[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 213 (Wednesday, December 16, 2020)]
[House]
[Pages H7211-H7213]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    TRANSPARENCY AND EFFECTIVE ACCOUNTABILITY MEASURES FOR VETERAN 
                             CAREGIVERS ACT

  Mr. TAKANO. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the 
bill (S. 2216) to require the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to formally 
recognize caregivers of veterans, notify veterans and caregivers of 
clinical determinations relating to eligibility for the family 
caregiver program, and temporarily extend benefits for veterans who are 
determined ineligible for the family caregiver program, and for other 
purposes.
  The Clerk read the title of the bill.
  The text of the bill is as follows:

                                S. 2216

       Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of 
     the United States of America in Congress assembled,

     SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

       This Act may be cited as the ``Transparency and Effective 
     Accountability Measures for Veteran Caregivers Act'' or the 
     ``TEAM Veteran Caregivers Act''.

     SEC. 2. MODIFICATION OF ADMINISTRATION OF CAREGIVER PROGRAMS 
                   OF DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS.

       (a) Formal Recognition of Caregivers.--
       (1) Report.--
       (A) In general.--Not later than 60 days after the date of 
     the enactment of this Act, the Secretary shall submit to the 
     Committee on Veterans' Affairs of the Senate and the 
     Committee on Veterans' Affairs of the House of 
     Representatives a report regarding the feasibility and 
     advisability of formally recognizing all caregivers of 
     veterans by identifying any caregiver of a veteran in the 
     electronic health record of the veteran.
       (B) Caregivers recognized.--The recognition of caregivers 
     described in subparagraph (A) shall include recognition of --
       (i) any family caregiver who is approved as a provider of 
     personal care services for an eligible veteran under the 
     program of comprehensive assistance for family caregivers 
     under subsection (a) of section 1720G of title 38, United 
     States Code; and
       (ii) any caregiver of a covered veteran participating in 
     the program of general caregiver support services under 
     subsection (b) of such section.
       (C) Timeline.--If the Secretary determines that formally 
     recognizing all caregivers of veterans as described in 
     subparagraph (A) is feasible and advisable, the report 
     required by such subparagraph shall include a timeline for 
     implementing such recognition.
       (2) Implementation.--If the Secretary determines that 
     formally recognizing all caregivers of veterans as described 
     in paragraph (1)(A) is feasible and advisable, the Secretary 
     shall implement such recognition in accordance with the 
     timeline included in the report required by such paragraph.
       (b) Notifications, Extension of Benefits, and Discharge 
     From Family Caregiver Program.--Section 1720G(a) of title 38, 
     United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the 
     following new paragraphs:
       ``(12)(A) The Secretary shall notify the individuals 
     described in subparagraph (C) regarding decisions affecting 
     the furnishing of assistance under this subsection using 
     standardized letters, as the Secretary determines such 
     notifications and letters to be appropriate.
       ``(B) A notification provided under subparagraph (A) shall 
     include the elements required for notices of decisions under 
     section 5104(b) of this title to the extent that those 
     elements apply to such notification, unless, not later than 
     60 days after the date of the enactment of the Transparency 
     and Effective Accountability Measures for Veteran Caregivers 
     Act, the Secretary determines that it would not be feasible 
     to include such elements in such notifications and submits to 
     the Committee on Veterans' Affairs of the Senate and the 
     Committee on Veterans' Affairs of the House of 
     Representatives a report setting forth the reasons for such 
     determination.
       ``(C) The individuals described in this subparagraph shall 
     include--
       ``(i) an individual who submits an application for the 
     program established under paragraph (1);
       ``(ii) an individual determined by the Secretary to be an 
     eligible veteran pursuant to such an application; and
       ``(iii) a family caregiver of an eligible veteran who is--
       ``(I) approved as a provider of personal care services 
     under paragraph (6)(B); or
       ``(II) designated as a primary provider of personal care 
     services under paragraph (7)(A).
       ``(13)(A) If the Secretary determines that a veteran 
     receiving services under the program established under 
     paragraph (1) is no longer eligible for such program solely 
     because of improvement in the condition of the veteran--
       ``(i) the effective date of discharge of the veteran from 
     the program shall be not earlier than the date that is 60 
     days after the date on which the Secretary provides notice of 
     such lack of eligibility under paragraph (12)(A) to the 
     relevant individuals described in paragraph (12)(C); and
       ``(ii) the Secretary shall extend benefits under the 
     program established under paragraph (1) for a family 
     caregiver of the veteran described in paragraph (12)(C)(iii), 
     including stipends under paragraph (3)(A)(ii)(V), if such an 
     extension is determined appropriate by the Secretary, for a 
     90-day period following discharge of the veteran from the 
     program.
       ``(B) This paragraph shall not be construed to limit the 
     authority of the Secretary--
       ``(i) to prescribe regulations addressing other bases for--
       ``(I) the discharge of a veteran from the program 
     established under paragraph (1); or
       ``(II) the revocation of the designation of a family 
     caregiver of a veteran as a primary provider of personal care 
     services under paragraph (7)(A); or
       ``(ii) to provide advance notice and extended benefits 
     under the program, as appropriate, if another basis for 
     discharge of a veteran described in subclause (I) of clause 
     (i) or revocation of a designation described in subclause 
     (II) of such clause applies.''.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Takano) and the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. David P. 
Roe) each will control 20 minutes.
  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from California.

