[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 13]
[House]
[Page 18781]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




              REBUILDING A NEW VA HOSPITAL IN NEW ORLEANS

  (Mr. JEFFERSON asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute.)
  Mr. JEFFERSON. Mr. Speaker, I rise to thank Chairman Bob Filner and 
members on his House Committee on Veterans' Affairs for holding a field 
hearing in New Orleans on this past Monday on the subject of rebuilding 
a new VA hospital in the greater New Orleans area.
  The VA has narrowed its search for the location of a new VA hospital 
to a downtown New Orleans site and to a site in the adjoining Jefferson 
Parish. For reasons of taking advantage of the synergies of the 
relationship of Tulane and LSU medical schools to the new VA hospital 
and because of the savings and long-term operational costs that can be 
realized, I and several of the panelists recommended the New Orleans 
site as most beneficial to the care of our veterans.
  Mr. Speaker, in the end it is important that we put our veterans 
first. When we have called on them to serve our country, they have not 
asked us to wait. They have responded to our Nation's call to duty at 
great risk to themselves and to their families. Nearly 2 years after 
Hurricane Katrina struck, we have already asked them to wait far too 
long. It is now time to build a world-class, state-of-the-art VA 
hospital in downtown New Orleans and to do so in the shortest possible 
time. We call on the Veterans Administration to do just that.

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