[AMENDMENT NO. 1052]

Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, I wish to take just a minute to address 48 extraordinary hours in my life -- (Senate - June 28, 2005)

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[AMENDMENT NO. 1052]

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I have cosponsored the amendment offered by my colleague from Washington. I want to make a couple comments.

It seems to me, on the question of what the priorities are around here, what are the right choices, veterans health care has to rank right up at the top.

We had a hearing at one point. We had Secretary Rumsfeld come, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. We asked a lot of questions about this issue because I think everyone wants the same thing. We want to say to young men and women who wear the uniform of this country: Please support this country's efforts. Go fight for freedom. Answer your country's call.

And when they do, and put themselves in harm's way--and most of us understand what ``harm's way'' means because we have been over to Walter Reed, we have been out to Bethesda Naval Hospital. We have seen these young men and women with lost limbs, limbs that have been blown off, and all kinds of other wounds. We understand the sacrifice that is made.

We asked the Secretary about the difference between someone who is a soldier on active duty and someone who has come home to a hospital to be treated for a lost leg or a lost limb or other devastating injuries and then is moved out of the service with a discharge--what is the difference between the level of health care for an active-duty soldier at Walter Reed or Bethesda and a veteran in a veterans hospital setting? Should there be a difference? No, there should not be. These are soldiers: active duty or retired, but soldiers.

I do not think there is a debate in this Senate about whether we adequately fund veterans health care. We all know the answer to that. The answer is no, we are not adequately funding it.

So the question is, will this be a priority? Will the Congress, will the Senate think this is as important as some other issues?

Someone once asked the question hypothetically: If you were asked to write an obituary for someone you had never met and the only information with which you could write that obituary was their check register, what would it tell you about the person? You could take a look and determine, what did that person spend money on? What did that person determine to be valuable?

You could make the same case with respect to the Federal Government. Take a look at the checkbook and evaluate, what did we determine was important? What were our priorities? Where was veterans health care, because we know the esteem in which this country holds its veterans? We know that starting with the poster that says ``Uncle Sam Wants You'' pointed to the face of Americans for decades to say: Join the service, represent this country, support and fight for it, fight for freedom. We know that call. But we also know a promise was made. The promise was, you do this for your country and, when you come back, we will have a veterans health care system available for you.

Some say--not publicly--why have a veterans health care system? Why not just have those folks go to a regular hospital? Especially after major wars, you don't ask that question because if you go to the veterans hospitals or Active-Duty hospitals that are treating these veterans, you will discover there is a kind of medical challenge that you don't find often in other hospitals.

I visited a young man at Walter Reed a couple times. I had appointed him to West Point. He is a proud member of the armed services. He went to Iraq. Because of an improvised explosive device, he lost his leg. He came back, was in Walter Reed, and went through a long period when they didn't know whether he was going to make it. He had a lot of infections and serious problems. He lost his leg right up to his hipbone.

Go visit those folks at the military hospitals or the veterans hospitals and understand these are different medical challenges than you find every day at the hospitals in the inner cities or the hospitals in the suburbs. I am not saying other hospitals don't face challenges. I am saying the wounds of war are deep, challenging. Go to the orthopedic section out here and understand the difference. It is a big difference.

I have told my colleagues about a Sunday morning at Fargo, ND. I will tell the story again because it is so important. It illustrates such an important point in support of my colleague.

A man served his country, left the Indian reservation when called during the Second World War and served. His name was Edmund Young Eagle--Native American, Standing Rock Reservation. He served in Africa, Normandy, Europe, served as his country asked him to, never complained about it. At the end of the war, he came back to the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, lived, had a tough life, didn't have a family of his own, loved to play baseball but had a tough life all of his life. Toward the end of his life, he went to the Old Soldiers' Home in North Dakota, and following that, he developed lung cancer.

