[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 40 (Thursday, March 8, 2007)]
[House]
[Pages H2334-H2335]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    WALTER REED ARMY MEDICAL CENTER

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from New Hampshire (Mr. Hodes) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HODES. Mr. Speaker, as a member of the House Oversight and Reform 
Committee, we recently traveled to Walter Reed Army Hospital, where, as 
a panel, we heard graphic testimony from numbers of witnesses. 
Witnesses included Staff Sergeant Shannon, who testified, wearing an 
eye patch, suffering from a traumatic brain injury, about the kind of 
treatment he had received at Walter Reed Army hospital.
  The testimony was striking. He told us, Mr. Speaker, that after a few 
days of inpatient treatment, he was transferred into a limbo of 
outpatient treatment in which he couldn't find his way around the 
grounds and didn't have help for that; in which the assistance he 
needed wasn't there. And he is still in that limbo.
  We heard graphic testimony from Mrs. McLoed, whose husband had 
suffered a traumatic brain injury and who also hasn't received 
treatment as an outpatient at Walter Reed of the kind that we would 
expect.
  And we heard from Specialist Duncan, also testified with an eye patch 
on, that he had been living in intolerable living conditions in what is 
now the infamous building 18 at Walter Reed Army Hospital.
  The testimony was gut wrenching. Nobody who was in the room could 
have not been affected at hearing how our soldiers, our brave troops 
who had been injured in combat and come home, to be sent to intolerable 
living conditions, with mold, peeling wallpaper, cockroaches and rats 
in their living quarters, and no way to work through a system that was 
a Byzantine bureaucracy, seemingly designed to deny care, instead of 
provide care for those who both need it and deserve it most.
  It was with a heavy heart that I heard the testimony of the generals 
who were in charge of this system. The Surgeon General, General Kiley, 
who said that it wasn't his job to inspect the barracks at building 18; 
he had people to do that.

[[Page H2335]]

  And the gentleman next to him, General Weitman, whose command 
recently was relieved, the person he essentially pointed to, the man 
who had been there for 6 months. But General Kiley had been there from 
2002 to 2004. He was the fellow in charge of the whole operation.
  General Weitman had been preceded by General Farmer. These conditions 
were known. And, in fact, General Kiley had been told on numerous 
occasions of the graphic problems with the system he was overseeing, 
and nothing had happened.
  It is now time to fix these problems, Mr. Speaker. It is time for 
this Congress to hold the system accountable. It is time for the Armed 
Forces medical system to step up with the kind of accountability and 
oversight and fix that our soldiers deserve.
  I look forward to participating in the fix of that system as a member 
of the House Oversight and Reform Committee. I look forward to hearing 
from the generals how they are going to fix things for our soldiers. 
Our soldiers need it. They deserve it.
  And especially at a time when the President proposes to send more 
troops to Iraq, I ask the question, how can he do it at a time when the 
medical system of the Armed Services is incapable of handling the 
inevitable casualties that will result?
  There is a disconnect, Mr. Speaker, and it is time that we change 
that.

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