STATEMENT ON THE VETERANS JOBS CORPS ACT
(as prepared for delivery)

I rise today to express my strong support for the Veterans Jobs Corps Act. I'm proud to be a cosponsor of this bill. I'd like to thank Senator Nelson for introducing it, and Senator Murray, Chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, for bringing this bill to the Senate and for all she does for our nation's veterans.

Veterans have done so much in serving our country courageously in the military, and they have been tested so profoundly and so many times over the last decade. These men and women have done everything for us. We owe them. That means they deserve the best health care and the other benefits they've earned from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

And that means a home. Last weekend, I was back in Minnesota at a Habitat for Humanity build doing critical home repairs for a Minnesota Guard veteran, Sergeant Brian Neill, and his family. A 23-year veteran of the National Guard, Brian was part of the Minnesota National Guard unit - the legendary Red Bulls -- who had their deployment in Iraq extended so that it was one of the longest deployments in U.S. history.

While Brian was in Iraq, his son was hit by a drunk driver while returning from his junior ROTC training, and he was left severely disabled. In Iraq, Brian, who mentored younger soldiers, saved the life of one of them when he collapsed from heat stroke. Sergeant Neill himself returned from Iraq suffering from very serious physical and psychological wounds that leave his wife, Jane, as the caregiver for both Brian and his son.

And they are just the most wonderful people. It was an amazing experience to help them with home repairs that will make sure they have the home that meets their needs.

But when I talk to veterans in Minnesota these days, the thing I hear about the most is unemployment. A job means money, of course, but it means more. It means a new mission. Without a job, you can't reintegrate into your community and start a new phase of your life.

Veterans' unemployment in Minnesota and the nation is way too high. My message to employers in Minnesota is simple: These are the people you want to hire. They've got the skills and the discipline.

We all have a role to play in making sure veterans have jobs - employers, state government, colleges and universities, municipalities, and also the federal government. That's how we do it in Minnesota. Let me give you an example. We had several thousand Red Bulls deployed to Kuwait, and the Minnesota National Guard recognized that a large number of them weren't going to have jobs when they came back.

So the Guard and Minnesota's outstanding Department of Employment and Economic Development brought went "upstream" to Kuwait to get ahead of the problem. They brough corporate leaders from Minnesota businesses like Target and Best Buy, and also MNSCU - part of Minnesota's public university system - to Kuwait to provide training for the Guard members on entering or reentering the workforce. They were able to share invaluable information with the Red Bulls on writing a resume, getting ready for an interview, and doing well in it.

So we all have a role to play. At the federal level, last year we passed the VOW to Hire Heroes Act that expanded and created new tax credits for businesses that hire veterans. And I've been spreading the word in Minnesota so our businesses know that for every unemployed veteran they hire, they can get a tax credit of up to $9,600.

The legislation we're considering today, the Veterans Jobs Corps Act, is the next step that we can and should take at the federal level.

The bill creates a Veterans Jobs Corps through the Department of Veterans Affairs in cooperation with other departments, where thousands of veterans will be able to work on conservation and resource management in our nation's public lands.

Under this bill, veterans will have the opportunity to restore and protect parks, forests, and other public lands - whether they be national, state, or tribal. Veterans will be hired to maintain the infrastructure and facilities on these public lands. The bill also provides funding for veterans to become fire fighters and law enforcement officers.

The Veterans Jobs Corps is very much modeled on the Civilian Conservation Corps from the Depression, which was created through a combination of actions by President Franklin Roosevelt and legislation by Congress. It was very successful and very popular. And in fact veterans were specifically included among those who could be enrolled in the CCC.

The CCC was one of those successful programs that helped us get through the Depression. My wife Franni's uncle James, who died not long ago at the age of 96, worked for the Postal Service, and served with the U.S. Army Postal Service in England, France, and Germany during World War II.

But before that, during the Depression, he joined the Civilian Conservation Corps. He was part of the crew that built the road through Evans Notch, a beautiful mountainous area at the border of Maine and New Hampshire. This was one of his proudest achievements. If you read his obituary, it's one of the most prominent parts of it, along with his service during World War II.

And that's the kind of thing the Veterans Jobs Corps can be.

We've got to do this work on our public lands. Our parks, forests, and other public lands need to be maintained, preserved, and improved. Why not put our veterans to work doing it? They've got the skills, they've got the experience, and they've got the discipline for it. For instance, if you've spent a lot of time on duty outside and you work in teams, which is obviously true of a huge number of our Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, you're going to be very well-suited for this work.

If you've built roads in Iraq or Afghanistan, you're well-prepared to maintain trails or manage resources in Minnesota's beautiful parks, forests, trails, and other public lands.

Minnesota has over 227,000 acres of land in 73 state and national parks and recreation areas - and that doesn't count our innumerable public lands under more local jurisdiction. These are some of the most beautiful places in the country. The Boundary Waters Canoe Area; Voyageurs National Park; Superior and Chippewa National Forests; or the trails along the Mississippi and St. Croix Rivers - just to name a few - need to be protected, maintained, and restored.

This is important work and it is dignified work. What better way to preserve the beauty of these places than by having veterans do it.

The bill also incorporates a number of other veterans jobs provisions from other bills sponsored by my colleagues from both sides of the aisle. One I want to mention in particular addresses a problem I hear a lot about in Minnesota: the problem veterans - and employers - encounter in getting their military experience counted towards certification and licensure requirements for becoming a nursing assistant or an emergency medical technician and for getting a commercial driver's license. This is also an issue that my colleague from Minnesota, Senator Klobuchar, has spent a lot of time working on.

The provision in this bill, authored by Senator Pryor, tells states that they have to take military training into consideration in issuing licenses for those jobs if they want to continue getting federal funds for some important veterans employment programs that states administer. This will provide an additional incentive for states to make sure that service members' highly relevant training and experience in these fields can be translated into civilian qualifications - eliminating the need for duplicative training, and opening the door to many more jobs for highly-trained veterans.

The Veterans Jobs Corps is a great idea for employing our nation's veterans doing the important work of preserving, protecting, and improving our nation's public lands, and serving as first responders. It is my strong hope that we will be able to bring debate on it to a close, pass it, and have it enacted into law. Our nation's veterans deserve nothing less.