[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 42 (Monday, March 12, 2007)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E521-E522]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       WALTER REED MEDICAL CENTER

                                 ______
                                 

                               speech of

                          HON. DANNY K. DAVIS

                              of illinois

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, March 7, 2007

  Mr. DAVIS of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, the scandal at Walter Reed Army 
Medical Center has placed a spotlight on our entire military and 
veteran health care system. That is a good thing because the system is 
in need of a thorough reorganization. As a result of cuts in VA health 
care, more than a quarter of a million vets were refused enrollment in 
2005 alone because they ``didn't qualify''. How many of these men and 
women were told when they reported for duty that they may or may not 
``qualify'' for veteran's care after separation?
  Mr. Speaker, I do not accept the notion that America's promise to its 
veterans is subject to later, arbitrary qualifications, but that 
quarter of a million veterans is the number we know of. Perhaps even 
more insidious are those vets who because of their PTSD or other 
injuries were discharged with less than honorable discharges most of 
the time with no hearing, no review. These men and women now reside in 
a kind of abyss between earth and hell. They have served their nation 
but their nation has turned its collective backs on them.
  Mr. Speaker, we need to recall Vietnam Vet Jim Hopkins who finally 
drove his Jeep into the lobby of the Wadsworth VA Hospital out of 
frustration and protest in 1981. Jim Hopkins didn't get the treatment 
he needed and couldn't get anyone in the VA or the administration to 
listen to him. His subsequent tragic death led to a fifty-three day 
hunger strike by vets and finally shed some national light on our 
refusal to acknowledge the reality of PTSD and the impact of dioxin on 
the human nervous system. Now, a quarter of a century later there are 
many more frustrated vets, men and women who responded when their 
nation called, men and women who we have promised lifetime medical care 
in return who are shut out of the VA system. Men and women have been 
kicked to the curb, unseen and unserved. Mr. Speaker, the hour and day 
have come: it is time for this Congress, in turn, to kick open the 
doors of the VA system--to ensure that every veteran, every veteran, 
has received his or her due for their service.

[[Page E522]]



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