Bring Jobs Home Act - Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, on June 11--a month and a half ago--in a very strong bipartisan way, the Senate voted 93 to 3--an overwhelming vote--to pass legislation written by Senator John McCain, a Republican, and myself to address crises facing our veterans community and the VA and to protect and defend the men and women who have put their lives on the line to defend us. I wish to take this opportunity again to thank Senator McCain for his very strong efforts on getting that legislation passed.

As you know, the legislation we passed was estimated by the Congressional Budget Office, the CBO, to cost about $35 billion. At just about the same time, the House of Representatives passed legislation dealing with, more or less, the same issues, and the bill they passed in the House was estimated by CBO to cost $44 billion--$9 billion more than what we passed in the Senate.

In the last 6 weeks, my staff, my colleagues, and I have been working very hard to refine this legislation, to come up with a more reasonable pricetag, and to address the needs of our veterans community in a significant way. In that process, I have been accused by some of ``moving the goalposts.'' I guess I have. I have moved the goalposts so the legislation we are introducing today is substantially lower--substantially lower--than what passed the Senate and what passed the House. If that is called moving the goalposts, I suspect in this case it is moving the goalposts in a positive direction. In fact, the bill we are presenting would cost less than $25 billion--a lot of money, no doubt--but that is some $10 billion less than what we passed on the Senate floor, and it is $19 billion less than what the House passed.

Our proposal is a commonsense proposal which deals in a significant way with the needs of the veterans community. What it does is provide emergency funding for contract services so veterans can, when they find themselves in long waiting periods--as in fact is the case in a number of locations around the country--they can go outside of the VA and get private health care or care at a community health center or whatever. They no longer have to wait during this emergency period for long periods of time to get into the VA. I think that is a very important part of this proposal. It is something we have to do.

In addition, what we also say is if a veteran is living more than 40 miles from a VA facility--and there are veterans who in some cases are living hundreds of miles away--they do not have to, when they are ill, get in their car and travel for 3 or 4 hours to get health care at a VA facility. They will be able to go to a non-VA facility, a private physician, if they live more than 40 miles away from a VA facility. I think that is a significant step forward.

But what our legislation also does is address an issue of huge concern to the veterans community. Just yesterday--just yesterday--I received, and many members in the Veterans' Committee received, a letter from 16 major veterans organizations. I ask unanimous consent to have the letter printed in the Record.

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Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, 16 major veterans organizations, including the Disabled American Veterans, the Veterans of Foreign Wars--the VFW--Paralyzed Veterans of America, the Vietnam Veterans of America, the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, the Military Officers Association of America, and many others--wonderful veterans organizations that have worked for years representing the needs of millions and millions of veterans--what these organizations say in this letter is that while we must address the immediate crisis of doing away with these long waiting lines and allowing veterans to get private care, what they also say--loudly and clearly--is that the VA must have the doctors, the nurses, and the space capacity that it needs so that in the future it will be able to permanently eliminate these long waiting lines so that 2 years from now, 3 years from now, when veterans come into the VA, they will get quality care, they will get timely care. That is what the veterans organizations have said.

I will quote to you one small paragraph of a long letter. They say that the charge of the conference committee should be ``to ensure that all veterans currently waiting for treatment must be provided access to timely, convenient health care as quickly as medically indicated,'' and at the same time ``protect, preserve and strengthen the VA health care system so that it remains capable of providing a full continuum of high-quality, timely health care to all enrolled veterans.''

Last week, in a Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee meeting, Sloan Gibson, the Acting Secretary of the VA, stated that the VA needed over $16 billion in order to hire thousands and thousands of doctors, nurses, other medical providers. In many VA facilities doctors do not have the examining rooms they need. There are space problems all over this country. What the veterans organizations--16 of them--said loudly and clearly is that Sloan Gibson, the new Acting Secretary of the VA--approved with wide Republican support--they said we support his proposal.

Our legislation does not give the VA all that Mr. Gibson would like, but we do provide them with the doctors and the nurses and the medical staff they need so we do not continue to have long waiting lines at VA hospitals all over this country, so we do not come back 2 years from now in the same position, with veterans not being able to get timely care.

I have worked for a month and a half with my House Republican colleagues, led by the Veterans' Affairs chairman there, Jeff Miller, to find a compromise. Everybody knows the House looks at the world differently than the Senate--we all know that--and if we go forward, we need a compromise.

