[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 100 (Thursday, July 21, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8589-S8590]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




         75TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS

  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, today marks the 75th anniversary of the 
Department of Veterans Affairs.
  On July 21, 1930, by Executive order, President Herbert Hoover 
consolidated our veterans programs into a new Federal agency. In the 
decades since, the Department has grown to become the second largest 
Federal agency. In 1989, its director was elevated to a Cabinet-level 
position. Today, the agency serves more than 25 million American 
military veterans.
  The Department of Veterans Affairs offers the most comprehensive 
veterans assistance programs of any country in the world. Since the 
very first

[[Page S8590]]

settlers, America has provided for our veterans. Way back in 1636, the 
Pilgrims of Plymouth County agreed that members of the colony would 
support soldiers disabled in the battles with the Pequot Indians. One 
hundred forty years later, the Continental Congress moved to provide 
pensions for soldiers disabled by the War for Independence.
  In the following decades, Congress enacted many more measures to 
support our retired service men and women. On June 22, 1944, Congress 
passed the GI bill, one of the most significant pieces of legislation 
in our country's history. Initially, the proposal to provide 
educational assistance to our vets was met with controversy. But after 
successful lobbying by the American Legion, the GI bill was passed 
unanimously in both Houses. It is now considered one of the most 
influential pieces of legislation enacted since the Homestead Act.
  The GI bill has not only opened the door to higher education for 
millions of Americans, it has transformed America from a society of 
renters to a society of homeowners. It is the Veterans Affairs 
Department that has so successfully overseen this tremendous 
achievement.
  An area of special interest to me is veterans health. Before coming 
to the Senate, I spent at least a portion of every week serving our 
veterans, through surgery, in the operating rooms in veterans 
hospitals, whether it was the veterans hospital in Nashville, TN, or 
when I was on the west coast. But literally every week, over the period 
of my entire professional career in medicine, I was serving veterans in 
a hospital, performing heart surgery and lung surgery and removing 
cancers from their chests.
  The VA hospitals in particular have been successful in streamlining 
their health information technologies. As we reach out today, focusing 
on our overall health care system--our health care sector, I should 
say; we don't have a real health care system in this country--we are 
looking to the Veterans' Administration and their now over 20 years of 
experience of health information sharing throughout a system, hospital 
to hospital and hospital to physician's office.
  A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that 
for a discrete set of measures, VA patients were in better health and 
received more recommended treatments as compared to Medicare patients 
treated on a fee-for-service basis.
  According to the VA's own medical professionals, a computer system 
called VISTA is the key to their success. Sanford Garfunkel, the 
director of the VA Medical Center in Washington, DC, says:

       I'm proud of what we do here but it isn't that we have more 
     resources. The difference is information.

  I applaud the VA hospitals for their innovation and for their 
commitment. I had the opportunity, before coming to the Senate, to see 
it firsthand in the patients I took care of in our VA hospitals. Each 
day, the physicians and nurses in these hospitals are advancing that 
mission of the Veterans Affairs agency to--in the words of Abraham 
Lincoln--``care for him who has borne the battle, and for his widow and 
his orphan.''
  It is in that spirit that I pledge to our Nation's veterans to pass 
legislation prior to the August recess to ensure that the veterans 
health care system has the resources necessary to care for those who 
have stood in harm's way for us.
  Tonight, the VA Diamond Jubilee celebrations will be kicked off with 
an event at the DAR Constitution Hall here in Washington, DC. In the 
following weeks and months, our Nation's veterans, their families, and 
grateful communities will come together in celebrations all over the 
country to honor the deep contributions of our service men and women.
  Thank you to the VA and to our women and men of the Armed Forces, 
including the new generation of veterans coming back from Afghanistan 
and Iraq. America owes you a great debt of gratitude, and we intend 
to--and will--continue that long and proud tradition of providing for 
our soldiers even after they have left the battlefield.

                          ____________________