Bipartisan Sportsmen's Act of 2014 - Motion to Proceed - Continued

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Madam President, I wish to begin by thanking my colleague, the senior Senator from Illinois, for his very eloquent and powerful remarks on the need to address gun violence in this country and to do it as part of our consideration of the Bipartisan Sportsmen's Act. I look forward to joining with him in the coming days--in fact, perhaps in the coming hours--in offering commonsense, sensible measures that will give us the opportunity to help stop gun violence in this country, addressing domestic violence as well, which so often leads to gun violence. Women are five times more likely to be killed in domestic violence when there is a gun in the home. The Senator from Illinois also addressed straw purchases and issues relating to drug trafficking. We have raised those and other issues in the past but have not yet successfully passed legislation in the Senate, not even addressed it in depth.

So I hope we will have the opportunity in these next couple of days to consider these kinds of measures, because the scourge of gun violence is continuing in our neighborhoods and on our streets, just as it took the lives of 20 beautiful children and 6 great educators in Newtown, CT, almost a year and a half ago, and 2 more people on Sunday on the east side of Bridgeport alone, and tens of thousands of others. It continues to cause death and injury and costs in lost lives and dollars throughout this country. We have an obligation as part of this measure to do better than we have in dealing with this tremendous, horrific, and unspeakable problem. It affects so many innocent children, particularly the children who are affected in urban neighborhoods where there are driveby shootings; in rural neighborhoods all across the country; in our cities and on our streets and in our schools.

We have an obligation to do better and to put priorities first when it comes to the use of guns. I understand the reasons for expanding or providing more opportunities in this bill that may involve firearms, but first things first. Let's cure the safety of the country. Let's consider commonsense, sensible measures on gun control before we expand the use of guns and firearms in this country.

VETERANS' HEALTH CARE

I am here as well to address the separate, unrelated issue of doing better to care for our veterans. The Veterans Access to Care Through Choice, Accountability, and Transparency Act of 2014 is now in conference. I am on that conference committee. This body passed that bill by an overwhelming bipartisan majority of 93 to 3 on June 11. It is a comprehensive bill to start addressing the problems that came to our attention so dramatically. There were reports of deadly delays, destruction of documents, manipulation of data, and falsification of records, as well as tragic reports of unacceptable wait times that were concealed at VA health care facilities. Books were cooked and criminal wrongdoing was covered up. That is the reason I have called for a criminal investigation, and one has now begun. I hope it will produce accountability from the health care system of the VA.

More fundamentally, we have an obligation in the Senate and in the Congress to address the underlying issues that led to those deadly wait times and delays, the cooking of books and covering it up that has so dramatically undermined trust and confidence in the VA health care system. If anything, since June 11, the problem seems to have worsened. In fact, comparing May to July, the recently released figures of July 3--just last week--the numbers of medical appointments delayed for longer than 30 days has tripled in Connecticut and doubled nationwide. Nationwide, that number has gone from 242,069--roughly a quarter of a million veterans whose appointments were postponed by 30 days or more--to 636,436. That is the number of veterans waiting longer than 30 days for an appointment. In Connecticut, the comparable numbers are 998 to 2,727--a tripling of the appointments delayed for longer than 30 days. In other parts of the country at other clinics and facilities, those numbers quadrupled.

The possible good news is that maybe--just maybe--the doubling, tripling, quadrupling of those numbers of appointments longer than 30 days delayed means the numbers are more accurate and truthful. We don't know. I have demanded an explanation. I have written to the Acting Secretary of the VA, Sloan Gibson, calling for a public explanation for these numbers and the very alarming and astonishing trends, drastic and dramatic increases in those numbers of appointments suffering from delays.

Justice Brandeis once said:

Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.

These chronic failings at the VA demand a better explanation. Veterans deserve to know if things have gotten worse or is the reporting just better. All of us--the public whose taxpayer monies fund the VA--deserve the same kind of explanation. There should be a criminal investigation if there has been obstruction of justice and destruction of documents and falsification of records which involve Federal criminal wrongdoing.

The act we now have in conference committee will help address many of these problems looking forward, moving ahead, by providing more access to private doctors and private hospitals outside the VA system to minimize and reduce and perhaps even eliminate those unacceptable waiting times of longer than 30 days for an appointment. It will provide more doctors--more than $500 million for that purpose alone. It will impose accountability by enabling easier firing and seeking to, in effect, claw back, or at best stop, some of the financial incentives that may have driven the false reporting.

In those ways and a variety of others, this bill will help us move forward and achieve progress.

No one should be under any illusion that this bill alone will solve all the problems. It is not a panacea. It is not a permanent solution to the VA's problems. We need, for starters, a new leader. The VA has no permanent Secretary. The confirmation of a new one is imperative. But tough questions are absolutely essential to determine whether the President's nominee should be the one to lead this agency, and I am certainly hoping he will be.

The Veterans' Affairs conference committee met on June 24. I emphasized the importance at that hearing of honoring the commitment of our men and women in uniform by addressing the VA challenges with adequate funding and essential legislation. I am hopeful we will move quickly and effectively after that first June 24 meeting now to present to both Houses a final version of this bill so we can truly address the problems our veterans deserve to have solved and the VA has an obligation to eliminate. We need to assure that the differences between the two bodies are resolved and send this bill to the President for his signature. A country that really values its veterans, truly honors their service, should not subject them to waiting delays, secret waiting lists, and false records. This broad, bipartisan, historic bill to ensure that delays in treatment are eliminated and bad actors at the VA health centers are held accountable is a critical step to keep faith with our veterans and let us move forward quickly and responsibly with this bill.

Thank you, Madam President. I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source