[[Page H7212]]

  



                             General Leave

  Mr. TAKANO. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may 
have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and 
to insert extraneous material on S. 2216.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from California?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. TAKANO. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of S. 2216, Senator Peters' bill, the 
TEAM Veteran Caregivers Act.
  This legislation clarifies certain elements of VA's program of 
comprehensive assistance for family caregivers and the general 
caregiver program.
  The bill formally recognizes a veteran's primary caregiver in the 
veteran's medical record and requires standardization in letters 
determining program eligibility.
  Additionally, it extends the benefits of the comprehensive program 
for 90 days after a veteran has been determined to no longer be 
clinically eligible. This will allow the family caregivers, who have 
likely forgone or minimized their own careers in order to care for 
veterans, the means and necessary time to transition back to the 
workforce without worrying about how to pay the bills. This is an 
unnecessary stress on those who have already been through so much.
  Mr. Speaker, I urge all Members to support S. 2216, and I reserve the 
balance of my time.
  Mr. DAVID P. ROE of Tennessee. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself as much 
time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of S. 2216, the TEAM Veteran 
Caregivers Act.
  Just as our Nation's veterans are heroes, so are their caregivers. 
When a servicemember or veteran is seriously injured in service to our 
country, their family caregiver serves as an irreplaceable source of 
support and care during recovery and beyond.
  They are just as vital a part of the veteran's care team as the 
veteran's doctors and nurses. They deserve respect, recognition, and 
support for all the work they do for their veteran loved ones and the 
personal sacrifices that work requires of them.
  Since the Department of Veterans Affairs' family caregiver program 
was created by Congress in 2012, caregiver support services--including 
a monthly stipend, respite care, training, and healthcare, if needed--
have been offered to eligible caregivers of post-9/11 veterans.
  We expanded the family caregiver program to include caregivers of 
pre-9/11 veterans in the MISSION Act 2 years ago, and those caregivers 
began receiving benefits through the program in October.
  Mr. Speaker, I would be remiss if I didn't say the Dole Foundation 
and Senator Dole had a great influence on this.
  Along with expanding the family caregiver program to caregivers of 
veterans of all eras, VA also made several programmatic changes, which 
I hope will ensure the program works better for every single veteran 
and caregiver in need of it. However, it may also result in some 
caregivers who were formerly eligible for the program to no longer be 
eligible for it because their veteran loved one had sufficiently 
recovered as to no longer require the same level of caregiving 
services.
  To help individuals under those circumstances, this bill would 
require the VA to notify veterans and caregivers of medical decisions 
and determinations that may affect their eligibility for the family 
caregiver program and to extend the caregiver benefits on a temporary 
basis to those who are deemed ineligible for the program, ensuring that 
they have time to adjust to life without the support it provides them.
  It would also require VA to list the names of caregivers in veterans' 
electronic health records to ease communication between providers and 
caregivers.
  Mr. Speaker, I am grateful to Senator Gary Peters from Michigan and 
Senator Marsha Blackburn, my fellow Tennessean, for introducing this 
bill, as well as Congressman   Andy Biggs from Arizona for sponsoring 
the House companion to it. I thank each of them for their leadership on 
this issue and their commitment to caring for caregivers.
  Mr. Speaker, I will be proudly supporting this bill today, and I urge 
all of my colleagues to join me.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. TAKANO. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. DAVID P. ROE of Tennessee. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the 
gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Biggs), my good friend, who is the House 
sponsor of this legislation.
  Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I thank 
the ranking member for all of his work here on this bill and so many 
others to benefit the lives of our veterans and their families. I 
appreciate it very much.
  I strongly support S. 2216, the TEAM Veteran Caregivers Act, and, as 
the sponsor of H.R. 6571, the House companion of this legislation.
  Family caregivers assume enormous responsibilities by caring for our 
wounded veterans, including many who are among our most vulnerable.
  I introduced this legislation because one of my constituents, Ms. 
Sharon Grassi, came to us with her concerns related to the VA's family 
caregiver program. Sharon is the mother and caregiver of her son Derek, 
a 100-percent disabled veteran who served multiple tours in Iraq and 
Afghanistan as a combat medic. Since Derek's departure from the 
service, Sharon has dedicated her life to securing the well-being of 
her son.
  Sharon told our office countless stories of her struggles attempting 
to gain access to her son's VA medical records, even something as 
simple as a much-needed copy of an MRI.

