Keystone XL Pipeline Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. MORAN. Mr. President, thank you very much for recognizing me to
take the opportunity to address something I hope can readily and easily
be solved. If common sense prevails--and we know it doesn't often
enough here in our Nation's Capital--one, the Department of Veterans
Affairs certainly, in my view, can solve this problem. If common sense
doesn't prevail there, then surely the Senate, the House of
Representatives, and the President could agree upon a legislative fix
that is really nothing more than common sense. I am talking about a
veterans issue--one that is certainly prevalent in a rural State such
as mine. My guess is it is a problem that occurs in a State such as the
Presiding Officer's as well.

I was very pleased. I came to the Senate floor and talked about the
importance of passing and approving the CHOICE Act. We remember the
scandal of last year in which it became clear the Department of
Veterans Affairs had significant problems across the country. The VA
hospital in Phoenix was a poster child for bad behavior that resulted
in potentially the death of veterans. One of the things we did to try
to help the Department of Veterans Affairs better take care of
America's veterans was to pass the CHOICE Act. We did that in August of
last year. It was signed into law, and it is now being implemented by
the Department of Veterans Affairs.

There are many issues that are associated with the implementation of
this bill, but let me raise one. The crux of that legislation is this.
If you are a veteran and you live more than 40 miles from a VA facility
or if you can't get the Department of Veterans Affairs to provide the
services within 30 days or the timeframe in which you need those
services, then the Department of Veterans Affairs is required by law to
provide those services, if you choose, at a place of your choice,
presumably your hometown.

This is about service to our veterans in their hometowns across
Kansas and across States around the country. The theory is that the
Department of Veterans Affairs is incapable of providing those services
perhaps for a number of reasons, including lack of the necessary
professionals. Therefore, let's take advantage of the professionals we
have at home in our hometowns. Let the veterans see his or her hometown
physician. Let the veteran be admitted to his or her hometown hospital.
It is a pretty commonsense kind of reaction to the inability of the
Department of Veterans Affairs to meet the needs of veterans across our
country--provide another option. If that is the choice of the veteran,
that veteran wants to have care at home, give them that option.

As a Senator from a State such as Kansas, this makes sense to me even
in the circumstance in which the Department of Veterans Affairs can
provide the service. For 14 years I represented a congressional
district in Kansas, the western three-fourths of our State. The
congressional district is larger than the State of Illinois and has no
VA hospital.

We pushed for a number of years and were successful in opening
outpatient clinics so veterans could get that care closer to home than
the VA hospital, and those outpatient clinics provide--or at least
intended to provide--routine care.

Here is the problem today. The law says if you live more than 40
miles from a VA facility, then the VA must provide the services at home
if you choose. The Department of Veterans Affairs is defining facility
as any facility, including the hospital or the outpatient clinic. That
doesn't seem too troublesome to me until you take it to the next step,
which is, even if the VA hospital or the outpatient clinic doesn't
provide the service that the veteran needs, they still consider it a
facility within 40 miles.

In my hometown, where I grew up, we have had an ongoing dialogue with
one of our honored veterans. He needs a colonoscopy. My hometown is
nearly 300 miles--250 miles from the VA hospital in Wichita. There is
an outpatient clinic, a CBOC, in Hays, 25 miles away. But guess what.
The outpatient clinic in Hays doesn't provide the service of
colonoscopies.

One would think the veteran in my hometown could go to the local
physician or the local hospital and have the colonoscopy performed and
the Department of Veterans Affairs provide and pay for the services.
But no, because there is an outpatient clinic within 40 miles, even
though it doesn't provide the colonoscopy, our veteran is directed to
drive to Wichita. Incidentally, we have calculated the mileage expense
of the veteran doing it. It does not make sense economically, either.
But regardless of that, it certainly doesn't make sense for that
veteran.

I have said this many times over the years as we have tried to bring
services closer to home to veterans. If you are a 92-year-old World War
II veteran and you live in Atwood, KS, up on the Nebraska border, how
do you get to the VA hospital in Wichita or in Denver?

