[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 169 (Thursday, October 11, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6781-S6782]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                                Veterans

  Madam President, as chairman of the Veterans' Affairs Committee, I 
have the honor of representing the U.S. Senate to our veterans and 
responding, along with the House committee chaired by Chairman Roe of 
Tennessee, on veterans' issues. All of us are for veterans. There is 
one place you never have an argument on appropriations, and that is for 
veterans. We don't have partisan arguments about veterans either. On 
the battlefield, you don't see Democratic veterans or Republican 
veterans; you see American veterans. We are all for the veterans.
  We have had some great successes with our veterans, but we have had 
some failures over the last decades. Sometimes they are on the front 
page of the newspaper, most recently last week when the hospital 
ratings came out. Two of the three hospitals servicing my State fell 
from three stars to one star, which meant they failed in their 
performance for our veterans, and we want to work to see that improve.
  But we also want everybody to understand how big the problem is, what 
we have done the last 2 years to address the problem, and what is 
coming soon for all of us, which I think is good news for everybody.
  First of all, starting 2 years ago, Senator Tester, the ranking 
member on the committee, and I sat down and made a pledge that we were 
going to work together from the beginning to address the tough issues 
that had been put behind the backdoor for a long time and hadn't been 
dealt with. We have done that. In fact, we have tackled every single 
one of them, except one that we are going to tackle in a couple of 
weeks. In so doing, we have helped our veterans.
  We had the help of the President as well. President Trump embraced 
our committee's work from the beginning.
  We had to find a new Secretary because the old Secretary resigned, 
and we worked hard to do that. We had a few bumps in the road. The 
President gave us his full support. Robert Wilkie, who is the new 
Secretary of the VA, is a terrific guy. He has a family history in the 
military. He loves the VA and worked for DOD, or the Department of 
Defense, which is the precursor in working for the VA if you are a 
veteran, because you have to be in DOD first to be a veteran, second. 
In fact, Robert Wilkie is a godsend for us. In a few short weeks, he 
has already proven to be a big help for our veterans. He is not 
unwilling to tackle the hard problems. In fact, he is willing to tackle 
them.
  Interoperative software for medical information has been a problem at 
the VA for years. The DOD and VA software didn't talk to each other.
  We have a guy who left the battlefield in Afghanistan, came back to 
Georgia, and went to Fort Benning. He decided to leave the military and 
retire and go into veteran status, and we couldn't get his records 
transferred from Active Duty to veteran status because we didn't have 
interoperable software. We didn't have a way to do it.
  This committee worked hard. We developed the largest contract in 
history with Cerner, a great software company. Cerner has a tremendous 
medical outreach product, and they are now installing that. Hopefully, 
over the next 15 years, we will have an interoperative system around 
the world that services our veterans who need medical service and have 
their records available instantaneously and immediately.
  We have a 20th century soldier in the battlefield, but we have a 15th 
century VA when it comes to information technology. We have invested 
the money now with Cerner to put in the system, and we are going to get 
it done. I will stay on their back every day to see to it they do it.
  I appreciate the cooperation of the employees of the VA. I tell them, 
as I make these remarks, that we are going to see to it they have every 
bit of backing they can get from us. We had too many vacant spaces in 
the VA. We had too many ``acting this'' and ``acting that.'' I hate it 
when we appoint acting directors and acting bankers and acting 
soldiers. We don't need them to act. We need them to take action. We 
will start to do that as soon as we fund the places that go vacant, 
where it hurts our veterans.
  I thank President Trump and Secretary Wilkie for their work and their 
support. It has been complete and seamless. We signed the VA MISSION 
Act in the Rose Garden a couple of weeks ago. The President came out 
and talked about his pride in the VA and what the veterans did for all 
of us and what he was going to do as President, as long as he was 
there, to see to it that he gave them at least the best of all of us 
like they have given us the best as veterans.
  President Trump has been a great leader for our VA, and he 
understands the problems and has been supportive of our trying to make 
the changes we want to make.
