill. It has worked, and it is a good example, perhaps the best I can think of, in which we see that bipartisanship in support of our military and our veterans takes place. So I want to congratulate Mr. Culberson and Mr. Bishop for a job well done, and we thank you for your bipartisanship.

Madam Chairman, I think this bill is one that Members on both sides of the aisle can wholeheartedly support to keep our military in fighting form and to give our veterans the benefits that they have so sincerely earned, many of them in the loss of limb, some in the loss of life. So I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

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