[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 18]
[Senate]
[Pages 27308-27309]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



         ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF THE COMMITTEE ON VETERANS' AFFAIRS

 Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I have sought recognition today to 
summarize for my colleagues, and for the public, the activities and 
accomplishments of the Committee on Veterans' Affairs during the 106th 
Congress. I am pleased to report, as chairman of the committee, that 
this Congress has been one of significant accomplishment.
  When this Congress convened, it was determined that three veterans' 
priorities needed to be met. We had to increase the availability of 
Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)-provided health care services, 
particularly long-term care services, to World War II veterans. We had 
to improve educational assistance benefits--so-called Montgomery GI 
bill or MGIB benefits--made available by VA to veterans, principally 
young veterans, newly released from service. And we had to address and 
rectify vestigial elements of discrimination against women contained in 
veterans' statutes. With the assistance of the committee's ranking 
minority member, Senator John D. (``Jay'') Rockefeller IV, and in 
bipartisan partnership with all of the committee's members, we have 
achieved all three of these goals--and more.
  First, with the enactment of the Veterans Millennium Health Care and 
Benefits Act of 1999, Public Law 106-117 (Millennium Act), the Congress 
provided for the first time that the most deserving of veterans--those 
with severe service-connected disabilities--will be assured of 
receiving nursing home care should they need it--and so long as they 
need it. Under the terms of the Millennium Act, any veteran who needs 
nursing home care to treat a service-connected disability will get it. 
Similarly, any veteran who is rated as 70 percent disabled or higher by 
VA due to a service-connected cause will be provided with needed 
nursing home care--even if the condition which causes the need for such 
care is not itself service-connected. Further, all veterans who are 
enrolled for VA care--even those who do not have service-connected 
disabilities--will, under the terms of the Millennium Act, receive any 
and all non-institutional alternatives to inpatient long-term care--
services such as home health aide services, adult day health care 
services, and the like--as they might need to forestall the day on 
which they will have to resort to inpatient long-term care. Finally, 
the Millennium Act mandates that VA maintain the nursing home capacity 
that it now has, and that it initiate pilot programs to determine, 
first, the most cost-effective ways of providing more nursing home care 
to more veterans and, second, the feasibility of providing to veterans, 
and their spouses, assisted living services.
  With enactment last month of the Veterans Benefits and Health Care 
Improvement Act of 2000, Public Law 106-419, the other two priorities 
which had been identified at the outset of the 106th Congress were also 
met. Under that statute, a veteran who has served a three-year 
enlistment and who returns to school after service will be eligible to 
receive as much as $800 per month in assistance payments while he or 
she is in school. In January 1997, when I assumed the chairmanship of 
the committee, veteran-students could receive no more than $427 per 
month in Montgomery GI bill assistance; thus, in four years, assistance 
to full time veteran students has been increased by 87 percent.
  The Veterans Benefits and Health Care Improvement Act also addressed 
two issues of importance to women veterans: It provided that special 
compensation benefits--those provided to male veterans when they lose, 
due to a service-connected cause, a so-called creative organ--will also 
be afforded to women veterans who sustain the service-connected loss of 
a breast. And it provided--based on sound scientific evidence--that 
children with birth defects of women Vietnam veterans will be provided 
compensation, health care, and job training benefits.
  These three measures--addressing the disparate needs of older, 
younger, and women veterans--are not the only veterans-related 
legislative accomplishments of the 106th Congress. To the contrary, the 
list of other legislative achievements is long. In addition to 
providing the long-term care benefits I have already outlined, the 
Millennium Act also specifies that VA will itself provide, or reimburse 
the uninsured costs of, emergency care needed by any veteran enrolled 
for VA care. It mandates, further, that VA enhance the services it 
provides to homeless veterans, and to veterans with post-traumatic 
stress disorders, drug abuse disorders, and injuries from sexual 
trauma. It provides, in addition, that higher priority access to VA 
care will be provided to veterans who were wounded in combat and are, 
as a consequence, recipients of the Purple Heart. And, finally, it 
authorizes VA to provide enhanced care, as space is available, to 
active duty service personnel and military retirees (who normally 
receive care from their respective military services), and reauthorizes 
the provision of health care evaluations to the spouses and children of 
Persian Gulf war veterans.
  Further in the area of health care benefits, the Millennium Act and 
the Veterans Benefits and Health Care Improvement Act jointly enhance 
services provided to veterans by improving VA assistance to State-run 
veterans' nursing home facilities; by authorizing 13 major hospital 
construction projects; by improving provisions of law relating to 
nurse, dentist, and pharmacist pay and the recruitment of physician 
assistants, social workers, and medical support staff; by increasing VA 
incentives to collect reimbursements from non-service-disabled 
veterans' health insurance carriers--funds that are not remitted to the 
Treasury but are funneled back into VA hospitals; and by encouraging 
increased VA and Department of Defense cooperation in the procurement 
of pharmaceuticals and medical supplies. And last, but surely not least 
in the area of health care, VA's health care system received the two 
greatest increases ever in funding for fiscal years 2000 and 2001, 
increases of $1.7 billion and $1.4 billion respectively. The ranking 
member and I very much appreciate that the chairman and ranking member 
of the VA, HUD and Independent Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee, 
Senators Bond and Mikulski, heard our call for such funding increases.
  In the area of veterans' readjustment benefits and other non-
healthcare-related benefits provided by VA, I have already outlined the 
significant increases in monthly Montgomery GI bill benefits that have 
been gained since 1997, and the improvements in women veterans' 
benefits. Beyond these accomplishments, there is a lengthy and strong 
record of accomplishment. In addition to increasing veterans' 
educational assistance allowances, the Veterans Benefits and Health 
Care Improvement Act also increased education assistance benefits 
provided to the widows and surviving children of persons who were 
killed in service or who died after service from service-connected 
causes. And these survivors' educational assistance benefits were, for 
the first time, ``indexed'' by the Veterans Benefits and Health Care 
Improvement Act so that they will keep pace with inflation. The 
Veterans Benefits and Health Care Improvement Act

