[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 30 (Wednesday, March 10, 2004)]
[House]
[Page H1000]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          VETERANS HEALTH CARE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. STRICKLAND. Mr. Speaker, I would like to address my colleagues 
from Texas and Florida who have just spoken and called themselves the 
Waste Watchers, and they listed all of these wasteful actions of 
government, and then they said that Democrats want to raise taxes. I 
would like to remind them that their party controls the presidency. 
Their party controls this House. Their party controls the Senate. And 
the last election in Florida demonstrates that their party controls the 
Supreme Court. If there is all of this waste, why does not their party 
get rid of it? Why blame the Democrats for something that their party 
is responsible for doing? I just point out that the Republican party is 
in charge and, therefore, the Republican party is responsible for the 
waste that my colleague detailed before us tonight.
  I would like to speak tonight about veterans health care. I attended 
a Committee on Veterans Affairs meeting today where the Veterans of 
Foreign Wars spoke before our committee. And those veterans are asking 
why it is that we are spending billions and billions of dollars to 
Iraq, $87 billion the last time we got a request from the President. He 
is going to come back and ask for probably $50 billion more following 
the November election, and yet, we are nickel and diming our veterans.
  We have said priority 8 veterans can enroll in the VA health care 
system. The President actually sent us a budget during this time of 
war, and in the President's budget, he is asking that for many of our 
veterans, the cost of a prescription drug be increased from $7 a 
prescription to $15 a prescription. Now, for a veteran that is on a 
fixed income and may have 6 or 8 or 10 prescriptions a month, that is a 
heavy, intolerable burden.
  The President's budget also asks that there be a user fee imposed 
upon veterans, a user fee of $250 per year, just so many of our 
veterans can participate in the VA health care system. And then we have 
a request in the President's budget to increase the cost of a clinic 
visit for our veterans. We are piling burden upon burden upon burden on 
the backs of our veterans. I simply do not understand why we would do 
this. In a time of war, when we are creating new veterans, many 
disabled, veterans with terrible injuries, veterans who have lost their 
arms and legs, many have been blinded, terribly disfigured, these are 
veterans who have newly fought for our country, and we are giving them 
a VA health care system that is woefully underfunded.
  I simply do not understand why the President does not step up to the 
plate and put his actions behind his rhetoric and say, I am willing to 
pay whatever it takes to provide adequate health care for the men and 
women who have fought and suffered for this country. I call upon the 
President tonight to rethink his priorities. Rather than spending money 
to send a man to Mars, we ought to be spending money to take care of 
our veterans.
  I have shared this with my colleagues in the Committee on Veterans 
Affairs. A couple of weeks ago I went to Walter Reed Hospital. I 
visited a young man from my district who joined the military when he 
was 17 years of age. On his 19th birthday, while standing guard duty in 
Baghdad, a truck bomb exploded and removed a large part of one side of 
his face. This young man who is only 19 years of age was at Walter Reed 
getting reconstructive surgery on his face. He is just one of 
thousands, and there probably sadly will be thousands more in the 
future.
  This Congress, this President, those of us of both political parties, 
should put the needs of our disabled, sick, and needy veterans at the 
top of our priority list. I call upon all of us, myself included, to 
make our veterans our number 1 priority.

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