[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 120 (Wednesday, July 25, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9863-S9864]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              DIGNIFIED TREATMENT OF WOUNDED WARRIORS ACT

  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, earlier this morning, the majority 
leader, Senator Reid, asked unanimous consent for the Senate to pass a 
significant piece of legislation, the Dignified Treatment of Wounded 
Warriors Act. That was agreed to, and the Senate has now accomplished a 
major step that I wish to take a few minutes to highlight this morning.
  All of us were astounded earlier this year when the Washington Post 
ran a series of articles about the treatment of our soldiers, our men 
and women, at the Walter Reed facility. They outlined the horrific 
conditions that some of our soldiers were living in as they received 
treatment for their wounds from a war far away. After that, we talked 
to and heard about many soldiers who were in medical hold units not 
only at Walter Reed but across the country who were waiting not a few 
weeks, not a few months, but months on end--and even almost 2 years--to 
get their disability ratings so that they could be discharged from the 
military and continue on with their lives once they had been wounded.
  I went up to Walter Reed with our majority leader and members of our 
leadership team to talk to some of the soldiers who were in medical 
hold at Walter Reed. They expressed complete frustration at what they 
found themselves in. It was not just the physical part of their living 
conditions, but it was the fact that they had other wounded soldiers 
who were their advocates trying to help them work through a disability 
system that made no sense to them, their advocate or to any of us who 
were listening.
  They talked about their family members who were literally left on 
hold not knowing when they would be able to come home, get a job, go 
back to work, and resume being a part of their family again. They 
talked about long lines. They talked about paperwork that had gotten 
lost. They talked about not knowing they had traumatic brain injury 
even a year and a half after they had been wounded and came home.
  No one had taken the time to ask them if they had been near an 
explosive device and perhaps they had some kind of brain injury. Yet 
they knew that they couldn't find their keys that they had set down, 
they couldn't remember the dates of their kids' birth, they couldn't 
remember what they had done a few years ago, much less today. They knew 
something was wrong, but no one had taken the time to ask them what 
they had seen on the ground in Iraq or what they had been involved with 
that might have caused a brain injury.

[[Page S9864]]

  I went home to the State of Washington and talked to some of our 
soldiers who were in medical hold at one of our facilities in 
Washington State. I invited anyone who would like to come. I expected 
maybe a dozen, two dozen men and women to come over and talk to me. 
Over 200 showed up, expressing anger, frustration, and telling story 
after story after story of long delays in getting their disability 
ratings, in being unable to get their lives put back together, in not 
being diagnosed correctly.
  Well, I am proud the Senate, in a few short months, has stood up and 
said: Not on our watch. Not anymore. This morning, in passing the 
Dignified Treatment of Wounded Warriors Act, we are moving forward in 
an aggressive way to make sure the men and women who have served our 
country so honorably are treated well when they come home. We are 
making sure those men and women who were asked to fight a war for this 
country, no matter how we felt about that war personally, those who 
went to the war and fought for our country don't have to come home and 
fight their own country to get the health care they so deserve and 
should get without having to fight someone for it.
  This Senate acted in an aggressive way. Two of our committees, the 
Veterans' Affairs Committee, headed by Senator Akaka, and the Armed 
Services Committee, headed by Senator Levin, in a bipartisan way, put 
together, for the first time, a historic joint committee to bring in 
experts to talk to us about what the needs were and what we needed to 
do. From those excellent recommendations from that joint hearing, we 
worked together in a bipartisan way to craft legislation that would 
require the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Veterans Affairs 
to develop a comprehensive policy by January 1 of next year on the 
care, management, and transition of our servicemembers from the 
military to the VA, or to civilian life, so our brave men and women 
don't fall into that transitional trap between the DOD and the VA 
anymore and feel like they have come home and been lost.
  This is critically important. It is an aggressive action that, for 
the first time, will require the Department of the Defense and the 
Department of the VA to work together. Soldiers, men and women, too 
often feel like when they are in the service--in the Army, in the Navy, 
in the Armed Forces--there is a completely different system that 
doesn't even talk to our VA, which has a totally different disability 
system. Their paperwork doesn't go back and forth between each 
regarding how they are rated as disabled. The Army is completely 
different than how they are rated by the Veterans Affairs Department. 
That means their care is not adequate, it means they are frustrated, it 
means they are angry, and we say: No more. We are requiring now the 
Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to jointly 
come back to us with a policy that makes sense for this country's men 
and women who have fought for all of us.
  In this legislation, we also dealt with enhanced health care for our 
men and women who have served us. Too often they find their health care 
cut off long before they are able to get back and get a job. We 
authorize disability ratings of 50 percent or higher to receive health 
care benefits for 3 years. For some of the family members of a spouse--
husband or wife--who have been injured, they lose their own health 
care. So we make sure we aggressively move forward and not allow our 
families to be left without health care while their servicemember is 
being cared for at one of our medical facilities.
  We also focus dramatically on TBI, traumatic brain injury, and post-
traumatic stress syndrome, two significant wounds of this war. We 
establish new centers of excellence within the Department of Defense, 
one for TBI and one for post-traumatic stress syndrome. We require the 
Department of Defense to analyze soldiers so they do not go home and 
end up like the young man who told me he had been discharged from the 
Army and for 18 months was at home. No one asked him when he was 
discharged whether he had been around any kind of IED explosion in 
Iraq. No one asked him how he was doing. For 18 months, he sat at home 
in a rural community in my State and wondered why he could no longer 
talk to his friends; wondered why he couldn't remember what he learned 
in school a few years ago; wondered why, as a young man of 22, he felt 
his life had changed dramatically and he didn't know who he was 
anymore. Eventually, he tried to take his own life. That should not 
happen to a service man or woman who has served us honorably.