  Senator Tester has been a great ranking member and a great partner 
with me on those things, and we made sure everything we did was 
bipartisan. To be honest with you, we passed 22 pieces of legislation 
and made 14 appointments. We had one ``no'' vote on one bill. We had 
complete unanimity on the committee--Republicans and Democrats--all the 
way through because we worked together, we set our goals, and we 
decided to make this work as seamlessly as our military works for us.
  Let me talk about a few of those things we have done because I think 
they are impressive when you look at them. We passed 22 pieces of 
legislation, which include the VA MISSION Act, most recently passed a 
month ago. We redefined the mission and the actions of the VA to see 
that it does everything it needs to do to be a 20th century benefit 
program, like the new modern-day GI bill, which is a part of that.
  The new GI bill says the old rule in the VA that you have to use your 
VA benefits within 15 years or you lose them on education is gone. We 
all know people's skills are changing about every 5 years or 6 years. 
If a person doesn't keep up with their continuing education, they are 
going to lose their job. They would lose their benefits because they 
have been in the VA 15 years. That is ridiculous. We removed that cap. 
Now they can take new courses and new training with their GI benefits 
for 25 years if they want to, if they are still eligible. We are not 
putting any time limit on it. There is no time limit on education. 
Education is the necessary product we have to use to produce the 
military of the 21st century.
  It used to be that we drafted our soldiers. We can't draft the 
soldiers anymore. The average draftee can't operate the type of 
equipment our men and women operate in the battlefield. You have to 
have people who understand technology, understand the STEM subjects, 
and are good with games. Video games is one of the biggest 
qualifications now for pilots because all of our airplanes are like 
video games. It looks like Pac-Man when you get in the cockpit. It is 
because of high technology, and they are training for that. We have to 
have an attractive job for them and attractive VA benefits for them if 
they want to come to work for the United States of America and stay 
with us, or else we will never be able to keep the military we have 
today as strong and powerful as it is.

  We also put a new law in on accountability. I served in the National 
Guard, and I understand accountability. In the military, you really 
understand accountability. You don't ask questions in the military. You 
give answers. If

[[Page S6782]]

your drill sergeant tells you to do 20, you drop and you do 20. If you 
can't do 20, you practice until you can and you get it right. That is 
what we have to do in the military because you don't fight wars for 
people who say: I am not interested today; I am not going to fight. You 
have to know what we are doing and do it right.
  We have to do the same thing and provide services to those veterans 
once they leave. We don't need to be casual about it. We need to be 
committed about it and make sure we are doing everything we can to see 
our veterans get the services they want, the services they need, and 
the information they need.
  Veterans Day is coming up in about 4 weeks. Every Veterans Day we are 
usually here, but I don't think we are going to be here on Veterans Day 
this year, if I understand the calendar right. I will be making 
speeches back home. Every year I have been here, I have made a speech 
on this floor about our veterans and how important they are to us. I 
try to point out a few people I have known in my lifetime who are 
veterans of the U.S. military and made a difference in my life forever.
  I talked about my friend Jack Cox, of the U.S. Marine Corps. He was 
killed by a sniper in Vietnam in 1968. He was my best friend. He 
volunteered. He came to the fraternity house. He was 2 years older than 
me. So I was still in school when he got out and graduated.
  After graduating, he went from the University of Georgia into the 
Marine Corps recruiting office and signed up for OCS. He went to Parris 
Island. From there, he went to Vietnam. On the 12th month of his 13-
month assignment, he was, unfortunately, killed by a sniper in Vietnam.
  He went to Vietnam because he wanted to represent his country, fight 
for his country, pay his price, and do his due diligence. Jack was a 
great man.