His sister contacted my office and said: My brother has never had very much, but he was always very proud of serving his country and never received the medals he had earned for serving in Africa and Europe and Normandy during the Second World War. Could you help get his medals?

So I did. I got the medals that this Native American had never received from his country for going all around the world and fighting for America. By that time, Edmund Young Eagle was transferred to the VA Hospital in Fargo with advanced lung cancer. In his late seventies, on a Sunday morning, I went to his room at the VA Hospital with his medals. His sister came. The doctors and nurses from the ward came and crowded into Edmund's room. We cranked up his hospital bed to a seating position, and I pinned on his pajama top the medals that Edmund Young Eagle had earned fighting for his country in Africa, Normandy, and Europe.

This man, who would die 7 days later, said to me: This is one of the proudest days of my life.

He was a very sick man but enormously proud that his country had recognized what he had done for America in the Second World War some 50 years later.

The fact is, he and so many like him, particularly now, those Tom Brokaw called the ``greatest generation'' who went off to win the Second World War, beat back the forces of nazism and Hitler, the fact is they are now at an age where they claim an increasing amount of health care in their late seventies, eighties, and nineties. There is a strain on the VA medical health care system. Added to that, the Vietnam War and the age of those veterans, the gulf war, now the war in Iraq, this is a system that is straining at the seams.

My colleague offers an amendment. She has offered it before. I have supported it previously on many occasions. It says: Let us, on an emergency basis, decide as a country that veterans health care is our priority. Let someone years from now look back at what we spent money on and have some pride in knowing that we spent money on a priority that was critically important, a priority that said to us: We will keep our word to veterans. We promised health care, if you served your country. Now we are going to deliver it.

It is not satisfactory to me and to many others in this Chamber to decide that among a whole series of priorities, providing another tax cut is more important than providing health care or keeping a promise to veterans. That is not acceptable to me.

That is why I am happy to join. I mentioned a tax cut as one example. We tried to offer an amendment to the emergency supplementals that previously went through this Congress. We just had an $81 billion supplemental, none of it paid for. We have now a $45 billion emergency supplemental passed by the House that is coming this direction. My colleague from Oklahoma made the point that we have increased spending. We sure have increased spending. No question about that. Take a look at what has increased with respect to defense spending and homeland security spending post-9/11. I have not opposed that spending. I happen to think we need to replenish Army accounts when you send troops to Iraq. I happen to think we need more security at our ports and other places. But it seems to me logical that progressives, conservatives, moderates, everything in between at some point ought to decide to get together and say: If we are going to spend this money, we ought to pay for it. Instead of doing that, we have done emergency supplementals.

My colleague from Washington is saying, if you are going to do emergency supplementals for everything, how about doing it for the first and most important thing, and that is keeping our promise to America's veterans.

Mrs. MURRAY. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. DORGAN. I am happy to yield.

Mrs. MURRAY. I wanted to ask if the Senator was aware that when our amendment was offered on the supplemental, Senators on this floor were told by the VA that they didn't need the funding. And last Thursday, the VA announced that they were indeed well over $1 billion short for this fiscal year alone for VA funding. That is why I needed to offer this amendment on this bill, and hopefully the Senate will pass it. I hope it will pass unanimously tomorrow. Is the Senator from North Dakota aware that is the situation we are now in?

Mr. DORGAN. Was there a question?

Mrs. MURRAY. I was asking if the Senator from North Dakota was aware that during the consideration of the emergency supplemental, when we offered our amendment, we were told by the administration they didn't need the funding. And then last Thursday they announced that they were, indeed, as we had warned, well over $1 billion short. That is why we are offering this amendment.

Mr. DORGAN. Let me say, that is why I support the amendment. It is a question of priorities. I know everyone has their own view of what priorities might be. One of the top priorities ought to be keeping your promise to America's veterans. I appreciate the amendment being offered.

I ask unanimous consent that Senator Durbin be added to the Byrd-Cochran amendment No. 1053 as a cosponsor.

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