[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 186 (Thursday, November 9, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5442-S5443]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  REMOVING EXTRANEOUS LOOPHOLES INSURING EVERY VETERAN EMERGENCY ACT--
                           Motion to Proceed

  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I move to proceed to Calendar No. 30, 
H.R. 815.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the motion.
  The motion was agreed to.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the motion.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       Motion to proceed to Calendar No. 30, H.R. 815, a bill to 
     amend title 38, United States Code, to make certain 
     improvements relating to the eligibility of veterans to 
     receive reimbursement for emergency treatment furnished 
     through the Veterans Community Care program, and for other 
     purposes.


                             Cloture Motion

  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I send a cloture motion to the desk.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The cloture motion having been presented under 
rule XXII, the Chair directs the clerk to read the motion.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

                             Cloture Motion

       We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the 
     provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, 
     do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the motion to 
     proceed to Calendar No. 30, H.R. 815, a bill to amend title 
     38, United States Code, to make certain improvements relating 
     to the eligibility of veterans to receive reimbursement for 
     emergency treatment furnished through the Veterans Community 
     Care program, and for other purposes.
         Charles E. Schumer, Patty Murray, Peter Welch, Angus S. 
           King, Jr., Brian Schatz, Mark Kelly, Tim Kaine, Thomas 
           R. Carper, Jeff Merkley, Debbie Stabenow, Elizabeth 
           Warren, Sheldon Whitehouse, Jack Reed, Mazie K. Hirono, 
           Richard J. Durbin, Christopher Murphy, Christopher A. 
           Coons.

  Mr. SCHUMER. I ask unanimous consent that the mandatory quorum call 
for the cloture motion filed today, November 9, be waived.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. SCHUMER. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Indiana.
  Mr. YOUNG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 
15 minutes prior to the scheduled rollcall vote.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                              Veterans Day

  Mr. YOUNG. Mr. President, days before he died, Frederick Knefler 
composed a letter of instruction to be read once he was gone. There 
was, he wrote, to be no memorial service or expensive coffin. His 
funeral should be private and simple, attended only by a handful of 
fellow Hoosier veterans. When it was lowered into the ground, his body 
should be wrapped in an American flag.
  Republics such as ours are uncommon. It is of great value for us, its 
citizens, to recall our blessings, and it is our heroes who provide 
that reminder. Although he was born an ocean away from America, 
Frederick Knefler dedicated his life to defending those blessings. He 
was one of those heroes. As a contemporary remarked after his death, 
``No descendent of a Mayflower Pilgrim was ever more wholly or 
intensely American than he.''
  As we mark Veterans Day, his story is worth sharing. He was a Jewish 
immigrant; one of the soldiers who saved our Union; a private citizen 
who spent his final days building a still-inspiring monument to their 
example.
  Before he ever set foot in America, though, as a teenager, he had 
already fought in a civil war, the Hungarian Revolution. Its failure 
and the sorry state of liberty across Europe inspired Knefler to look 
elsewhere for freedom. He found it across the Atlantic. He and his 
family arrived in New York and then settled in Indiana in 1850. There, 
they were among the earliest members of the Indianapolis Hebrew 
Congregation, the city's first and today its oldest synagogue family.
  Knefler fell in love with America. He embraced its laws, customs, and 
institutions. He even taught himself English by reading Shakespeare. 
Then he moved on to military history and tactics.
  In 1861, when the Southern States deserted the Union, Abraham Lincoln 
called for volunteers to form an army to bring them back. Knefler, 
whose adoration of America was equaled only by his hatred of slavery, 
answered the call. He vowed he wouldn't do a day's work until the war 
was over and the Nation reunited.
  True to his word, he left his job as a clerk and enlisted in the 
spring of 1861, after the bombardment of Fort Sumter, and he didn't 
return to civilian life

[[Page S5443]]

