[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 12]
[House]
[Page 16009]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          VETERANS HEALTH CARE

  (Mr. EDWARDS asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. EDWARDS. Mr. Speaker, it has now been 14 days since this House 
could have sent to the President a $1.5 billion emergency spending bill 
to solve the health care crisis facing America's veterans. 
Unfortunately, the House leadership chose not to support the bill that 
passed unanimously on a bipartisan basis by the Senate 2 weeks ago. 
Unfortunately, to compound that error, the leadership, I guess, decided 
a vacation for House Members tomorrow was more important than resolving 
this serious health care crisis, where today as we speak there are 
veterans not getting the care they deserve because of the shortfall of 
funding.
  To add insult to injury, the White House budget director just said a 
few minutes ago to the Budget Committee that VA funding over the last 3 
years has actually been too much. So the White House budget director is 
saying we funded too much for veterans health care over the last 3 
years. I think veterans across America are going to be outraged that 
that is the position of this administration.
  We are facing a crisis today because we have underfunded VA health 
care. We should correct it before Congress takes one more day of recess 
or vacation.

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