Military Construction and Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act

Floor Speech

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam Chair, I rise today to express my support for H.R. 2216, the FY14 Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations bill. I commend Chairmen ROGERS and CULBERSON and Ranking Members LOWEY and BISHOP for crafting a bipartisan bill that addresses the needs of current and former service members and their families.

This MilCon-VA bill provides critical funding for the DoD to build hospitals, clinics, schools, family housing and other facilities in order to deliver timely and vital medical care to our nation's veterans, active military members and their families. In addition, it provides funding for disability care, educational benefits and other resources to help advance U.S. missions abroad.

I specifically applaud the committee for addressing the inexcusable backlog problem that continues to plague our Veteran's Affairs Regional Offices, including the VA's Baltimore Regional Office. This bill provides $155 million for the paperless claims process system, $136 million for the digital scanning of health records, and $252 million to establish a single, integrated Department of Defense (DOD) and VA electronic health record system. I am hopeful that these measures will be an important step in ensuring that backlogged claims are expedited as quickly as possible.

In addition, this bill fully funds the FY2014 budget request for Family Housing construction at $1.542 billion, providing these necessary resources for service members, veterans, and their families. I am also pleased that this bill provides for much needed improvements at the Arlington National Cemetery.

While I support the military construction/veterans spending bill, I strongly oppose the procedure Congressional Republicans used to bring it to the House floor. The Rule governing this bill affects not just the MilCon-Va budget, but other parts of our budget. I find it especially cynical that our Republican colleagues would use the spending bills on veterans and military construction as the vehicle to pass their overall budget levels, which will result in dramatic cuts to the parts of the budget that fund our kids' education and that finance investments in scientific research to find cures and treatments to cancer and other diseases. The House Appropriations Committee has already set the funding levels for those categories of the budget. And you know what they are? A $30 billion cut below the sequester level to the parts of the budget that fund our kids' education and that fund scientific research.

We're supposed to have a budget process. The House passed a budget. I don't like the House Republican budget, but it passed. The Senate passed a budget. Under the rules of the Congress--in fact, as a matter of law--the House and the Senate are supposed to have completed a budget conference by April 15th. That was quite a while ago. In fact, it's been over 70 days since the Senate passed a budget and the House passed a budget. We still don't have a House-Senate conference committee report. Why might that be? Well, it turns out that the Speaker of the House has refused to appoint conferees to work with the Senate to come up with a budget.

The Rule for the military construction/veterans spending bill says ``let's pretend.'' Let's make believe that the House and Senate went to conference, and let's pretend that they agreed on the House budget numbers--the numbers that would cut the part of the budget that deals with our kids' education--by over 20 percent. Let's pretend that, because we don't want to go through the normal process. That's what this Rule does. It's a total fake, and it's a fake because of the refusal to work these issues out in a transparent manner for the American people.

Let's at least start the process of complying with the law. Speaker BOEHNER and House Republicans should follow regular House procedure and immediately request a conference and appoint conferees to negotiate a Fiscal Year 2014 budget resolution--so we can have a real federal budget, not a fake budget.

For these reasons, I support President Obama's threat to veto final passage of this legislation unless it ``passes the Congress in the context of an overall budget framework that supports our recovery and enables sufficient investments in education, infrastructure, innovation and national security for our economy to compete in the future.''

It is also troubling that this bill rejects the President's proposed 1.0 percent pay raise for federal workers. These individuals have already contributed more than their fair share to reducing the deficit, sacrificing more than $100 billion in pay and benefits. It is unreasonable to ask federal employees, who have already disproportionately sacrificed for deficit reduction, to bear the burden again.

This year's MilCon-Va bill continues to ensure our veterans and active servicemen and women have the resources they need to succeed when they come home. However, Congress must also come together to follow regular order and appoint budget conferees so we can pass a final budget and have a normal appropriations process. It's time to replace the sequester, invest in our economy, and reduce our long-term deficit.

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