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Klobuchar Pushes for More Vets Funding

Senator just returned from Iraq where Minnesota soldiers asked to help "take care of them when they return"

March 21, 2007

(Washington, D.C.) U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar today took to the Senate floor praising the increases in veterans funding included in the proposal for the federal budget and marking it as a first step to caring for soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. The Budget Resolution is an annual framework within which Congress makes its decisions about spending and taxes. The Senate's resolution - which includes $3.5 billion above the President's request for veterans funding - is scheduled to be voted on by the end of this week; it will then be merged with the House resolution in the coming weeks.

"At a time when we are spending billions on wars and reconstruction projects overseas, we can certainly afford this increase in veterans funding at home," said Klobuchar. "The VA funding in this resolution is just the first in a series of payments towards that debt that we owe these soldiers on the front lines who have sacrificed for us."

The full text of the Senator's speech is below:

"Mr. President, I rise today to implore my colleagues to support the Budget Resolution currently before the Senate. I particularly want to speak in support of the additional funding the resolution provides for the Veterans Administration, funding that will help address one of the most important challenges facing this nation today.

"That challenge is how we repay our men and women who have sacrificed for us on the front lines in the battlefield when they return home, and how do we ensure that they have all the support and services that they need to resume their lives.

"But before I turn to the VA funding I want to first speak about the current economic condition in America and how this resolution even the economic playing field for the people of this country.

"I have to say whenever you go around now, especially in rural America, and you start talking about economic issues. I would have situations where I would think 10 people would come to a small café and a 100 people would show and that's because when the price of gas goes up to over three bucks a gallon like it did last summer people with farther ways to drive feel it first.

"And when they've got two kids that they're trying to send to college and tuition at the University of Minnesota goes up 110 percent they feel it first. When their health care premiums have gone up 60 percent in the last seven years like they have been in our state middle class people feel it first.

"And when it's their kids that are going to war and their neighbors and their cousins and their grandkids, they feel it first in their heart. That's what this is about.

"At the national level, the economic policies have produced record deficits and ever amounting debt. What was a 128 billion dollar federal budget surplus in 2001 turned into a 258 billion dollar deficit in 2006. A 5.6 trillion dollar 10 year projected surplus in 2002 has turned into a two trillion dollar deficit.

"Federal debt has gone up by 1.5 trillion with most of it being held by governments in China and India and many of our economic competitors. This resolution will begin the effort to restore fiscal sanity and responsibility to our government and includes a strong pay as you go rule that requires that we pay for any new mandatory spending or offsets or else get 60 votes to approve it.

"There will be no more 'spend as you like' bills. This does not mean that there will not be any new mandatory spending or tax cuts to help working families. In fact the resolution includes a reserve fund for new tax relief measures but only if we find appropriate offsets. It just means that we have to work to implement them in a fiscally responsible way.

"The resolution also makes it much harder to push through budget reconciliation measures that are now used in the opposite way than they were intended to increase the budget deficit or decrease the budget surplus. This resolution signals an end to the spend as you like policies that have created fiscal problems at the national level.

"My colleagues and I on the economic committee are dedicated to reversing this trend and to putting the interests of middle class families front and center. This budget resolution is a good start.

"Now I would like to address the veterans provisions in the resolution which I think is also very important to middle class families in our country.

"In the past four years, American military service personnel and their families have endured the conditions that are unprecedented in recent history, including repeated deployments. I can't tell you Mr. President how many families I speak to where their kids have been asked not just to serve once in the National Guard but to be repeatedly called back and every time they say 'yes.'

"One-and-a-half million American service men and women have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. These wars are creating a new generation of veterans who need their country to stand with them.

"These are men and women who have served our country on the front lines. When they come back to this country they're too often shunted to the end of the line - waiting for health care waiting for education benefits and now as the shocking revelations from Walter Reed shown us, some have been left waiting in the most squalid of conditions.

"I want to commend Chairman Conrad and members of the Budget Committee for recognizing that the President's budget request for Fiscal Year 2008 severely shortchanged the needs of veterans in this country. Passing this resolution with the $3.5 billion added to the President's request, for a total of $43.1 billion in discretionary veterans' spending, should be our highest priority.

"At a time when we are spending billions on wars and reconstruction projects overseas, we can certainly afford this increase in veterans funding at home.

