Caring for Our Veterans

CARING FOR OUR VETERANS

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight with my two friends, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) from Niles in northeast Ohio and the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) from a district that runs from Portsmouth, along south from the Ohio River, up east including parts of Mahoning County near Youngstown. We will talk about the treatment of veterans in this country and the problems that we have seen, and the strength of the veterans administration, the good things it has done but how it really has fallen short, a Federal agency that has done remarkably good work for so many, but fallen woefully short in the last couple of years.

I want to continue the theme that the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) mentioned, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott), others, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi) earlier this week, Are you better off today than you were 4 years ago? And I think this theme particularly is reinforced when asking about veterans. Are veterans in this country today better off today than they were 4 years ago?

And I think we will see as the evening goes on in the next 30, 40, 50 minutes or an hour, how the veterans really have been shortchanged by this administration, how the Veterans Administration does not work as well as it did. Our benefits to veterans are not nearly as adequate, never really generous, as they used to be. I want to talk about that, whether veterans are better off today than they were 4 years ago.

As I said, I am joined by the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) and the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland). Last week Secretary Principi and President Bush announced that they would close three Veterans Administration hospitals in the United States: one in Mississippi; one in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area; and one in Brecksville, Ohio in northeast Ohio. The Ohio facility serves 48,000 veterans in our region of northeast Ohio.

I find it ironic and a little sorrowful that as we head into Memorial Day next week, as we prepare to dedicate the World War II memorial, that the President and Secretary Principi and his administration announce plans to close VA hospitals. Prior to Secretary Principi's announcement, I, along with the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) and the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) sent a letter to the Secretary asking him not to close the Brecksville hospital.

Our letter echoed the sentiment of more than 5,000 veterans who signed petitions; it echoed the sentiment of several thousand more who came to rallies and meetings and wrote us letters and made phone calls to us saying this VA hospital in Brecksville, one of the best in the country, treating homeless veterans, a model for the country in treating veterans with mental illness, protesting that this hospital be closed.

I met with hundreds of local veterans who voiced their opposition, as has the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) and as has the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan). Instead of listening to the men and women who served this Nation, the administration is foisting upon American veterans a plan that will force them to travel further and wait longer for health services they depend on.

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In the case of Brecksville, they are closing a facility with a leading reputation for mental health services, and for the last 43 years Brecksville has pioneered innovative, nationally recognized programs and services for homeless vets and veterans with mental illnesses.

Since 1971, Brecksville has offered inpatient mental health services, including acute substance abuse treatment and acute and long-term psychiatric care, to veterans from all 50 States.

We are creating new veterans. The irony of closing these three hospitals, the irony of cutting veterans benefits, health and education benefits, which has happened in this House of Representatives on this floor and with this President, the irony of doing that, the irony of closing these hospitals that lead up to Memorial Day is every day we are creating more veterans in this country as soldiers return from Iraq, sometimes with scars, emotional scars, physical scars, mental scars, where they really do need treatment.

Approximately one-third of the adult homeless population served their country in the armed services. On any given day, as many as a quarter million male and female veterans are living on the streets or in shelters, and perhaps twice as many experience homelessness at some point during the course of the year.

For many homeless and mentally ill veterans who struggle with local public transportation, closing Brecksville will double, even triple, the number of miles they will be forced to travel.

The administration made big promises to American veterans. George Bush can hardly go anywhere without singing the praises of our men and women in uniform, even though, as the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) has pointed out many times on the floor, they sing their praises but do not provide them with safe drinking water, did not provide our soldiers with body armor, do not outfit our Humvees with metal plate armor underneath the Humvees and on the door of the Humvees, so that they are much more dangerous.

There is hardly a day goes by that the President does not in one of his fund-raising speeches around the country, which are almost daily, that he does not, the President, sing the praises of our veterans.

At the same time, this administration has cut veterans benefits, cut education and health care benefits, raised the price of prescription drugs, and now, strike three, is closing these three hospitals which are serving hundreds of thousands of veterans.

When I think about a veteran in my district who originally was paying a relatively small copayment per drug per month, that copayment has tripled, and now the administration wants to double that copayment again. It is just amazing to me the President of the United States would do that in a time of war.

