Making Continuing Appropriations During a Government Shutdown

Floor Speech

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Mr. SANDERS. Let me just thank Senator McCain for his very hard and bold work on this issue. He stood and came forward when we needed someone to do so. I think we have made real progress in a bipartisan way.

As Senator McCain just said, and I agree with him, if this is not an emergency, I am not quite clear what an emergency is.

During the last 4 years some 2 million new veterans have come into the VA system. Many of them have come in with very difficult medical problems, PTSD, TBI. We have an aging veteran population. Taking care of older people is complex and expensive. The simple truth is that in many parts of this country--not all parts I suspect, but in a number of places in this country--we simply do not have the number of doctors, nurses, and other medical staff to accommodate the needs of our veterans. I have been told, unofficially at least, that at the very minimum there is a need for 700 new physicians in the VA. I am told that is the floor, that the reality may be higher than that.

I have been told that in Phoenix alone there is a need for hundreds of new providers in order to address the problems in that one large facility. Further, this legislation says to veterans that if there are long wait times, if they cannot get into a facility in a reasonable time, they can go outside of the VA. That is what this bill says.

You know what. That is going to cost money. That will cost money. This legislation also says that if they live 40 miles or more from a VA facility, they have the option of going to a private provider. That benefit is going to cost money. The bottom line is that if we are going to do what in my view we should do; that is, to make sure every facility in the VA has adequate staffing--doctors, nurses, other medical personnel--and to make sure there is available funding to pay for those veterans who will now get care outside of the VA--right now the VA is spending about $4.8 billion a year in contract fees. There is no question in my mind that number is going to go up, but that is what we are voting on now.

If you want to provide timely care to veterans, if you agree they should go outside of the VA, it is going to cost money. If we are going to do that and the other things in this bill, that legislation needs to be passed as written, and we must waive the point of order brought up by Senator Sessions.

Lastly, I remind my colleagues that when Congress voted to go to war in Afghanistan and Iraq, it did so with emergency funding. Those wars will, it is estimated, cost between $3 and $6 trillion by the time we take care of the last veteran. If we can spend that kind of money to go to war on an emergency basis, surely we can spend one-tenth of 1 percent of that amount to take care of the men and women who fought those wars.

What we have done, as Senator McCain has indicated, is developed a compromise. I am sure he is not happy with everything in the bill. I am not happy with everything in the bill as well. I did want to also remind Senators about a few of the other provisions that are in this bill that are important and I think do have bipartisan support.

This bill allows for 26 major medical facility leases, which means improved and expanded care for veterans in 27 States and Puerto Rico. This bill provides for the expedited hiring of VA doctors and nurses and $500 million targeted to hire those providers with unobligated funds. As I mentioned earlier, this bill allows for veterans to go outside of the VA when there are waiting lines and when they live 40 miles from a facility. This bill also deals with an issue where there is widespread support both in the House and the Senate; that is, the need to address instate tuition for all veterans at public colleges and universities.

It also provides that surviving spouses of those who die in the line of duty will be eligible for the post-9/11 GI bill. This bill also importantly establishes commissions to provide help to the VA in terms of improving scheduling capabilities--God knows they certainly need that help--and also for capital planning.

Lastly--and we need to reiterate this point--this bill gives the Secretary of the VA the authority to immediately fire incompetent employees and those who have falsified or manipulated data in terms of waiting periods.

Our legislation differs from the House in that in order to prevent, in my view, the politicization of the VA or eliminate all due process, it provides for a very expedited appeals process.

The House of Representatives passed legislation yesterday which covers a lot of the same ground the Sanders-McCain bill covers, and I am absolutely confident that working with Chairman Miller and Ranking Member Michaud we can bridge the differences and send the President a bill that he can sign in the very near future.

Finally and lastly, I want to say to the 300,000 employees who work at the VA that the overwhelming majority of those people are hard-working, honest, serious people. For many of them, taking care of veterans is not a job; it is a mission. Many of them are, in fact, veterans themselves. These people understand the sacrifices the veterans have made to protect our country, and they are doing the best that they can to support our veterans.

I hope we pass this bill. I hope we pass a waiver for the budget point of order. I hope we get a conference committee moving immediately, and I hope we get a bill to the President as soon as possible.

Furthermore, as Senator McCain has just mentioned, I don't think this is the end of the discussion regarding the needs of veterans. I hope very much that in our committee and on the floor we can begin to address some of the other very serious issues facing the veterans' community.

With that, I yield the floor.

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