Our initial attempt was to put an outpatient clinic closer. The
problem with that--we now have an outpatient clinic in Burlington, CO,
and an outpatient clinic in Hays, KS. But that is still 2\1/2\ hours
from Atwood, KS. If you are a 92-year-old World War II veteran in
Atwood, KS, how do you get to Hays or Burlington, CO? The answer is you
probably don't.

Our veterans are not being served. We attempted to address this
issue. Let me say it differently. We addressed this issue in the CHOICE
Act and said that if you are 40 miles from a facility, then the VA
provides the services at home. The VA is interpreting that facility--
the word facility--just to mean any facility there regardless of what
service it provides.

In many instances--I take Liberal, KS, where there is a CBOC. They
haven't had a permanent physician in their CBOC in almost 4 years. But
yet Liberal--the CBOC in Liberal--counts as a facility even though
there is no physician who is regularly in attendance at the clinic.
These issues ought to be resolved in favor of whom? The veteran. Whom, of all people, would we expect to provide the best service to? In any capable way we
can, whom would we expect to get the best health care in our Nation? I
would put at the top of the list those who served our country.

The committee that passed this legislation, the CHOICE Act--it says
in the language--the conferees recognized the issues I just described
and added report language that allows veterans to secure health care
services that are either unavailable or not cost-effective to provide
at a VA facility, which was intentionally included to give the VA
flexibility to provide veterans access to non-VA care when a VA
facility, no matter what size or location, cannot provide the care the
veteran is seeking.

Yesterday I introduced S. 207. I would ask my colleagues to join me.
Again, I guess my first request is, Could the Department of Veterans
Affairs fix this problem on their own? If not, I would ask that my
colleagues join me in fixing this legislatively with one more directive
to the Department of Veterans Affairs saying, if they cannot provide
the service at the CBOC, then it does not count as a facility within
the 40 miles.

This is a problem across our States. I had my staff at a meeting in
the VISN in which they were describing how they were going to implement
the CHOICE Act. They put up a chart in which they show how they are
going to have a mobile van work its way through the area of our State
and Missouri and talked about how that will then satisfy the 40-mile
requirement.

Why is the VA bending over backward to avoid--let my say it
differently. Why is the VA not bending over backward to take care of
the veteran, instead of bending over backward to make sure it is the
most difficult circumstance for a veteran to get the health care they
need at home?

We ought to always err on the side of what is best for veterans, not
what is best for the Department of Veterans Affairs--if you could ever
make the case that providing services someplace far away from the
veteran is good for the VA.

I thank the Presiding Officer for the opportunity to speak to this
issue. It is an important one. I have mentioned it to a number of my
colleagues. They have described similar circumstances in their State. I
have met with the Department of Veterans Affairs personnel. I serve on
the veterans' committee, have since I came to Congress. We will work in
every way with the veterans' committee, Republicans and Democrats, to
make certain there is a fix to this issue.

But I want to highlight the manner in which the Department is
implementing the CHOICE Act is not the way Congress intended, and it is
not the way that benefits the veteran. Finally, let me say that even if
there was some circumstance in which the Department does not have the
authority to do what we are asking them to do in the CHOICE Act, they
have the ability today to provide non-VA care whenever they deem it
necessary.

There is also the opportunity for them to use a pilot program that
many of us have in our States. I see the Senator from Maine is on the
floor. They have a pilot program, the ARCH Program, in which we are
trying to provide services to veterans at home. There are a variety of
ways the Department can solve this problem. I ask them to do that.

In the absence of their solution, I ask my colleagues to join me in
sponsoring, in debating, in potentially amending but most importantly
in passing and sending this bill to the President so we can resolve
once and for all that the Department of Veterans Affairs is created for
the benefit of the veteran, not the Department.

I yield the floor.

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Mr. MORAN. Mr. President, this is an amendment that sets aside the
endangered threatened species listing of the lesser prairie chicken. It
is an important issue to the citizens of Kansas but also to Texas,
Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Colorado.

I look forward to having this conversation and debate on the Senate
floor at the appropriate time.

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Mr. MORAN. Mr. President, earlier this evening an amendment of mine
was made pending to the legislation that we now have before us,
amendment No. 73.

