Deborah Sampson Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. BARR. Mr. Speaker, I thank my good friend, Dr. Roe. I wish the gentleman a happy belated Veterans Day, and I hope he had a good weekend. I certainly did back home in Lexington, Kentucky, at Veterans Park with the Veterans Park Elementary School choir singing to our great veterans back home.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of H.R. 3224, as amended, the Deborah Sampson Act.

As my colleagues before me have already pointed out, women have served our country since the very earliest days of the American Revolution. But as the fastest growing segment of our veteran population, they are only now starting to get the recognition that they deserve.

I am proud to be here today to support this bill that will ensure that the Department of Veterans Affairs provides them the care and benefits that their service and their sacrifices have entitled them to.

And I commend the gentlewoman from New York for her leadership on this important legislation.

I do have to say, Mr. Speaker, however, that any characterization that my Republican colleagues on the Veterans' Affairs Committee and I feel anything less than pride in the many women who have served and the many women who continue to serve today, and a steadfast commitment to support them and to meet their needs, is simply untrue. Had my colleagues or I been allowed to speak on this bill in committee, that would have been very evident to any Member of this House.

What my colleagues and I do object to are the overly partisan tactics that were deployed by the majority when this important bill was being considered.

I am new to the Veterans' Affairs Committee in this Congress, but I know that the committee has a long tradition of bipartisanship, where Members check their party affiliations at the door and do not shy away from debates or disagreements in the spirit of living up to the very democratic ideals that our veterans fought to defend. Unfortunately, we seem to have lost sight of that great tradition this year.

As Dr. Roe referenced in his comments earlier, I have been trying since February to address an unintended consequence of a House-passed bill that could allow an accused child molester who is awaiting prosecution to care for a veteran's child in a VA childcare program.

I do not know any parent in any political party who would want one of their own children to be cared for by someone who has been charged with a serious crime, like a sexual assault against a minor, before they have been fully cleared. Yet, the majority has twice used parliamentary procedures rarely if ever seen in the Veterans' Affairs Committee to refuse to allow our committee to consider my legislation to prevent that from happening to the child of one of our Nation's veterans.

Most recently, the majority did that when this bill, the Deborah Sampson Act, was being considered. Their actions were so unexpected that my colleagues and I left the markup when it became clear that the chairman was not going to allow us, or any other Member, the opportunity to speak, much less offer amendments, and declared that we were done voting on the bill.

I resent the comment that this amendment was not offered in good faith.

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Mr. BARR. Mr. Speaker, I can assure you, as the former president of Prevent Child Abuse Kentucky, this amendment was offered very much in good faith.

It is disappointing, and it is deeply ironic, given that lack of childcare, while certainly not solely a woman's issue, is a well-known barrier to care for many women veterans, as my Democratic colleagues have pointed out over this past year.

Given that, it continues to astound me that the chairman would not allow us to even discuss my amendment--much less vote on it--and then immediately send a press release out after the markup accusing me and my fellow Republicans of walking out on the women veterans that my amendment would have helped to better serve.

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