  What happened to him has happened to many other soldiers who have 
served us in Iraq. He had been around not 1, not 5, not 20, but more 
than 100 explosions while he was on the ground in Iraq. As a result, he 
had severe traumatic brain injury that was not diagnosed when he left. 
No one asked him when he was discharged whether he was having any 
problems. No one followed up when he got home, to see if he was 
adjusting okay.
  We say, no more. We say the Department of Defense looks at every 
soldier when they come in and when they leave, asks them what kind of 
action they have seen on the ground in Iraq, and follows up with them 
and gives them the care so they can perform and come back to normal 
life as quickly as possible. This is the least we can do.
  It has taken the Senate just a few months to aggressively go after 
this, to pass a bill through committee, to bring it here to the floor 
of the Senate and, very importantly, the full Senate this morning 
supporting that legislation and passing it to the House, hopefully 
quickly to conference and to the desk of the President of the United 
States. That is what our soldiers deserve. I am sorry it happened 4\1/
2\ years after this war started. It should have happened before this 
war started with the preplanning that I will not go into this morning 
that obviously we did not have. But I will say as a Senator who did not 
vote to go to war in Iraq, I have said consistently--no matter how we 
felt about that war then or how we feel about it today--that we have an 
obligation, as leaders of this country, to make sure the men and women 
who fight for us get the care they deserve. The passage of this bill 
today is part of that commitment, and I am very proud of the Senate.
  Later this morning, the commission the President has put in place, 
the Dole-Shalala commission, will also come forward with their 
recommendations. I look forward to seeing what they have to say, but 
this Senate is not going to sit around and wait for a report from 
anybody. We are moving, and moving aggressively. I hope whatever 
recommendations come out in the Dole-Shalala commission report that we 
see today do not end up on a dusty shelf in the White House, as the 9/
11 Commission recommendations did or as the Iraq study commission 
recommendations did. I hope the White House works aggressively to make 
sure these recommendations--both from Congress and from their 
commission--are put into effect because whatever laws we pass will only 
be managed efficiently and effectively and work if the White House 
joins us in a partnership to make this happen.
  I wanted all of our colleagues in the Senate to know, and for the 
country to know, we are moving aggressively forward to make sure the 
men and women who serve us are served as well by this country, and I am 
proud of the action of the Senate this morning.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Jersey is recognized.
  Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 10 
minutes as in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has that right.

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