[[Page 27309]]

and the Millennium Act also improved VA educational assistance programs 
by allowing benefits to be paid to students taking test preparation 
courses and certification or licensing examinations, and by paying 
benefits to students during term breaks and, retroactively, to students 
who are veterans' survivors and who are deemed eligible for such 
benefits only after their educations have begun. In addition, those 
statutes also expanded eligibility standards applicable to post-Vietnam 
era veterans by allowing those who had participated in the less 
generous Veterans Educational Assistance Program or VEAP program of the 
late 1970's and early 1980's to convert to Montgomery GI bill 
eligibility. Finally, the Veterans Benefits and Health Care Improvement 
Act liberalized MGIB participation rules so that officer candidates and 
veterans serving second enlistments would not, due to technicalities in 
the law, be denied Montgomery GI bill eligibility.
  Benefits other than educational assistance benefits were also 
improved by the Veterans Benefits and Health Care Improvement Act, the 
Millennium Act, and other committee-approved legislation. Compensation 
benefits provided to radiation-exposed veterans were modified by the 
addition, under the Millennium Act, of bronchiolo-alveolar cancer to 
the listing of diseases that are presumed to be service-connected if 
they are contracted by radiation-exposed veterans. The Veterans 
Benefits and Health Care Improvement Act specifies that compensation 
will be provided, for the first time, to reservists who suffer heart 
attacks or strokes while on active duty and to veterans who are injured 
while participating in VA-sponsored compensated work therapy programs. 
In addition, that statute provides for a long-overdue increase in the 
net worth threshold at which compensation payments are suspended in 
certain cases involving veterans who are hospitalized on a long term 
basis, though I hasten to add that a repeal of this limitation--which, 
under current law, applies to mentally incompetent hospitalized 
veterans but not to other hospitalized veterans--will remain a top 
priority of mine. And benefits provided to veterans' widows were 
improved by liberalizing eligibility for survivors of former prisoners 
of war and widows who have remarried. In addition, the Veterans Claims 
Assistance Act of 2000, Public Law 106-475, reinstated and improved 
court-struck provisions of law requiring that VA assist veterans and 
other claimants--principally, widows and surviving children--in the 
preparation of their claims to VA for benefits. And Public Laws 106-118 
and 106-413 increased VA compensation, survivors' benefits, and other 
cash-transfer benefits by 2.4 percent and 3.5 percent, respectively, 
thereby assuring that VA benefits keep pace with inflation.
  In the area of insurance benefits, the Veterans Benefits and Health 
Care Improvement Act increased the amount of life insurance available 
to service members from $200,000 to $250,000, and authorized insurance 
program participation by members of the Reserves. That statute also 
freezes premiums paid by certain insured veterans who have reached the 
age of 70. And, in the area of housing benefits, the Veterans Benefits 
and Health Care Improvement Act improved remodeling grant programs to 
assist disabled veterans in making their homes accessible, and the 
Millennium Act extended mortgage loan guarantee benefits to members of 
the Reserves.
  In order to assist veterans in gaining meaningful post-service 
employment, the Veterans Benefits and Health Care Improvement Act 
extends eligibility for Federal contractor outreach programs to 
recently-separated veterans. In addition, the Veterans Entrepreneurship 
and Small Business Development Act of 1999, Public Law 106-50, provides 
technical, financial, and procurement assistance to veteran-owned small 
businesses.
  Finally, in the area of memorial affairs, the Millennium Act mandates 
that VA establish six new national cemeteries in areas which VA had 
identified as being underserved. In addition, the Millennium Act 
facilitated last month's dedication of the World War II Memorial on the 
National Mall by authorizing the American Battle Monuments Commission 
to borrow funds needed to proceed now while World War II veterans 
remain alive to see the memorial they earned. Finally, the Veterans 
Benefits and Health Care Improvement Act extended eligibility for 
burial, and funeral expense and plot allowances, to certain U.S.-
citizen Filipino veterans, improved VA assistance to States in 
establishing State cemeteries, and extended job-protection benefits to 
Reserve and Guard members who take leave from their civilian jobs to 
honor veterans by serving in burial details.
  Mr. President, I commend and thank the ranking minority member of the 
Veterans' Affairs Committee, and all of the committee's members, for 
their extraordinary diligence and cooperation in assisting me in 
pressing forward the numerous improvements to veterans programs that I 
have outlined in this statement. The Veterans' Affairs Committee 
operates in an unusually bipartisan way--a way that might be a model 
for constructive activity in the 107th Congress. We will continue to so 
act, and we anticipate that the 107th Congress will show a record of 
accomplishment similar to that which characterizes the 106th.

                          ____________________