Military Construction and Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2012
Floor Speech
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Mr. MEEKS. I have an amendment at the desk.
The Acting CHAIR. The Clerk will designate the amendment.
The text of the amendment is as follows:
At the end of the bill (before the short title) insert the following:
Sec. __. None of the funds made available by this Act may be used to declare as excess to the needs of the Department of Veterans Affairs or otherwise take any action to exchange, trade, auction, transfer, or otherwise dispose of, or reduce the acreage of, Federal land and improvements at the St. Albans campus, consisting of approximately 55 acres of land, with borders near Linden Boulevard on the northwest, 115th Avenue on the west, the Long Island Railroad on the northeast, and Baisley Boulevard on the southeast.
The Acting CHAIR. The gentleman from New York is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. MEEKS. Mr. Chair, I rise in support of the amendment I have regarding the St. Albans VA Hospital in New York.
First of all, this is clearly a bipartisan bill. I have the support of my good friends Peter King and Michael Grimm of New York to stop the enhanced lease process for the St. Albans VA in my district. There is rarely a time that you have an issue where everybody has come together, and, clearly, here is an issue where members of the community and the veterans have spoken with one voice to say that what is being proposed there is against the best wishes of the veterans and the needs of the veterans and against the wishes of the community, basically changing the whole complexity of the community so that the people that live there would have a terrible injustice and disservice.
Now, I know that the EUL process works in certain areas because part of it is supposed to be where the EUL process works with the community and veterans and everybody agreeing and working together. That is not the case in this scenario.
In this scenario, we have veterans from all over--in fact, we have the Queens County Council of VFWs. We have the Vietnam Vets of America. We have the New York Vets Advocacy Group. We have the Department of New York District 1 VFW, United Council for Veterans Rights, Nassau County VFW, Vets Helping Vets, Inc., all of whom are supportive of this amendment saying that this is not in the best interests of veterans.
The VA has come up with the idea of putting together a facility that doesn't even include a full-service hospital and is not based upon the number of vets that we have coming back from Afghanistan and Iraq. Now, they have put everything on the line for them, and here we have the opportunity to make sure that we do the very best that we can for our veterans. And here the whole community surrounds us, and we want what the veterans want. We want to stand behind them in 100 percent lockstep. And it seems as though, to some at the VA, there is a deaf ear in regard to that.
So we will continue to fight. And what this bill says is that we will stop the EUL process in New York at the St. Albans facility because it is not what is needed. It is not what the vets want. It just seems to me that, instead of working with the community, the VA has chosen to go out and do a high-density residential area, residential building in this facility that is not even just for veterans, which will then have a devastating impact on the local community.
So we're saying no, that shouldn't happen. You can't destroy the very fabric of a great community, and you can't produce something that does not benefit the very vets that we're supposed to be here to help.
So, Mr. Chair, I urge support of this amendment regarding the St. Albans VA Hospital. I urge that we support our veterans who are absolutely united on this matter.
I yield back the balance of my time.
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