[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 6104-6110]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1930
             CONDITIONS AT WALTER REED ARMY MEDICAL CENTER

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. Capps). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Carter) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. CARTER. Madam Speaker, I want to rise today before this House to 
talk about something that weighs on the conscience of every Member in 
this House, a news story that broke very recently that has upset us 
all, the conditions at Walter Reed Hospital. Many Members of Congress 
have gone out there and looked at these conditions, and we are shocked 
by them.
  Every Member that I have spoken to is as concerned as I am. I am 
particularly concerned because I am from a district that I would argue 
has probably put more fighters in this war than any district in 
America, having Fort Hood, Texas, a two division post, the only two 
division post in the Army in my district. The 4th Infantry Division and 
the 1st Cavalry Division, along with the 3rd Corps, have deployed now 
to Iraq on three separate occasions each. The 3rd Corps and the 1st 
Cavalry are over there right now as we speak and the 4th Infantry 
Division is gearing back up to go back.
  Our soldiers have given a lot of their blood, sweat and tears to this 
war. They believe in their mission and they go to their mission as 
heroes, as far as I am concerned. And to learn that someone, whoever 
they may be, from whatever post in America or around the world, would 
have substandard conditions at what is supposed to be one of the two or 
three premier medical facilities for our Army in the country, shocks me 
and concerns me.
  I would think it concerns every Member of this Congress, whether they 
are for this war or whether they are against it. But for me in 
particular, having 50,000 soldiers that depend on me and other Members 
of this Congress to make sure that we have an adequate facility that 
gives the absolute best medical care that we can give, that we have 
that, is important. It is very important. It is actually lifesavingly 
critical.
  Now, first, to get the right picture, I have been to Walter Reed. I 
have been there on multiple occasions. I have visited one patient as he 
cycled through there a 9-month period of time, maybe even longer than 
that.
  I will tell you that the emergency care, the intensive care that was 
given in that unit, I can't say enough good about the doctors, the 
nurses, the orderlies and everyone who was doing the work there. I 
think that they gave outstanding service, the kind of service we would 
expect for our soldiers.
  The trauma medicine that is developing and has developed in the 
military today, from a medical standpoint, and I am no doctor, but I 
have sat in a courtroom and heard an awful lot of medical testimony, 
the trauma treatment that we have for our soldiers today is, quite 
frankly, state-of-the-art in what they can do to save lives, and we, by 
the procedures we have set up for our soldiers, are saving a lot of 
lives.
  But then we learn that people who are there as holdovers, who are at 
the recovery side of their phase through Walter Reed, are being housed 
in substandard housing, where there were rodents and infestations of 
insects, where there was black mold, which I happen to have personal 
firsthand experience with, having been moved out of my house for a 
little over a year because of stachybotrys, black mold, and having had 
my house totally wrecked to get that stuff out of it. I am very 
familiar with the health hazards that are claimed for that mold.
  To know that soldiers who have given their hard work and suffered an 
injury of some sort on our behalf are being required to stay in 
substandard housing such as that, or substandard facilities such as 
that, it is appalling. Quite frankly, if it turns out that is what the 
black mold was that they found there, that has health implications that 
affects the breathing of every human being, and it is very critical 
that we be concerned with that.
  So this is an issue where the light of day needs to shine on it, and 
we need to talk about it. I hope some of my colleagues will join us 
later here so we can discuss this matter, because I think it is 
important. I think it is important, and the American people expect, as 
I expect, that we will give the best quality health care from beginning 
to end for every soldier and veteran in the United States.
  It is Congress' responsibility to ensure that these medical 
facilities are providing the best possible care. The buck stops here. 
We have that responsibility.
  I think overall we are very proud of the medical care that is 
provided for our soldiers. But we can only hope to expend much more 
time and, if necessary, much more resources to make sure that what is 
going on at Walter Reed is corrected and that we look to see if there 
is anything we need to do at every hospital in America.
  I want to applaud the Army for getting on this deal right away. They 
have dispatched officials to inspect the quality of care at 11 
hospitals, and they are doing that this week and next. Of course, the 
President immediately acted and appointed Bob Dole and Donna Shalala to 
head a bipartisan commission to look into the solution to this problem. 
I think that is commendable, and I think that clearly shows how much 
the President and the White House care, as we care, about the health 
care of our soldiers.
  Because I have a major hospital in my district, at Fort Hood, I went 
this weekend out to Carl Darnall Army Medical Center in my district. 
This