until the summer of 1865, after the surrender at Appomattox Court 
House. He joined Indiana's 11th Regiment, serving as lieutenant to Lew 
Wallace, and then was promoted to colonel of the 79th Indiana Infantry.
  Knefler's language was notoriously gruff. In fact, Governor Oliver 
Morton was so offended by his profanity that he was hesitant to offer 
him a military appointment.
  He was a man of strong opinions. ``A talk with him was like a stiff 
breeze,'' a friend once said. His men labored greatly under relentless 
discipline and constant drilling but came to admire their leader. And 
he whipped the 79th into a formidable fighting machine.
  From their organization in Indianapolis in 1862 till they mustered 
out in Nashville in 1865 as part of the Armies of the Ohio and then the 
Cumberland, these Hoosiers saw action:
  At the deadly Union victory at Stones River, which helped embolden 
Abraham Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation; at the disaster 
at Chickamauga, which sent a damaged Army of the Cumberland into 
retreat; with William Tecumseh Sherman, as he marched through Georgia, 
captured Atlanta, and cut off Confederate supplies, leading to Abraham 
Lincoln's reelection and the South's defeat.
  But it was in November 1863 from the foot of Missionary Ridge that 
the 79th ascended into history. You see, at that time, the Army of the 
Cumberland was cornered and cut off in Chattanooga. Winter neared; 
rations were low; soldiers were starving and disheartened. The 
Confederate Army arrayed its artillery and waited for the Yankees to 
surrender. Jefferson Davis himself even arrived to take in the scene 
and predicted that victory was near.
  As Knefler recalled, the ``gift of prophecy'' was not the Confederate 
president's strong point. Desperate to break the siege, General Joseph 
Hooker's men climbed and took Lookout Mountain on November 24. On the 
following afternoon, the 25th, Union soldiers mounted an offensive, and 
they cleared the rebels from the base of Missionary Ridge.
  Then, without orders, they spontaneously--Knefler said they were 
guided by a ``mighty impulse,''--they spontaneously followed the 
retreating enemy up the steep ridge. When the Confederates looked down, 
they saw a flood of blue rising up. The Rebels unleashed shells, shot, 
and rifle balls down the mountain. Soon the entire ridge was enveloped 
in a cloud of gray smoke, shooting off lightning bolts of musket fire. 
The 79th, joined by another Indiana regiment, the 86th, charged up 
through it.
  Through the fierce fighting and incredible determination, they took 
Missionary Ridge. They sent the enemy into retreat, and they broke its 
lock on Chattanooga.
  That defeat heralded, as a rebel lamented, the death knell of the 
Confederacy. General Ulysses S. Grant later recalled that Frederick 
Knefler was the first field officer to reach the top of Missionary 
Ridge.
  At the conclusion of the conflict, Knefler was breveted as Brigadier 
General, the highest ranking Jewish officer to fight in the Civil War. 
This Hoosier returned to Indianapolis. He settled into private life. He 
practiced law. He advocated for fellow veterans.
  Fittingly, the final years of his life were dedicated to the 
construction of a monument to them in Indianapolis.
  In 1895, when the long-discussed project reached an impasse, Indiana 
appointed Knefler to lead the board of regents responsible for rescuing 
the project. Knefler threw himself obsessively into the work, raising 
money, scrutinizing design plans, fixating on details, dealing with 
temperamental artists.
  When a sculptor complained the model of a figure representing 
``peace'' was not wearing an overcoat, as he intended, Knefler reminded 
him that when the Union men came home in 1865, it was summer. ``Who 
ever heard of a soldier wearing a big overcoat in July?'' he snapped at 
the sculptor.
  Because of Knefler's exertions and urgency--he desperately wanted the 
monument finished while veterans of the Civil War remained--the 
Soldiers and Sailors Monument was dedicated on May 15, 1902. On that 
day, bands played, battle flags waved, soldiers marched, statesmen 
delivered speeches, and crowds wept at the foot of a towering column, 
built of Indiana limestone, of course.
  Among the thousands of attendees, Knefler was absent. He had died the 
year before. But in the days leading up to his death, stricken with 
disease, he worked to honor his promise that the monument would be ``as 
great a work of art as the world ever saw.'' He didn't live to see it 
complete, but that work of art would have been neither great nor 
completed without him.
  Folks, we don't celebrate Veterans Day in order to venerate war but, 
rather, to reflect on its horrible cost. But we also honor our veterans 
like Frederick Knefler on this holiday for the same reason we build 
monuments to them, doing these things reminds us what is precious, and 
that what is precious is fragile.
  For over two centuries, this Nation, however imperfectly, has been a 
rare outpost of freedom, an outpost of tolerance in a world where both, 
throughout history, were the exception, not the norm.
  Look to the monument Knefler worked so hard to raise, the focal point 
of Indiana's capital city. On its crown sits a brown statue of Lady 
Victory, her arm outstretched, the torch of liberty in her hand. Below 
stand statues of the Hoosier soldiers and sailors, who risked and gave 
their lives to protect it, to preserve the sacred pledge that all men 
are created equal.
  This Nation, with its singular values, has endured thanks to our 
veterans. Men and women--to use Knefler's words--of ``heroic mold,'' 
who have ``held it with fire and steel.''
  So on Veterans Day, we give them our deepest gratitude and our 
pledge, our pledge to do our part to guarantee what they have held is 
never lost.

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