It is especially amazing when you look at the price of drugs in Canada, the price of drugs in France, in Germany and around the world, how much less drugs cost in those countries. In fact, every once in a while I have taken, over the last 6 years, busloads of seniors to Canada to buy less expensive drugs, but how can you look a veteran in the eye and say, Hey, you ought to go to Canada and buy your prescription drugs? How can you tell a veteran he or she should go to Canada and buy their prescription drugs because they are cheap?

Under this administration, a third of America's veterans have unprocessed claims, and 130,000 veterans are waiting for appeals decisions.

New enrollment fees and increased costs of prescription drugs will cost veterans $2 billion over the next 5 years.

This administration is opposed to the renewal of imminent danger pay for families of active duty soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Think of that. The administration and the Secretary of the VA sing the praise of American soldiers, and then oppose giving those soldiers a little extra money when they are in the face of danger in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We are spending $1.5 billion a week in Iraq turning our young men and women into veterans. We ought to be able to ensure when they come home that they receive the best health care. Our veterans deserve better.

It begs the question earlier, are veterans better off than they were 4 years ago? I think when you look at what this administration has done with soldiers and with veterans, it is a decided no.

I yield to my friend from Ohio (Mr. Strickland).

Mr. STRICKLAND. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friend, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown), and I look forward to hearing in a moment from another gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan), but the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) said something that triggered a recollection that I want to share with him.

I had said earlier here on the floor that this administration apparently wants to compensate Iraqi prisoners who were abused in the prison in Baghdad, and I understand why Secretary Rumsfeld has reached that conclusion, but I also pointed out that I was puzzled that the administration, on the other hand, was opposing American ex-POWs who had been held in captivity in Iraq during the first Gulf War getting compensation from the Iraqi Government. So there seems to be a double standard.

On the one hand, the administration is willing to compensate the Iraqi prisoners who were abused and opposes the American prisoners who were abused from getting compensation. But there is a second contradiction, a second example of where this administration seems to favor people in Iraq versus the good old, homegrown American.

An example is the fact that just last week it was reported that, back in December, Paul Bremer, who is our point man in Iraq, had gone to the Department of Labor and secured $5 million, and this was $5 million that the Congress had no awareness of, in order to pay unemployment compensation to former Iraqi soldiers. These were Iraqi soldiers who were no longer working as soldiers.

And so this administration got $5 million in order to pay them unemployment compensation at the very same time that the administration, for months now, has been fighting extending unemployment compensation to unemployed Americans.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I would add that there are 50,000 Ohioans alone who have seen their unemployment benefits expire in the last 6 months, 1 million Americans. These are people looking for a job, playing by the rules, but cannot find a job.

The President said the economy is growing. We heard our friend from Iowa and the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Portman) saying things are great, jobs are coming back, the economy is great. Well, 50,000 Ohioans cannot get their unemployment benefits.

Mr. STRICKLAND. Mr. Speaker, one other point I pointed to throughout was a discrepancy between the administration's wanting to compensate abused Iraqi prisoners and not compensate America's abused prisoners; and then I pointed out that it sought money to pay unemployment compensation to unemployed Iraqis while fighting extending unemployment benefits to Americans.

There is a third example of how the administration is favoring the Iraqis over Americans, and that is the fact that in Iraq we have promised Iraqi citizens health care. We have said that we are going to provide universal health care to the Iraqi citizens, while we have got millions, some 44 million Americans, with no health coverage, and we have got Americans who are losing their health coverage on a daily basis, and yet this administration seems to not care about that at all.

So here are three clear-cut examples of where this administration has a double standard and where this administration is willing to put resources into Iraqis and into Iraq, while refusing to help the people right here at home who are in desperate need of help.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. I thank my friend, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland), for his comments, and I yield to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan).

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Mr. BROWN of Ohio. The gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan), my friend, was mentioning that people watching this at home just sometimes might think it is almost like we are making this up, this could not be like this. Why would people do these kinds of things?

Why would President Bush talk such a good game about the military? He was in the military, and remember when he landed on the ship and was in his flight suit, and he certainly showed the American people that he was one of the military, but why would he then turn around and make these cuts? But these are political choices.

I mean, we sit in this body, the 435 of us, we come down to the House floor with this little plastic card and we vote "yes" or "no" on issues. This is a question. Government is about making choices. We decide. What do we do about prescription drugs, what do we do about Medicare, and what do we do about the environment?