"In addition to providing billions more for veterans health care and other support programs, this Resolution rejects the President's apparent belief that now is the time to increase mandatory fees veterans must pay under TRICARE.

"The President's budget called for an increase in TRICARE pharmacy co-payments from eight to 15 dollars. It called for an annual enrollment fee based on a veteran's family income. And it proposed to require veterans to cover their entire co-payment for non-service connected disability. This Budget Resolution blocks those outrageous proposals.

"This administration has shockingly underestimated the number of veterans who would require medical care. To give you one example in its Fiscal Year 2005 budget request, the Department of Defense estimated it would have to provide care for 23,500 veterans when they came home from Iraq and Afghanistan. In reality, more than four times that number required help. Last year, the Pentagon underestimated the number of veterans who would require care by 87,000.

"That this administration underestimated and under-funded veterans' programs should not come as a surprise. Ever since the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq began, the administration has seemed oblivious to the fact that when you send hundreds of thousands of soldiers into battle, you must have a plan to provide for the hundreds of thousands of veterans that you are creating and active duty soldiers that will require substantial support when they return home.

"With this additional discretionary funding, we can begin to seriously address the epidemic of Traumatic Brain Injuries and polytraumatic injuries suffered by soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan that has so tragically become the signature injury of this war.

"We can enhance and expand the recovery and rehabilitation centers for the 30,000 wounded Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.

"We can provide increased counseling and create greater awareness for the tens of thousands of veterans suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and other mental illnesses. According to a Veterans' Health Administration report, roughly one-third of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who sought care through the VA have been diagnosed with potential symptoms of post-traumatic stress, drug abuse or other mental disorders.

"And, on an issue that is particularly important to Minnesotans, we can increase benefits and services for National Guard members and Reservists who are being asked to play the role of active duty soldiers on the battlefield, but are then treated as 'second-class veterans' at home.

"This past weekend, I traveled to Iraq with three of my colleagues to visit our troops in the field and assess the situation on the ground. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to thank many of the brave men and women from my state for their sacrifices.

"The sacrifices our troops are making, and the risks they are taking, was driven home in a poignant and powerful moment at the Baghdad Airport when I stood with nine firefighters who are members of Minnesota's National Guard. They were there to show their respect for fallen soldiers and they stood there and saluted as six caskets were loaded on an airplane, all were draped in the American flag. I watched these men stand stoically, but sadly, and then I saw them return to their task at hand.

"With all of the political noise in Washington about the war in Iraq, we often lose touch of what the perspective is of the men and women on the front lines. I went to Iraq to find that perspective.

"I met Marines in Fallujah from Roseville and Rochester, Minnesota. I met a Navy Seabee from Appleton, Minnesota. I met Army soldiers assigned to help train Iraqi troops from Minneapolis and Saint Paul. I met Army Reservists based out of Fort Snelling. And I met National Guardsman attached to the fighter wing in Duluth

"These soldiers and National Guardsmen I met in Kuwait, Baghdad, and Fallujah—they didn't ask about the resolutions the Senate was debating.

"They didn't ask me what my plan was to bring them home to their families.

"They didn't ask about the shortages in equipment and body armor.

"They didn't ask about repeated tour extensions.

"They only asked about two things. First, they asked about the results in the Minnesota High School Hockey Tournament. But they asked one more thing, they asked that we take care of them when they returned home.

"I pledged to them, and I bring that pledge to the Senate floor today, that their sacrifice would not go overlooked, that their service would not be forgotten, and that our debt to them will be repaid.

"The VA funding in this resolution is just the first in a series of payments towards that debt that we owe these soldiers on the front lines who have sacrificed for us.

"I have always believed that when we ask our young men and women to fight and make the ultimate sacrifice for our nation, we make a promise that we're going give them the resources they need. This has always been a country where we believe in patriotism and patriotism means wrapping our arms around those that have served us.

"In his Second Inaugural address, President Lincoln reminded the American people that, in war, we must strive 'to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan.'

"Today, Americans are again called to bind up our nation's wounds and to care for those who have borne the battle, as well as their families who have shouldered their own sacrifice.

"Let us live up to this solemn obligation to bring our troops home safely and to honor our returning soldiers and their families by giving them the care and benefits they have earned.

"That is why Mr. President I support the veterans funding that is included in this budget resolution. Thank you."

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