Congressional News Conference on Veterans Health Care

Federal News Service

HEADLINE: CONGRESSIONAL NEWS CONFERENCE
 
SUBJECT: VETERANS' HEALTH CARE

SEN. GRAHAM: When it comes to supporting our troops, this president is all hat and no cattle. The White House claims that it supports our troops, but its actions prove otherwise. The administration has not supported our troops on the frontlines and has acted with indifference toward our veterans.

What is some of the evidence of this lack of support and indifference? The administration fought against the initial increase, and now has fought against the extension of an extra $225 per month for hazard pay and for troops serving abroad. When pushed against the wall by Congress, the White House reluctantly supported the extension, but only for those troops serving in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Further, Congress insisted that all of our troops serving abroad should receive this additional compensation, and that service men and women who are fighting the war on terror here in the United States should get its benefits.

In one of the most outrageous decisions of this administration, the Department of Defense was charging our soldiers for the meals that they were receiving while they were hospitalized. Congress halted this effort by including a provision in the supplemental appropriation bill that assures that soldiers will no longer have to pay for the meals that they are receiving as a result of hospitalization, in many cases as the result of injuries suffered in combat.

We also passed the amendment offered by Senator Boxer, which would reimburse soldiers who had had to pay the cost of their meals when hospitalized since September the 11th, 2001.

We were also successful, as she has so forcefully and eloquently stated, in passing the Mikulski-Bond amendment, which provides an additional $1.3 billion for veterans' health care, funding that which the Bush administration failed to recommend. This funding is sorely needed, considering that 80,000 veterans are currently waiting longer than six months to see a VA doctor, and until they see a VA doctor, they are not eligible for VA benefits, including access to prescription drugs.

When debating the supplemental, Democrats offered an amendment that would have granted full concurrent receipts, allowing veterans who have been injured and disabled, and who have now reached the point that they are eligible for retirement, to receive both types of compensation. Republicans blocked this proposal by ruling it out of order. The administration has also slashed benefits to middle-income veterans, adding co-payments to medical services for veterans and is currently working through the CARES process to cut some 6,000 beds in the VA system. This comes at a time when wounded and sick servicemen are returning from combat to inadequate health care and living conditions.

We've had to fight every step of the way to get this administration to commit adequate funding to the care of our troops and the care of our veterans. The men and women who serve our country deserve more than this White House's empty rhetoric. They deserve more than an empty hat. They deserve recognition for their sacrifice and service and honor for their hard work. They deserve the beef. This means recognizing their heroism during and after their service to America. Thank you.

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SEN. GRAHAM: One additional perverse consequence of the United States supplying its reconstruction totally by grants is that we are going to make every other creditor of Iraq that much more secure. Many countries had essentially written-off their loans to Iraq as being non-collectible. If we go in and repair the bridges and the roads, the schools at our total expense without any likelihood of reimbursement, we're making everybody else's debt that much stronger.

Some of the countries, specifically one of the countries, conducted itself in a manner before September the 11th, 2001, and I think after September the 11th, 2001, in a way that merits the United States condemnation, not its giving greater solidity to the loans that it has made to Saddam Hussein's Iraq. I think that's an outrage. And I hope that the conferees understand the feeling of the American people and will not follow the administration's demand that they remove this loan provision, even in the face of a threat of a veto.

Isn't it ironic that the administration says it's critical now that we support the troops, but if supporting the troops also means that we do not give benefits to countries that were our enemies in the war on terror, that's a higher priority?