I thank my colleagues for allowing that amendment to become pending,
and I look forward to the opportunity now, while we are determining the
remainder of the evening's schedule, to describe the nature of
amendment No. 73.

I have a copy of the amendment in front of me. It is a short
paragraph, but it is one that has significant consequences to the
people of Kansas. But in addition to the people of Kansas, it has
significant consequence to the people of Colorado, New Mexico,
Oklahoma, and Texas.

The story we are talking about is the lesser prairie-chicken. In
March of 2014, the lesser prairie-chicken was listed not as an
endangered species but a threatened species under the Endangered
Species Act.

It is true the numbers of birds declined in 2012 and 2013. The U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service had their explanation for why there was the
decline in the population of those birds, both those who live on the
land but as well a number of wildlife experts--people who are very
interested in conservation practices in our State--believe and agree
that the primary reason behind the bird's decline in population was the
historic and prolonged drought that our area of the country has
experienced in the past several years.

There is less habitat for birds generally in our State and across
this region of the country, but the reality is that it is because we
have had so little rainfall. We have been in a drought in a significant
part of the Nation, in our part of the country, for a number of years,
and as a result there is less habitat and a decline in the bird
population. What many believe is that with the return of rainfall, with
the return of snow this winter and the moisture it will provide, we
will have increasing wildlife habitat for the lesser prairie-chicken
and a large number of birds and other wildlife in our State and in the
surrounding States where this is a significant issue.

There are some exceptions that have been written into the
designation, but the reality is that there are huge, ongoing,
significant economic consequences to the listing as a threatened
species of the lesser prairie-chicken in Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma,
New Mexico, and Texas. Front and center of that, of course, are the
consequences to agriculture. It is how we earn a significant portion of
our living in our State. Land values, for example, have dropped as a
result of this issue. Oil and gas exploration has been disrupted. Wind
energy projects that have been an important component of our State
economy and particularly a benefit to the economy of rural Kansas have
been harmed as a result of this listing. These disruptions have driven
down county tax revenues that are used for essential services in some
of the most challenging and difficult parts economically of our State,
from damage to Main Street, and certainly harmed a portion of Kansas that always struggles to be economically viable.

The listing, in my view, was based on an artificially low population
estimate due to the drought I described. I guess I failed to mention
that 1 year ago this was a bird which could be hunted in Kansas. So,
again, it was prevalent enough to be able to be pursued by those who
hunt, but because of the drought the population declined. In fact,
every Kansas county that is included in the habitat area was
experiencing a D3-Extreme or a D4-Exceptional drought, according to the
U.S. Drought Monitor, again highlighting that what we need here is
rainfall and moisture that comes from snow and rain and that listing
this as a threatened species doesn't create the moisture necessary to
create the habitat for the return of the population of the bird.

What we really have asked for is an opportunity which has been
offered and suggested by conservation groups in Kansas, by the Kansas
Department of Wildlife and Parks, and by the Kansas Farm Bureau and
others to work together to find a solution short of this listing to
increase bird population in Kansas. And I assume that is true in the
other States as well. We are looking for a cooperative effort to
improve habitat, and the fact is that the listing as a threatened
species has been so disruptive that we have been unable to get what we
would say is a more commonsense, less broad-brush approach to solving
this problem in place as compared to the heavy hand of this listing. We
stand ready, willing, and able to provide that kind of local effort to
improve habitat and bird population.

This amendment would not mean the lesser prairie-chicken would never
be listed again, but it gives Kansans and others the opportunity to go
back and make certain that efforts at the local level are given a
chance to work before the very dramatic and devastating implementation
of this decision to list the bird as threatened.

So this is a relatively straightforward and simple amendment that
will take the lesser prairie-chicken off the list as a threatened
species, give Kansans and others the opportunity to improve the
habitat, reduce the economic damage that is being done in our State and
the States that surround us as a result of this listing, and then give
us the opportunity to again work with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service to find a better solution and one that, I might add, may be
more easily found once the rainfalls return to the State of Kansas.

I thank the Presiding Officer for the opportunity to describe this
amendment, and it is certainly my request and I look forward to it
being an amendment that would be considered tonight, later this
evening.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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