Barack Obama

Obama and McCaskill Applaud Passage of Wounded Warrior Legislation

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

For Immediate Release
Contact: Ben LaBolt (Obama) or Adrianne Marsh (McCaskill)

Also urge president to act on commission recommendations released today

WASHINGTON, D.C. – As the President’s Commission on Care for America’s Returning Wounded made recommendations to the Bush Administration concerning care for soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. Senate unanimously approved legislation inspired by U.S. Senators Barack Obama (D-IL) and Claire McCaskill (D-MO)’s Dignity for Wounded Warriors Act. Both Obama and McCaskill applauded the Senate’s actions to improve health care and the recovery process for service members and their families, and called on President Bush to move quickly in implementing the Commission recommendations in order to provide further protection from military men and women.

Like the Obama-McCaskill legislation, today’s successful legislation would cut Pentagon red tape, improve military medical facilities, and increase oversight at our nation’s military hospitals.

“This bill goes a long way toward providing our service members with the treatment and facilities they and their families need to heal and rebuild their lives,” said Senator Obama. “Today’s recommendations offered by the President’s Commission, which also include some of our proposals from the Dignity for Wounded Warriors Act, remind us that we must do more work to ensure that our wounded warriors don’t have to wage another battle when they return home. Providing the best care for our returning service members, veterans and their families is one thing about this war we can still get right.”

“Earlier this year when the Walter Reed scandal broke and the nation read about the unacceptable conditions our injured troops were facing when they returned home from Iraq and Afghanistan, Senator Obama and I proposed necessary changes to ensure that would never happen again. I’m pleased that today the Senate has adopted a measure that includes many of those changes,” McCaskill said. “Our brave young men and women sign up to fight for freedom at home and abroad; they do not sign up to have to fight for adequate medical care when they return.”

The bill that passed the Senate today includes several Obama-McCaskill provisions such as improving living conditions at military facilities, enhancing mental health care for recovering service members, slashing red tape to ease the healing process, providing health care to family members assisting recovering service members, and reforming the broken military disability review process. The bill also adopts other Obama-McCaskill legislation, the HERO Act, which would launch a major national research endeavor into the readjustment needs of returning service members, veterans and their families.

Today’s service members and their families face a unique set of needs that must be identified and addressed. To provide them with the best care, comprehensive legislation should also include other provisions McCaskill and Obama have fought for, such as:

• Strengthen protections for service members against improper discharges for service-connected mental health conditions.
• Provide important federal job protections for family members on invitational orders. A mother or father should never have to choose between caring for a wounded son and keeping their jobs.
• Require post-deployment, face to face mental health screenings for all returning service members.

Obama and McCaskill also noted that the Presidential Commission’s report reflects many findings the senators made last winter and subsequently incorporated into their legislation. Along with other recommendations, the Commission, created by President Bush in the aftermath of the Walter Reed scandal and co-chaired by former Senator Bob Dole and former Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna E. Shalala, specifically seeks expanded job protections for family members who are assisting recovering service members in military hospitals. Similarly, McCaskill and Obama recently offered an amendment to the defense authorization bill to provide 12 months of job protection to these family members. Today, they said they will continue to fight for passage of this provision.

Senators Obama and McCaskill first introduced this legislation in February following the revelations of extreme neglect at the Walter Reed facilities. In March, they offered key provisions of the legislation as an amendment to the Iraq Supplemental Bill, which was rejected by Senate Republicans.

Senator Obama serves on the Veterans’ Affairs Committee and Senator McCaskill serves on the Armed Services Committee.