  I have a bracelet on--two, as a matter of fact. One is a bracelet for 
Matt Cooper, a law enforcement officer who was killed a couple of weeks 
ago. The other one is for John McCain--John McCain, a former Member of 
this body, who a few weeks ago was buried at the Naval Academy, and his 
funeral was at the National Cathedral. He was a pilot in the Vietnam 
war and was captured. He was held captive by the North Vietnamese for 6 
years. When he got out, he was badly wounded, badly injured, badly 
hurt. He came back to the military, rehabilitated himself, and went 
into the VA healthcare, and they rehabilitated him from his broken 
arms, his broken back, and all the other problems he had. He ran for 
the U.S. Senate, came to the U.S. Senate, and was a star, as you know, 
in this Senate Chamber from the day he got in the Senate until the day 
he died. He had a pervasive commitment to his country. He was exactly 
for our country what I want all of us in the Senate to be for this 
body--committed to the job, committed to the task, always ready, always 
prepared. Marines are that way. The Army is that way. The Air Force is 
that way, and the Senate ought to be that way. We are committed that 
way to our veterans in what we do today.
  We also have to hold them accountable in the military. Accountability 
is important. Veterans want us to hold the VA accountable. That is why 
we put in the accountability bill, which, among other things, allows us 
to fire senior executives in the VA for not doing their job. You can't 
do that in many government jobs. As a matter of fact, people were 
surprised that we were able to pass it, and we passed it bipartisan. It 
passed bipartisan because everybody knew if your job wasn't subject to 
your doing your job, you didn't have accountability.
  The first person taken to court for violating the law by not doing 
their job was in Georgia. I saw to it we prosecuted that case and used 
our lawyers to be able to do it. I wanted people at the VA to know we 
are not going to take bad behavior--break-the-law behavior--or bad 
attitudes in the VA. We are only going to give the best to our 
veterans.
  We have a number of title 38 veteran leaders who have been suspended, 
moved, or otherwise fired because they weren't accountable for their 
job. We have some openings now that need to be filled because we got 
rid of them. We got rid of people who weren't doing the job and put in 
people who did the job. In the military, your accountability is doing 
the job, and there are no excuses if you don't.
  We have done a lot of other things to help our veterans and help our 
country. I commit that we will continue to do so and make sure this 
Congress is as helpful and beneficial as we can.
  There are three quick things I want to talk about. I want to thank 
the private sector for its support of our veterans. Morehouse School of 
Medicine in Atlanta, GA, is helping the Atlanta VA now with our doctor 
shortage in the VA. Yes, we have a doctor shortage. We need the doctors 
to do the jobs. Some of these waiting times you have heard about from a 
lot of our veterans are not because we are making them wait because we 
are slow. We are making them wait because we don't have enough doctors. 
We are working on joint ventures with medical schools to do so.
  Seventy-two percent of the doctors in the United States did a 
residency or an internship at the Veterans Administration. It is the 
key training center of all our doctors, and we have to expand that and 
improve it.
  On the appeals process for benefits, there are people who are having 
to wait 2 and 3 years. We have one veteran whose case has been on 
appeal for 25 years. You can keep it on appeal as long as you file new 
information every year. He has found a way to file new information for 
every year. For 25 years, he has been putting something new in his 
file. He is blocking other veterans who need to get their attention to 
get their service because he is making the line longer than it should 
be.
  We put an accountability on the Veterans' Administration, as well, to 
see that our benefits are handled quickly and expeditiously and that 
the appeals are fair, and veterans can get an answer. We are cutting 
the average time of wait, and we are going to get it down to below half 
a year pretty soon. Pretty soon, we will have it as instantaneous as 
you can make it. You shouldn't have to wait to have a benefit paid if 
you didn't wait to complete an order from the officer whom you worked 
for.
  Lastly, I want to thank Shepherd Center in Atlanta, GA. That is my 
hometown and my home State. Shepherd takes the most seriously injured 
veterans in the United States who we no longer can help because we 
don't have the expertise. They take them and help them. More often than 
not, they turn their lives around and make it where they can 
communicate, they can work, and they can do their job. In other words, 
the veterans are getting the best of care and the best of attention 
because the Committee on Veterans' Affairs in the Senate is giving 100 
percent of their attention to them.
  I am proud of what we have done, proud of what the Senate has done, 
and I am proud of our military and proud of our country. I hope we 
continue doing in the Senate as we have always done: do our job, do it 
well, and support our country.
  May God bless the United States of America.
  I yield back.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Daines). The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.