[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 161 (Thursday, September 17, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5683-S5684]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                        Hot Springs VA Facility

  Mr. THUNE. Madam President, South Dakota's veterans and the Hot 
Springs community are currently celebrating the VA's announcement that 
it has begun the process of rescinding its order to close the Hot 
Springs VA facility. This was a hard-fought victory in a battle that we 
weren't always sure we would win. It started almost a decade ago, in 
2011, when the Obama administration announced its plans to realign--
when I say ``realign,'' reclose--the Hot Springs VA facility.
  I was well aware of what the Hot Springs facility means to South 
Dakota veterans and to the entire Hot Springs community, and I 
determined that there wasn't going to be a closure if I could help it. 
I knew that closing the Hot Springs facility would put accessible care 
out of the reach of a lot of rural and Tribal veterans--not only rural 
and Tribal South Dakota veterans but rural and Tribal veterans from 
neighboring Wyoming and Nebraska who depend on the Hot Springs facility 
for care.
  Traveling to Rapid City and Fort Meade for care, as the VA proposed, 
would be a real hardship, if not an impossibility, for many of these 
veterans. I also strongly disagreed with moving not only medical care 
but the vital Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Program from Hot Springs. 
Not only would this put the program out of reach of some veterans, I 
believed it was also a mistake to remove a tremendously effective 
program from the place where it has been so successful and try to 
reconstitute it elsewhere.
  I got to work in Congress, along with other Members of the South 
Dakota delegation. My first priority was simply trying to get Hot 
Springs' veterans a hearing with the VA.
  In 2016, after years of trying, we persuaded then-VA Secretary Bob 
McDonald to visit Hot Springs. Unfortunately, the visit didn't work, 
and soon

[[Page S5684]]

after the Secretary signed an order finalizing the decision to close 
the majority of the facility.
  The battle wasn't over. In 2014, I had succeeded in attaching a 
measure to an appropriations legislation prohibiting the closure of the 
Hot Springs facility until a national VA realignment strategy was 
proposed. In each year, with appreciation to the Appropriations 
Committee, I have managed to renew this measure. And after a new VA 
Secretary--Secretary Robert Wilkie--took the helm, I repeatedly urged 
him to come to Hot Springs and to check out our facility for himself. 
Early this year, the Secretary announced that he would visit the 
facility in March.
  I then organized a letter with the rest of the South Dakota 
delegation strongly urging the Secretary to make time to sit down with 
Hot Springs veterans and other stakeholders and listen to their 
concerns about the planned closure. To our great gratitude, the 
Secretary agreed.
  Early in Secretary Wilkie's visit to Hot Springs on March 2, I 
requested that he revisit the order to close the facility signed over 3 
years ago. A bit to our surprise and much to our relief, the Secretary 
agreed, reassuring us that the Hot Springs VA would remain open for our 
veterans.
  That meeting with veterans was pivotal. I worked hard in Congress--
along with other Members of the South Dakota delegation--to keep the 
Hot Springs facility open. But the campaign would never have succeeded 
without the passion of Hot Springs veterans and the Hot Springs 
community, which rallied in support of the facility and have proposed 
innovative ideas for the campus's future. And meeting with these 
veterans and other stakeholders and hearing their thoughts and stories 
played a major role in Secretary Wilkie's decision.
  Now, 2020 has been a tough year. But even in tough times, good things 
can happen. And last week's announcement that the VA has begun the 
formal process of rescinding its order to close the Hot Springs 
facility, expected to take 30 to 60 days, has given a lot of us reason 
for gratitude. I am thankful to Secretary Wilkie for taking a real look 
at South Dakota veterans' concerns and reversing the VA's decision to 
close the facility. And I look forward to celebrating with South Dakota 
veterans the next time I am in Hot Springs--or, as a lot of us know it, 
the ``Veterans Town.'