[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 22]
[Senate]
[Page 30784]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




               GIVE OUR VETERANS THE CARE THEY'VE EARNED

  Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, it has been 3 weeks since President Bush 
signed into law the 2006 spending bill providing funding for the 
Department of Veterans Affairs. Unfortunately, his signature was 
accompanied by a glaring asterisk. Instead of approving the full amount 
of funding that Congress provided for veterans health care, the 
President bottled up $1.2 billion in emergency funding that the VA 
urgently needs to make ends meet.
  Congress added the emergency money to the bill after discovering that 
the President's 2006 budget request for the VA was woefully inadequate, 
compounding a series of errors in funding assumptions by the 
administration that led to a massive shortfall in VA funding in fiscal 
year 2005.
  The $1.2 billion in emergency funding was not some kind of optional 
Christmas bonus for America's veterans. It is money that the VA needs 
to cover the baseline cost of veterans health care programs. But that 
money cannot be released to the VA until the President signs on the 
dotted line and designates it as an emergency. Unless and until the 
President acts, the money will simply languish in the Treasury, 
benefitting nobody while jeopardizing the VA's ability to meet the 
needs of veterans. Make no mistake about it: without this money, the VA 
will experience another shortfall in funding in 2006, and veterans will 
suffer the consequences of diminished services and longer waiting times 
for health care.
  So why is the President sitting on this money? When Congress passed 
the VA funding bill, I wrote to the President urging him to release the 
emergency funding at the same time, thus assuring veterans that health 
care services will continue uninterrupted for the next year. But for 
some reason, the President has chosen not to release the emergency 
money. Instead of sending the VA the full amount of funding that 
Congress appropriated for veterans health care in 2006--a total of 
$22.5 billion--the President has chosen to hold $1.2 billion hostage at 
the White House.
  What possible reason could the President have for refusing to 
relinquish this money to the VA? Does he expect America's veterans to 
beg for the money? Could he possibly fail to understand the importance 
of fully funding the VA health care program? Or could he have somehow 
forgotten the chaos last summer when the VA revealed that it had at 
least a $1 billion shortfall in health care funding for 2005, and was 
facing another gaping shortfall in 2006?
  What kind of a signal does this send to our Nation's veterans, and to 
our men and women fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan?
  Congress has worked diligently over the past 6 months to clean up the 
budget mess in the VA. As a result of amendments that I spearheaded in 
the Appropriations Committee and on the floor, the Senate seized the 
initiative to provide emergency funding to cover the shortfall that 
occurred in 2005 and to head off another shortfall in 2006. The 
administration, by contrast, had to be dragged to the table and only 
grudgingly owned up to the catastrophic consequences of its sloppy and 
inept budget estimates.
  Congress has acted. Now the ball is in the President's court, and the 
clock is ticking. Mr. President, I again call on the President to 
immediately release the $1.2 billion in emergency funding for veterans' 
health care that Congress has provided.

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