Nomination of David Jeremiah Barron to be United States Circuit Judge for the First Circuit -- Continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I am honored to represent the 12.5 million people living in the State of Illinois, and it is a special honor to represent 745,000 veterans who live in my State. These men and women have served their country honorably. Many of them are leading great lives and making great contributions to our State. Some are struggling, returning from war with wounds--visible and invisible.

I came to speak to the issue involving the so-called VA scandal at the Arizona Hospital. What I have been told is troubling. What I have been told is that there were secret waiting lists of veterans who were being unnecessarily delayed when they needed critical medical care. The allegations suggest that some of them may have died while on the waiting list. That is as cruel an allegation as anyone could make about anybody and particularly cruel when it applies to our veterans.

We are trying to investigate this, as we should. The President sent his Deputy Chief Rob Nabors, a person I know, to Arizona today, but we are not going to stop with that. We are going to do everything we can to make sure every veterans facility across America is serving our veterans in a timely and professional way. That includes, of course, those in the State of Illinois.

Tomorrow I will be meeting with General Shinseki in my office. He is the head of the Veterans' Administration. We are going to focus on Illinois, because in Illinois we have five VA medical centers, 30 outpatient clinics, and 11 veterans centers. I want to make certain there are no secret waiting lists at any of those facilities, and I want to make certain we are doing everything in our power to serve our veterans in a timely professional way.

We know the stories--the stories that have come out of these wars we are concluding now. The war in Afghanistan is winding down to a close. Iraq was over just a few months, maybe 1 year ago, but despite the end of these wars, it is not the end of the war for many veterans. They come home with needs--serious needs: post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, amputations, serious problems that will haunt them for some time.

We promised these men and women, if they would volunteer to serve our Nation, if they were willing to serve and even die for our Nation, we would never quit on them; that when they came home, we would stand by them.

We passed a GI bill on the floor of the Senate several years ago. Jim Webb was the Senator from Virginia, a Marine Corps veteran himself of the Vietnam war. He brought in a modern GI bill for those men and women currently serving, and it passed overwhelmingly with both political parties supporting it, as they should. In a place where we don't agree on much, we sure agreed on that. When it comes to veterans and the GI bill, we stood together. We have to do it again on a bipartisan basis.

I read the comments from President Obama this morning. I thought they were unsparing in terms of his personal concern over what has been reported.

I know we all honor the contribution made to America by General Shinseki, a disabled veteran himself from the Vietnam war. He is an extraordinarily good man. The question is whether he can fix this problem if one exists.

I don't know about the Arizona situation. We will wait until those facts come together. But this much I do know: Our Veterans' Administration has been overwhelmed by disability claims coming in at rates that surpass this country's experience in any previous war. Almost half, almost 50 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are filing for disability benefits when they come home.

The backlog at the VA is 300,000 cases--applications for disability. They have been pending for more than 125 days--4 months. Some have been in the process for more than 1 year. It is an improvement--300,000 from 611,000, which was the case last year--but not good enough.

Illinois has cut its backlog in half as well. But when I read some of the delay times in making a decision at the VA, we will understand why we find this still unacceptable.

Seven years ago the average processing time for an Illinois veteran claim was 1 year, maybe 18 months. Appeals sometimes took 2 years. Today veterans tell us the claim will easily take 2 years to process, maybe longer, and an appeal may take 3 or 4 years. Compared to the numbers of 7 years ago, the numbers are much worse today. I understand there are more veterans who are applying, but it just means we need to put the resources in place to serve this surge of veterans looking for help.

The veterans who call my office are just asking for updates and accurate information about the claims and medical care. They want to know if somebody--anybody--at

the VA is taking a look at their application. They get conflicting information from the VA.

Sometimes the VA calls them back and says: You have to send such and such a document.

The veteran says: I have already sent it.

That kind of frustration for someone who is coping with illness or problems is unacceptable, and it is certainly unacceptable when it comes to our veterans.