  As many caregivers know, having timely access to medical records is 
extremely important to move forward in the recovery process of the 
patient. Sharon has had issues getting access to these records because 
the VA does not formally recognize family caregivers in the health 
records of the veteran.
  Today, we are one step closer to fixing this issue by requiring the 
VA to report to Congress on the feasibility and the advisability of 
recognizing family caregivers in the electronic health records of the 
veteran.
  I will continue to work with my House and Senate colleagues and the 
VA to ensure that no family caregiver goes through the same 
bureaucratic nightmares as Sharon has.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank all the caregivers who support our wounded 
veterans every day, the Elizabeth Dole Foundation, Disabled American 
Veterans, Paralyzed Veterans of America, and all the veterans service 
organizations that voiced their strong support for this legislation.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank, again, my colleague from Tennessee, Dr. Roe, 
for his service in Congress and his strong support of our Nation's 
veterans. I will say I respect him. His leadership and expertise will 
be missed in the Halls of this Congress.
  Thank you, Dr. Roe.
  Mr. Speaker, I urge all of my colleagues to vote ``yes''.
  Mr. TAKANO. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. DAVID P. ROE of Tennessee. Mr. Speaker, I have no further 
speakers, and I am prepared to close.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to take a couple of minutes of personal privilege 
before I do close.
  This will be the last couple of days I am here on the House floor, 
and I would like to thank the constituents of the First Congressional 
District of Tennessee who have supported me overwhelmingly for the past 
12 years. I cannot thank you enough.
  I have made so many great friends as I have traveled those 12 
counties in rural east Tennessee, and I couldn't be prouder of them. 
Certainly, my prayers are with them now during this COVID epidemic.
  This was a year like no one ever expected, Mr. Speaker. I think we 
will all look back years from now, and history will judge us on how we 
did now.
  I want to thank my family and friends that I have had. I would not be 
here without them.
  During this past 12 years, I have had, obviously, some personal 
issues. My wife died of cancer during the 12 years I was here. I lost a 
very dear personal friend not 6 weeks after that. My mother died a year 
after that. And a year after that, I was diagnosed with cancer myself, 
and I am a cancer survivor.

[[Page H7213]]

  I want to thank the people in this body and in this House for the 
personal support that they gave me and uplifted me, the Congressional 
Prayer Breakfast, and just many friends, as Mr. Biggs talked about, 
that would stop and speak to you and lift you up. I don't think people 
see that.
  I want to thank my staff. I have had an incredible staff since I have 
been here. I am amazed at the insight and work that these young people 
do on both sides of the aisle. It is just amazing. We would not get 
this legislation completed. You see this big, thick binder right here. 
It is these staff members that put this together, do the hard work, and 
bring us together. And I can't thank them enough.
  And my colleagues: I have met and made some amazing friends that will 
last a lifetime here.
  I remember, and I will pass this along, an old coach told me this 
once. We were at a Boy Scout camp and I was a counselor there. One of 
the scouts ran up and said: ``Coach, Coach, we have a problem down at 
shower house number 2.''
  And he said: ``What is it?''
  The scout said: ``Well, the toilet is stopped up.''
  And the coach, I will never forget this, he said: ``We don't have 
problems here. We have opportunities.''
  So, basically, we have had a lot of opportunities, I have, since I 
have been here.
  I have been able to serve on some committees, the Veterans' Affairs 
Committee, which I have been a member since day one; the Education and 
Labor Committee, which I had the privilege of serving as the chairman 
of the Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions. I 
served a term on the Agriculture Committee. I served on the Joint 
Select Committee on Solvency of Multiemployer Pension Plans. I have co-
chaired the GOP Doctors Caucus for the past several terms.