Well, the Congress has made a series of choices about tax cuts and the budget and expenditure of money, and this Congress and this President who has pushed this Congress, and the Congress pretty much rubber-stamps, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay) pretty much rubber-stamps what the President wants. This Congress made a choice.

If you make $1 million a year, you get a $123,000 tax cut. If you are worth $100 million and you pass away, rather than $30 or $40 million of that going to the government, now, under Republican plans, even though that is only one-half of 1 percent of the public that would pay this tax, that has been eliminated.

So when somebody that makes $1 million pays a tax of $123,000 and no longer pays it, then that money has got to come from somewhere. So what happens is Congress makes a choice. Do you give that millionaire, the guy making a million, do you give them the $123,000 tax cut, and when you do it, it means you have got to cut veterans benefit? Or do you not give him the tax cut and fund these veterans' programs?

Clearly, my Republican friends have made the decision, as has President Bush, to give the millionaire the $123,000 tax cut and to deny veterans health care benefits, education benefits, raised their prescription drug costs, closed the Brecksville Hospital and Pittsburgh Hospital and Mississippi Hospital.

These are choices that people make. That is why we hold elections. The voters will say, Yeah, we like it that George Bush gives a millionaire a $123,000 tax cut and cuts veterans benefits; or they will say, We should not give these tax cuts to the superwealthy. Instead we should meet our commitments on health care and education.

I had a group of people come into my office today, and it is a little off the subject, not much, a group of people with Lou Gehrig's disease, ALS, and this government has refused to fund research the way we have been funding it the last 4 or 5 years.

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And the question, again, is: Do you give a millionaire a tax cut of $123,000 or do you fund programs in research and development that really are going to make wonderful scientific discoveries and save lives?

To me, the answer is pretty clear. To my friends on the other side of the aisle it is equally clear, but they have a different viewpoint. I am not saying they are immoral or sleazy. I am just saying they made the choice that they would rather give a millionaire a tax cut than to fund veterans benefits, than to keep Brecksville open. They would rather give a tax cut to the wealthiest 5 percent. Not somebody making $50,000 or $100,000. I am talking about people making $1 million a year, to give tax cuts to them; and when they do, we end up closing VA hospitals, we end up cutting veterans health care benefits, we end up cutting veterans education programs, and we end up with State university tuitions going up through the roof, at Ohio State, at Kent State, and Akron U and all over.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.

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Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Speaker, I think we have established pretty well tonight why Republican leaders and George Bush do this, why they have made these cuts in veterans benefits, why they made cuts to close the Brecksville Hospital. It is a question of choices they have made between giving a $123,000 tax cut to a millionaire or funding these programs.

The second question to ask, as we examine the whole question of are we better off, are veterans better off today or the American people better off today than they were 4 years ago, is to the look at how all this happened.

The three of us, joined by 400 of our colleagues, sat in this Chamber in the middle of the night, month after month after month, passing some of the worst legislation, legislation that my friends in the Republican leadership do not want people to see, so we passed these bills literally in the middle of the night, after midnight; and I want to talk about a couple of them.

Starting a year ago, starting literally 14 months ago, at 2:54 a.m. on a Friday in March, the House cut veterans benefits by three votes. At 2:39 a.m. on a Friday in April the House slashed education and welfare by five votes. At 1:56 a.m. on a Friday in May, the House passed the leave-no-millionaire-behind tax cut by a handful of votes. At 2:33 on a Friday in June, Republicans boarded the midnight express and passed the Medicare privatization prescription drug bill by one vote. At 12:57 a.m. on a Friday in July, the Republicans again boarded the midnight express and eviscerated Head Start by one vote. Then, after returning from summer recess, after the August recess, at 12:12 a.m. on a Friday in October, the GOP again boarded the midnight express and voted $87 billion for Iraq. Two months later, again in the middle of the night, the Medicare bill passed. The debate started at midnight, the vote started at 3 a.m. Normally, the vote takes 20 or 30 minutes. The roll call stayed open until 6 a.m. It was a 3-hour vote.

In every single case, these bills were passed after the press had gone home and people had turned their television sets off, those watching C-SPAN, and the country had gone to bed. So not only are they passing legislation that cuts veterans benefits, legislation that discriminates against veterans, proposals that shut down hospitals and cut back drug benefits and reduce education benefits for veterans, they are doing it, and again this is not made up, it is documented in the Congressional Record, they are doing this in the middle of the night, under the cover of darkness, as they board the midnight express.

