Each year on Memorial Day, families across Wisconsin come together to remember those who have sacrificed their lives on behalf of our country in the name of freedom and democracy.  The debt owed to them is immeasurable.  I commend our service members and their families for the contributions they have made to our country. We owe them a debt of gratitude that can never be repaid.   

On this Memorial Day, more than 2,800 Wisconsin soldiers are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.  With our country involved in two conflicts overseas, these deployments exemplify the need to support our troops and renew our commitment to keep our promises to them, their families, and veterans.
 
To help veterans succeed, Congress enacted the new Post 9-11 GI Bill, which took effect in August 2009.  The bill restores the promise of a full, four-year college education, allowing up to 2 million soldiers of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts to be part of a new American economic recovery, just like after World War II.  These crucial college benefits have also been extended to all children of fallen service members since 9-11-01.

We’ve also enacted incentives for businesses to hire unemployed veterans and as part of the Recovery Act, Congress provided nearly 2 million disabled veterans a $250 payment to help make ends meet.   

To offset the financial burden of serving, we’ve provided benefits and support.  Many of our troops have served multiple tours of duty, with great strain on their families and finances.  Congress provided special $500 payments for every month service members and veterans were forced to serve under stop-loss orders since 2001.  We’ve also taken steps to reduce the backlog and wait for veterans trying to access their earned benefits, increased military pay 3.4 percent, and expanded TRICARE health benefits.  

To meet their needs for high-quality health care, we’ve made an unprecedented commitment to veterans’ health care increasing the investment in veterans’ health care and services by 60 percent since January 2007 - the largest single increase in the 78-year history of the VA.  This funding has strengthened health care for more than 5 million veterans, resulting in 17,000 new doctors and nurses, and greater access for veterans in rural areas.  

Finally, there is no better way to honor our veteran’s service than by recording their memories.  To help us commemorate and preserve our veteran’s service, I created the Veteran’s History Project. The project uses volunteer interviews to record the stories of our veterans, which are kept in the permanent collection at the Library of Congress.  These living testaments help preserve an important part of American history.  Although the project has collected nearly 70,000 individual stories to date, the world’s largest oral history collection, there are still millions of stories that can be told.  I urge you to take the time on Memorial Day to not only thank our veterans and remember our country’s fallen soldiers, but also to ask the veterans in your life to record their stories.   They serve as the most significant memorial we can possibly give to our nation’s fallen and living veterans.

For more information on how to participate in the program and/or interview a veteran, please visit my website at www.kind.house.gov or the Library of Congress at www.loc.gov/vets.