                              {time}  1530

  Mr. Speaker, I mean this sincerely. No one person does any of these 
things. It does take a team effort. And that team effort, you heard it 
today, you heard both sides of the aisle contribute to this piece of 
legislation that we just passed by voice vote.
  We were able to pass in a bipartisan way the MISSION Act, which will 
fundamentally change--it is a very complex act that will fundamentally 
change how veterans get their care and improve the quality of care for 
our veterans.
  The Forever GI Bill--Mr. Speaker, when I got out of the Army in 1975, 
I was able to use the GI Bill, and I know it paid me $300 a month for 2 
years. It sunsetted at 10 years. This Congress fully paid for that.
  These young people now, these men and women who have served this 
country, can use that benefit the rest of their lives and that benefit 
can be transferred. It is an incredible help to families now with the 
high cost of education.
  We had an SGR, the sustainable growth rate repeal, and Medicare 
reform, the Medicare wage index reform.
  We passed the National Desert Storm and Desert Shield War Memorial 
Act.
  With Whip Hoyer, we passed an EpiPen bill so that they can be put it 
schools around the country. And I can tell you, after that happened, in 
my own district about 3 years ago, a student had an anaphylactic 
reaction. She did not know she had a problem. And a life was saved 
because of that.
  I think if I did anything in Congress--and I want to thank Mr. Hoyer 
for his help with that. We have another asthma bill that is getting hot 
lined in the Senate, to show you can do bipartisan work across the 
aisle.
  That is just a few of the things that we were able to succeed and do. 
These are, again, not done by any one person. They are done as a team. 
And I want to thank everyone who helped make my time here in Congress 
successful.
  I can tell you, it is one of the great privileges of my life to serve 
in the House of Representatives, in the greatest deliberative body in 
the world, the United States Congress. It is an honor I will never 
forget, Mr. Speaker.
  I will finish by saying that I encourage my colleagues to support 
this bill and, graciously, I yield back the balance of my time.
  Mr. TAKANO. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  I would just like to take a few moments to say even more words of 
praise for my colleague, Dr. Phil Roe, my ranking member. We have 
served on two committees coterminously: the Veterans' Affairs 
Committee, which you chaired and which I now chair and which we have 
been both ranking members; and the Education and Labor Committee.
  It is sort of a fate of coincidence, but it has been an absolute 
pleasure to be your colleague, sir. I wish you well in this next 
chapter of your life.
  I especially want to take note of the example you set by organizing 
the congressional delegation trip to Afghanistan. I believe it was 
either my first term or my second term in Congress. What an honor that 
was to travel with you and a bipartisan delegation to serve turkey 
dinner during Thanksgiving. I never forgot that lesson.
  I vowed that if I ever became chairman of the committee, that we 
would do the same thing, we would continue that tradition of serving 
our troops who cannot be with their families during the holiday season.
  That spirit of service carried into the work that you have done and I 
have done together, with all the Members. We say it is a team effort. 
It is a special part of the Congress that we have staff that interact 
with each other, not primarily in an antagonistic mode. There are 
differences, but we work them out and we work them out bicamerally.
  I note that Mr. Towers is going to go work on the other side, and I 
say that with all great affection. Some things will change, some things 
will stay constant.
  This behemoth, it is more than 300 pages of legislative text. That is 
a testament to the spirit of wanting to do right.
  I want to congratulate my own staff director, Ray Kelley, for that 
amazing work of both he and Jon and their counterparts in the Senate. 
This could not be the work of Phil Roe and myself alone. It was the 
work of incredible leadership at the staff level.
  I could go on and name every staff person. I have 28--29 staffers, 
and they all have performed magnificently to produce, I think, this 
incredible holiday gift to America's veterans and to America.
  So Phil Roe, thank you for, together, this gift that our teams have 
created for our country. Thank you for the gift you have been to our 
country.
  And my final word to you is, on your next chapter, Godspeed.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion offered by the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Takano) that the House suspend the rules 
and pass the bill, S. 2216.
  The question was taken.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. In the opinion of the Chair, two-thirds 
being in the affirmative, the ayes have it.
  Mr. TAKANO. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to section 3 of House Resolution 
965, the yeas and nays are ordered.
  Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, further proceedings on this motion 
will be postponed.

                          ____________________