So the public does not see this. By the time it gets in the paper on Saturday, it is old news. It is a couple of days later. It is never on the front page, and the public only learns about it when they realize their veterans' benefits have been cut again by the Bush administration.

Mr. STRICKLAND. If my friend will yield, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. I yield to my friend from Ohio.

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Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) filed a lawsuit some time ago.

Mr. STRICKLAND. Yes.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. The lawsuit was basically to force the VA to do what it is charged by this Congress to do, and he will explain. But it was not just a question of policy decisions that the Congress and the President have made to cut benefits, to fail to take care of the soldiers with body armor; it was not just bad decisions by Congress and the President. It also was incompetence by the VA and underfunding by the VA to take care of many of the people who were in their charge. I would ask the gentleman from Ohio to explain that.

Mr. STRICKLAND. It is quite simple. I was shocked many months ago when the VA put out a memo, and I am paraphrasing, but I am true to the spirit of the memo, which basically said, too many veterans are coming in for services and it is costing us too much money. We do not have enough money to provide those services. So henceforth, all of you who are health care providers are forbidden to market VA services to veterans. And it got quite specific.

These health care providers were told they could not participate in community health fairs in their local communities. They were told they could not send out newsletters.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, so President Bush and the Secretary of the VA have decided the VA should offer services to American veterans, but they are not allowed to tell anybody that they are offering these services?

Mr. STRICKLAND. I call it the "If they do not ask, we will not tell policy." If the veteran does not ask what they are entitled to receive, the VA will not proactively provide that information.

I tried to work this out. I went to Secretary Principi, a man that I know and admire, as a matter of fact, and we tried to work this out. I tried to get them to rescind this gag order, because it is a gag order. It is a gag order placed upon the health care providers. We just could not get them to budge.

Finally, I decided to initiate legal action and I got the Vietnam Veterans of America to join me. We filed a suit. That suit is currently before the court. It is my hope that the court will decide that this policy of the VA is, in fact, contrary to the law and will require them to rescind this terrible policy.

It is a terrible policy because there are veterans out there, for example, if I can just give an example, veterans out there who may have been exposed to Agent Orange while serving in Vietnam. We now know that exposure to Agent Orange, even all of these years later, can lead to serious health consequences. For example, certain cancers are more likely to be found in those soldiers who were exposed to Agent Orange, such as prostate cancer, for example.

There may be veterans out there who have been so exposed and are not aware that they are at risk, that they should come into the VA facilities for an examination, and if they are found to have one of these illnesses, that they are entitled to receive medical care from the VA.

That is just an example of why this outreach to veterans is so important and why it is so really quite pathetic that an administration that says it cares about veterans would take this action to limit the information that is disseminated to veterans who are in need of this kind of information.

This is a matter of health, and it can be a matter of life and death. That is why I think it is so shameful that we would have a policy, and as the gentleman says, at the same time we are giving tax cuts to millionaires, to millionaires, we are taking steps to limit the dissemination of information to our veterans because if they come in, it may cost too much money to provide them the care they need.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, just before I wrap up, this is all very puzzling. I understand why President Bush is hostile to good environmental policy, because environmentalists do not vote for him. He does not seem to care.

I understand that President Bush pushes legislation that kind of restricts the rights of minorities because minorities do not vote for him. I understand why he is hostile to organized labor because he does not get many labor union votes from steelworkers or auto workers or food and commercial workers.

But I do not understand why he is so hostile to veterans. That really puzzles me because a lot of veterans voted for President Bush. They liked the fact that his father was a decorated veteran. They liked the fact that he served this country through the National Guard honorably and fully, at least before the news broke they thought he did, and they voted for him because they thought he was sort of a stand-up tough guy and would stand up for American interests.

It astounds me that this President would change our policy and military doctrine, would attack Afghanistan, attack Iraq, make noises about Iran and other places such as North Korea, but when the veterans come home, not treat them any better than he treats them.

The only answer I can figure is, he is so wedded and focused on his tax policy, on cutting taxes for the very wealthy, saving literally over a trillion dollars in taxes for the richest 1 percent, that everybody else suffers, veterans suffer, school kids get shortchanged, seniors through the Medicare program get shortchanged, environmental enforcement gets shortchanged, food safety enforcement, research for the NIH get shortchanged; and that is the only explanation I can come up with.