Supplemental Appropriations

Floor Speech

SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS -- (Senate - March 29, 2007)

Mr. REED. Madam President, the emergency appropriations bill passed by the Senate this morning is urgently needed for our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, for our wounded veterans, and for scores of Americans facing natural disasters on the homefront.

I commend Chairman Byrd and Senator Cochran for their hard work and close collaboration. As the acting chairman of the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Subcommittee, I also wish to thank Senator Hutchison and her able staff, along with my committee staff, for the help they gave in crafting the portions of the supplemental which dealt with military construction and veterans affairs.

The total for military construction and veterans affairs in this supplemental is $6.548 billion. It includes in title I $1.644 billion for military construction. Also contained in this section is a proviso restricting the obligation of $280 million until the Secretary of Defense certifies that none of the funds will be used for the purpose of establishing permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq. I think that is an important point to clarify.

Title II of the recommendation includes a total of $4.9 billion for military construction and also for activities at the Department of Veterans Affairs. This includes $3.137 billion to restore funding for BRAC, which is very important to reset our forces as they are returned from overseas and to help reconfigure all of the services. This fully funds the request of the Department of Defense for fiscal year 2007 for this account and will keep the BRAC process on track.

Because the costs of the war are not associated strictly with activities on the battlefield, the recommendation includes $1.767 billion for the Department of Veterans Affairs.

In crafting the VA portion of this bill, we targeted the funding specifically for purposes of building capacity to deal with the influx of OEF and OIF veterans, hiring claims adjudicators and leveraging technology to expedite benefit claims, and upgrading existing VA facilities.

The VA health care system is one of the best in the world. It has specialties in a number of areas, including spinal cord injury and blind rehabilitation. Because of these specialties, the VA has become a great resource for the treatment of troops wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, due to the nature of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, coupled with the advances in battlefield medicine, both the DOD health care system and the VA health care system are treating more military personnel with complex and multiple wounds and particularly traumatic brain injuries.

In response to this, in 2005, the Congress provided funding to the Department of Veterans Affairs to establish polytrauma centers. The funding contained in this bill builds on the success of these centers by providing a total of over $163 million in polytrauma care for services ranging from establishing more level 1 comprehensive polytrauma centers to creating polytrauma residential transition rehabilitation programs, to upgrading the entire polytrauma network system.

The bill also adds $150 million for enhancements to readjustment counseling, substance abuse programs, and mental health treatment capacity. These are specialty areas that the VA will need to continue to expand to deal with readjustment issues facing veterans returning from the war zone. In order to begin making progress toward deficiencies identified by the VA's facilities condition assessment and to prevent a possible Walter Reed Building 18 situation, the recommendation includes $550 million in nonrecurring maintenance and $356 million in minor construction.

In addition to funding provided to the Department, the supplemental also includes a general provision directing the National Academy of Public Administration to conduct an independent analysis of the management, structure, and processes that are in place at the VA with regard to providing health care to active duty and veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as providing benefits to veterans of these conflicts. This study will assist the VA and Congress in identifying the cumbersome bureaucratic redtape that far too many of our soldiers go through in their transition to the VA.

The bill also includes a provision requiring the Congressional Budget Office to conduct a budget study of the current and future long-term budget impacts of OEF and OIF on the Department of Veterans Affairs. We know with a number of these young men and women who have been severely injured--many with brain injuries and likely lifespans of 50 or 60 more years--that we will have to provide long-term, consistent, robust funding. We should identify that number now and provide that continuing support for the next several decades.

This supplemental marks the continuing high priority the Senate places on ensuring that yesterday's, today's, and tomorrow's soldiers are cared for in the highest manner once they have done their duty and once they have come home to America.

Let me make one other point. I was somewhat disappointed in this bill because I was attempting to include an amendment to rehabilitate a levee system in Woonsocket, RI, to ensure it is up to Federal standards.

This amendment would have provided $3.25 million for the city of Woonsocket to rehabilitate the levee, including replacing important gate cables. The present cables are about 40 years old. According to the Army Corps of Engineers, failure of a cable during operation could result in an uncontrolled discharge downstream of the dam. Woonsocket is an old industrial city, densely populated, and these levees protect that city.

The Woonsocket project was built between December 1963 and April 1967 by the Army Corps of Engineers. The Corps estimates that cumulative flood control benefits for the Blackstone Valley project are more than $82 million. This project in place protects at least $82 million worth of property.

Given the importance of this flood protection to Woonsocket and communities on the Blackstone River, I believe Federal assistance is warranted to protect life and property.

These deficiencies were discovered as a direct result of Katrina. We learned in Katrina there were projects, levees that were unsatisfactory. They failed and they caused billions of dollars of damages. Being forewarned--I hope we are forewarned--that having studied these problems, I hope we can now come together in Congress to provide the resources and help these local communities, many of which do not have the resources to sustain this kind of immediate and rapid expenditure.

A recent assessment by the Corps found that the Woonsocket levee and dam is in need of repairs. The Corps has given the city until February 2008 to make these repairs, otherwise the project will no longer be eligible for Federal construction funding through the Army Corps of Engineers.

In addition, if these repairs are not made, the Federal Emergency Management Agency could, and likely will, determine the levee no longer offers adequate flood protection and could require residents to buy flood insurance, which is a very expensive proposition. The city of Woonsocket is economically distressed. It needs Federal assistance. There are other communities around the country that might be in a similar situation.

The devastation wrought by Katrina in New Orleans shows us what could happen. Now we have the knowledge--the foreknowledge--and now we have to act. I am disappointed we did not act in this situation to protect this complex of levees.

I will continue to bring this issue to the attention of my colleagues again and again because I believe that with this knowledge, action is required--prompt, appropriate action--to ensure this community is protected.

I wish to make a final point because my colleague has been very patient and very considerate in allowing me to go ahead.

We have included in this supplemental language with respect to our policy in Iraq which I think is important, indeed, perhaps historical. It recognizes that we should begin a phased redeployment of our forces. It recognizes that we also must maintain certain missions in Iraq--counterterrorism operations, training Iraqi security forces, and protecting our forces. But it does emphasize we should begin on a date certain going forward to take out our forces at a pace and a level decided by operational commanders. There is a goal--not a fixed deadline--but a goal that our combat forces--those not performing these residual missions--should be out of Iraq by March 31, 2008.

This is a solution proposed essentially by the Iraq Study Group. It has been recommended, endorsed by the public sentiment of the American people by a wide margin. It allows us to continue missions that are critical to the safety and security of not only ourselves but of the region, but it does, we hope, disengage us from a potential and sometimes very real civil war in Iraq.

I hope that in the deliberations with the House, we can come up with a measure that combines the best elements of both versions of the spending bill. I hope we can bring this to the President and discuss it with him. It does represent, I think, the sentiment of the American people. It does represent not only the sentiment that we change course in Iraq, but, as this budget does, we fully fund our forces in Iraq.

I am hopeful we can make progress and that we can send to the President a bill, after discussing it with him, that could be signed rather than vetoed. That is my hope at this moment.

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