[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 5]
[Senate]
[Page 6725]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                         OLDER AMERICANS MONTH

  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, because of the traffic and the business in 
the Chamber yesterday, I was not able to speak on May as Older 
Americans Month, but I did submit a resolution as chairman of the 
Senate Aging Committee to recognize May as Older Americans Month, as we 
have for 38 years, saying that this is the official month during which 
we pay tribute to the contributions of 44 million older Americans.
  It is during this month that we as a nation recognize older Americans 
for their service, hard work, and sacrifice that helped assure us the 
freedom and security we now enjoy.
  There is a great deal more I could say, and through the month of May 
there will be a great deal said about the contribution that older 
Americans make to this great society of ours.
  Of course, for those of us who still have parents or grandparents who 
are active and contributing to their communities, we know how valuable 
this group of citizens is in our culture.
  The program we will be looking at when we reauthorize, as we did the 
Older Americans Act, is going to advance once again the surety of a 
good many of the programs that are available to them. We reauthorized 
it last year finally after 5 years. It is important we did that because 
so many of those programs drive results at the local community level 
that are extremely valuable to all of us.
  With this authorization, Congress was able to add an important 
component to the act, and that was the program to authorize $125 
million to establish a new National Family Caregivers Support Program 
to provide grants to States to provide information and services to 
family caregivers, another one of those broadening concepts on which we 
work with the senior community of our Nation.
  I wanted to take time briefly this morning to recognize May as Older 
Americans Month and the resolution that was submitted yesterday by 
myself and others.

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