Barack Obama

It is a picture of a soldier returning from war. He has a duffle bag clutched in his left hand. He’s looking up at the back of a brick building with laundry hanging from the back porch. A woman in an apron sees him with outstretched arms and a young child races down the stairs. Everyone sees that soldier – the neighbor’s kids; the man fixing the roof; faces from another window – and everyone welcomes that soldier who’s come home from war.

That is what our nation did for the millions of service members who returned from the Atlantic and the Pacific. We watched them come home in waves: some were just as strong as their first day in battle, others limped. We saw them crowd Times Square. We saw them walk down Main Streets and sit on stoops. And my grandfather, who fought in Patton’s army, would often speak about this time as America at its finest.

That Homecoming didn’t just happen; we were ready for it.

Long before the beaches of Normandy were stormed and the last battle was fought, in 1943, President Roosevelt said, ... “Among many other things we are, today, laying plans for the return to civilian life of our gallant men and women in the armed services. They must not be demobilized into an environment of inflation and unemployment, to a place on a bread line, or on a corner selling apples. We must, this time, have plans ready – instead of waiting to do a hasty, inefficient, and ill-considered job at the last moment.”

These are words of wisdom that we ignore at our peril.

Today, we have more than 631,000 veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan and other parts of the Global War on Terror. According to a recent VA health care report, one third—more than 205,000—have sought treatment at VA health facilities.

Even if the war in Iraq comes to an end soon – and I hope the Senate takes action this week to accomplish that goal – the war will live on with our service members and their families for the rest of our lives.

Unfortunately, over the past month, we have all seen the disturbing pictures of neglect at Walter Reed. We have read about bats and bureaucratic red tape at the VA. We have seen too many stories about our veterans who have been forgotten—not greeted by the nation that asked them to serve. The time has come for us to see this generation of veterans in all their valor and pain. We should provide them with a plan that is worthy of their courage and will help build back the military they love.

That is what Senator McCaskill and I are trying to do with the amendment we offer today.

First, we provide an additional $41 million to hire more caseworkers to assist service members navigating the military’s bureaucracy. The last thing a wounded service member should have to face when they return home is a frontline of paper work and delay. Right now, the caseworker to service member ratio at Walter Reed is 1 to 50.

Caseworkers help recovering soldiers schedule appointments, care for their everyday needs, and help them fill out paperwork. Military caseworkers are overwhelmed. I understand that the Army is reducing the caseworker to service member ratio to 1 in 17. I applaud this move and our amendment would help the military achieve this goal at all military hospitals.

Our amendment also provides $30 million for the armed forces to create an Internet-based system for service members to submit their paperwork electronically. No longer will amputees and servicemembers in wheelchairs have to go to countless offices to fill out duplicative forms, only to learn that the forms have been lost in the government bureaucracy.

We also need to do more to increase the number of mental health crisis counselors available to assist recovering service members and their families. Too many service members are returning home with unmet mental health needs – stresses that are often experienced by their family members. That’s why our amendment provides $17 million for more mental health crisis counselors.

While we all praise how our country treated the service members returning from World War II, we must remember the lessons after Vietnam.

The landmark National Vietnam Veterans’ Readjustment Study was congressionally mandated in 1983, fifteen years after the height of that war. The completed report showed that the vast majority of Vietnam veterans had successfully acclimated to post-war life.

We can’t wait fifteen years to plan and prepare for the readjustment needs of the service members returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. The average age of a service member deployed since September 11th is 27. The average age of our Guard and Reservists is 33. Sixty percent of those deployed have family responsibilities – 47 percent of those who have died have left families. 160,000 women have been deployed, and ten percent of those women are single mothers. These men and women are going to face real challenges in readjusting to normal life.

Our amendment would provide for a study by the National Academy of Sciences of the mental health and readjustment needs of returning service members. This study will assist the Department of Defense, VA, and Congress in planning for the long-term needs of our veterans.

Mr. President, last week, I met a woman at Walter Reed.

She is one of the 160,000 women who have been deployed, and she suffers from post traumatic stress disorder. Most of us associate PTSD with men and combat. But many of the women in theater face first hand dangers in their combat support roles. Driving a truck in Baghdad is one of the most dangerous missions around – and that is a support role. Women are witnessing the horrors of improvised explosive devices and the horrors of losing fellow service members. And too many experience the trauma of sexual abuse.

This young woman was very scared and she trembled as we spoke. I asked what we could do to help. She said that she could not handle group therapy sessions; she could only tolerate one-on-one sessions with counselors. Her experience is shared by many women. Treatment for women with PTSD, especially sexual abuse victims, is very different from treatment for men.

That is why today, we want to provide $15 million to address the unique mental health needs of women. This funding will ensure the development and implementation of a women’s treatment program for mental health conditions, including PTSD. It will also include the hiring and training of sexual abuse counselors, so that the service members who suffer from this trauma do not have to suffer in silence. We can do this for the woman I met at Walter Reed and the thousands who suffer like her.

The total cost of our amendment is $103 million – less than one-tenth of one percent the total cost of this bill. That’s the least we can do for our service members and their families.