We have put good-faith offers on the table time and time again and we have tried to meet our Republican colleagues more than halfway, but I am very sad to say that at this point--and I hope this changes--but at this point I can only conclude, with great reluctance, that the good faith we have shown is simply not being reciprocated by the other side.

Standing here and saying this is the last thing I want to be doing. Our veterans deserve a responsible solution to this crisis.

Last night--this is an example of what has happened--somewhere around 10 o'clock in the night, the cochairman of the veterans conference committee, Mr. Miller in the House, announced unilaterally, without my knowledge or without my concurrence, that he was going to hold a so-called conference committee meeting in order to introduce his proposals.

Needless to say, his proposal is something I have yet to see. I do not know what it is. This is a proposal nobody on our side has seen. My understanding is he then wants to take this to the House on Monday to come up with a vote. In other words, his idea of negotiation is: We have a proposal. Take it or leave it. Any sixth grader in a school in the United States understands this is not negotiation, this is not what democracy is about.

I note the presence on the floor of the coauthor of the bill passed in the Senate, Senator McCain, and I am happy to yield the floor for Senator McCain.

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Mr. SANDERS. First of all, I want to thank Senator McCain again for all of his hard work on this issue.

Let me ask a few questions. The Senator and I have been talking the last few days. Does the Senator not think--he has been here for 1 or 2 years--that the best way to go forward is for people to sit down at a table and knock out their differences? And then the idea of presenting it to a conference is absolutely right. But the Senator knows, and I know, that what conference committees are largely about are 5-minute speeches.

I have been disappointed that I have not--I think the Senator will agree with me, maybe not, that the best way forward is for people to sit down in a room and work out their differences, not to go forward with unilateral statements. Does that make sense?

Mr. McCAIN. Well, could I say to my friend from Vermont, I believe it is a matter of simple courtesy, that the Senator, as the chairman of a committee, should be asked to come to a meeting with the other major chairmen and ranking members of the committees. I hope that kind of thing does not happen again.

What I would like to see--and I beg my colleagues to sit down and let's work this out. It is a matter of money. It is not a matter of the provisions of the bill. That cannot be the reason for us not to reach some agreement. I intend at noon to attend. I intend to make a strong case that we would be glad to hear any proposal by the chairmen and ranking members on the other side of the Capitol, and that we would have a counterproposal and maybe could start a discussion and dialog which could lead to an agreement.

Mr. SANDERS. Let me ask Senator McCain one more question. I thank the Senator very much. He is not on, at this moment, the Veterans' Affairs Committee, but he has jumped into this with both feet and is playing a very big role. Would the Senator be prepared if, generally speaking, what happens is the chairmen and ranking members of the Senate and the House get together--you are not the chairman, you are not the ranking member, but I think you could play a good role. Would the Senator be prepared to sit down with the other four members, myself, the other three, and help us reach a compromise?

Mr. McCAIN. I would be more than glad to do that, I would say to my friend from

Vermont. I would also like to say I hope the participation of a number of people would lead us to some agreement today. Because once we reach an agreement, then, of course, we have to go through the normal votes and all of the things that require some period of time.

I want to say to my friends who are deeply concerned about the costs here of some of these provisions: My argument is that, yes, we should seek ways to pay for as much as we can. I believe we can compromise on some areas of spending. But we cannot allow that alone to prevent us from acting.

I thank my friend from Vermont. I look forward to engaging with him. I think maybe it is important that we show courtesy to all Members who are involved in this, including the chairman of the committee. I thank the Senator.

Mr. SANDERS. One more second. I wanted to paraphrase. Tell me if I am misquoting. I do not have it in front of me, but when we were debating this bill on the floor, the Senator said--we were talking about emergency funding--something to the effect of if this is not an emergency, I do not know what an emergency is. Is that a correct paraphrase?

Mr. McCAIN. That is absolutely my conviction, that the reason why we have emergency funding from time to time in times of crisis is for when there is an emergency. I will repeat: I do not know of a greater domestic emergency than the care we owe the men and women who have served this country.

I thank my colleague. I yield the floor.

Mr. SANDERS. I thank Senator McCain very much for his statements and for his hard work on this and would reiterate what he said; that is, my belief that what we have here on the Senate floor, that if taking care of the men and women who have put their lives on the line to defend us and who came home without arms or legs, or without their eyesight or 500,000 of them who came home with post-traumatic stress disorder or traumatic brain injury--if that is not an emergency, taking care of those brave men and women, I agree with Senator McCain, I do not know what an emergency is.

I am happy to yield the floor for my colleague from Alaska, Senator Begich.

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