Even when claims are processed, there are cases of mistaken identity. A bad address leads to canceled benefits and checks, and it takes months to fix it. I am trying to help. As chair of the Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, I put $3.6 million in the Defense Department to speed up the program that allows servicemembers' records to be transferred to the VA electronically so we can have at least a quicker response from the VA. I directed the DOD inspector general in my bill to work with the VA inspector general to streamline the transfer of records between the Departments.

Another way we tried to step up support for veterans is by creating the Caregiver Program at the Veterans' Administration. I will be the first to tell you this was not my idea. It was the idea of Senator Hillary Clinton of New York. She used to sit back there, and she came up with an idea: If members of a disabled veteran's family will stay home with them and help them get through, we ought to help those members of the family. She called it the caregivers act. It didn't pass while she was here, but when she left I liked it enough to call her and say to the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton: Do you mind if I steal your idea and try to pass it? She invited me to be her guest, and I did. With the support of Senator Danny Akaka, Senator Patty Murray, and others, we made the caregivers act the law of the land, and now across America hundreds of spouses and parents who care for disabled veterans are getting a helping hand. We provide them medical training, nurses training so they can take care of their veteran. We give them respite care of up to 2 weeks a year so they can have some time off, a vacation to recharge their batteries. If they have a financial hardship, we provide a modest amount of money to help them get by. It is the right thing to do. These veterans get to stay home with families who love them. That is where they want to be. From our point of view as a government, just to put it down to dollars and cents, it is a lot cheaper when they stay home. So we do well and the veterans do well. That is a great outcome.

We have to expand the reach of caregivers assistance through the VA so at every veterans center there is a source of information to tell that veteran and the veteran's family: The Caregiver Program is there if you want to stay home. We want to help you stay home and be healthy as you do.

I think that is a good thing to offer the veterans. The ones I have met, there are some amazing stories in Chicago that truly warm your heart to know that those veterans, after what they have been through, can stay home with their families and be there with the people they love and who love them too.

There is another area I wish to mention. Our committee has pushed the Veterans' Administration to focus on the sustainability of orthotics and prosthetics. We are worried about the professional workforce that deals with these important parts of restoring a veteran's life.

Twenty percent of the orthotics and prosthetics workforce, about 7,000 clinicians, will retire over the next 5 years. We have never needed these specialists more than we need them today: 1,715 servicemembers lost limbs in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many have lost multiple limbs. The United States has 5 quadruple amputees and 40 triple amputees from these wars. The VA serves 40,000 people with limb loss every year.

That is why I am focused on this--to get the professionals in the orthotics and prosthetics fields of medicine to be trained and ready to help these veterans in the years to come while others are retiring.

There are 745,000 veterans in my State, and not a single one of them should be deceived about what they can receive for their service nor delayed when it comes to seeing a doctor or having their claims processed. Not one of them should wait 2 years before they start getting disability benefits. We have 5 VA Medical Centers, 30 outpatient clinics, and 11 Veterans Centers across Illinois, and we have to be there to serve them in a timely way.

None of these facilities has the right to mislead or lie to the veterans about what doctors they can see or what services they can receive. The Senate just added $5 million to the budget of the inspector general at the Veterans Administration, and the Inspector General is now investigating 26 facilities.

One of the toughest votes that a Member of Congress is called on to cast is whether we should go to war. It has happened a few times in my career. You don't sleep well the night before, wondering how you are going to vote, and knowing that at the end of the day, even if this is a just and necessary war, innocent people will die, including innocent Americans. What I have come to learn over the years is that it is not just a matter of that simple decision to go to war, but it is the cost of war--the cost in human lives. Over 4,000 died in the war in Iraq, and over 2,000 have died in the war in Afghanistan. There are thousands and thousands who come home with injuries, and, of course, there are the expenses and budget costs that come along with each and every one these conflicts.

It really helps when you make these decisions and reflect on them to also be aware and honest about the real cost of war. The real cost of war in human life and human suffering can't be calculated, but we did make a promise that those who would stand for our country in those wars would have our help when they came home.

The scandal that has been reported in Arizona--the problems at the VA centers--is unacceptable in a Nation as great as America, and we owe it to these veterans and their families to stand by them. I promise I will, not just for veterans facilities in Illinois, which is my first priority, but for those across the United States.

I yield the floor.

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