[[Page 6105]]

wasn't my first trip there. I have been there on numerous occasions. 
This hospital serves approximately 50,000 active duty soldiers and 
airmen, approximately 56,000 family members, and over 40,000 retirees 
and surviving annuitants. This hospital, quite frankly, we have been 
working very diligently and we are very hopeful that we will expand 
Darnall so that it can be bigger and better.
  I was not concerned from what I had seen on multiple visits in the 
past that we would find problems at Darnall. But it seemed like to me 
that in light of the fact that we had this issue at Walter Reed, which 
by my visits to the intensive care unit at Walter Reed, I certainly did 
not see these conditions that are being described at Walter Reed, that 
I should make sure to talk to the folks, to go look at the hospital, to 
look at where we are housing our medical holdovers, and just see 
exactly what is going on at Darnall, too.
  I am happy to report, Madam Speaker, quite frankly, I was very 
impressed. In fact, I went into the rooms where some of our holdover 
medical folks were. Most of them were Guardsmen. They are living in 
dormitory-like rooms, dormitory barrack rooms, two to a room, 
occasionally one to a room, the kind of room I checked my boys into 
when I checked them into Texas Tech University to go to college. They 
were the kind of room you would put your child in, you would be happy 
to put your teenager or young adult child in while they were going to 
school; clean, well-established, well-furnished, kitchenette-type 
rooms.
  I visited some of the soldiers and asked them how things were 
working, were things working well there at Darnall. They were pleased. 
I went into more than one room and dropped in to visit with these 
folks.
  I want to say in defense of the people in the Army Medical Corps, 
these folks do care about our soldiers. I don't know what fell through 
the cracks out there at Walter Reed, and I am sure we are going to find 
out about that, but overall I cannot impress upon this body how much we 
have to respect these doctors and nurses and the time they are giving, 
because these folks are being deployed as well as serving our soldiers 
here. Many of them are being deployed to the two theaters of war today, 
working in theater hospitals that are part of the lifesaving process 
that we provide for soldiers today.
  It is a tragedy when we talk about the number of soldiers that we 
have lost and airmen and, of course, Marines and sailors. It is a 
tragedy when we lose one, and it breaks the heart of every American to 
lose any soldier. But as we look at what the medical community has been 
able to accomplish in this war over previous wars, we have kept 
fatalities down because of doctors and nurses and administrators and 
the plans they have to get our soldiers to the doctor, to get help 
quickly.
  The key is if they can get them off the battlefield and to a 
professional in 12 minutes, the vast majority of the time, no matter 
how serious the wound, we are able to save their lives. That is a track 
record that we don't have from previous wars. But it has been done by a 
combination of utilizing our medical facilities that all the branches 
of the service are involved in, and I have an example from back home 
that I will talk about sometime today to show how that works.
  Also while I was there, I went and visited the Olin E. Teague 
Veterans Center in Temple, and I will tell you, you think about what 
you have heard about veterans hospitals in the past. Well, I am telling 
you, everything you have heard, you need to go visit Olin E. Teague 
Hospital in Temple, Texas. I promise you, you will be impressed with 
the quality of health care and the quality of that facility, which 
houses everything from our old soldiers in nursing care to intermediate 
holding care to hospital care for our veterans. I am telling you, it is 
state-of-the-art, first-class medical care that they are providing 
there.
  Their new center, where they have about 400 men and women, it is 
better than what I live in here in Washington. It is a nice place. It 
looks like we have got a bunch of really happy veterans in that center. 
They have a lot of amenities. It is gloriously beautiful. I commend the 
foresight of those who preceded me to build that hospital up to the 
quality it is, and I feel very confident any inspections that take 
place there or at Darnall are going to come back with a very good 
report card.
  But that doesn't get us away from the issue we have been talking 
about, the Walter Reed issue. These dedicated professionals can do just 
so much, and I will tell you when the Army was called upon to respond I 
think they responded very quickly.
  I see I have been joined by my friend Robin Hayes.
  I yield to Robin Hayes.
  Mr. HAYES. Congressman Carter, thank you very much for holding this 
Special Order tonight. I think it is critically important that people 
be fully informed as to the quality of medical care that is being 
administered to our troops.
  You are a true champion for Fort Hood down in Texas. The epicenter of 
the universe for me is Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, North Carolina. You 
and I both spend a tremendous amount of time on this. Nothing is more 
important to you and I and our staffs and other Members of Congress 
than the health of every active duty, former, or soon-to-be-retired 
veteran. Anybody that is connected to the military, there is nothing 
that we will not do to make sure that their care is the absolute 
ultimate.
  You and I both have seen, as has Congressman Poe and others, there 
have been some revelations at Walter Reed Army Hospital. There have 
also been two instances at the VA hospital in Salisbury, in my 
district, where the care was not what you and I would have liked. 
Medicine is an art as well as a science. You and I and the rest of 
Congress are committed to making sure that those situations don't ever 
happen.
  But I think far more important, particularly in this debate, is the 
American public see here and realize fully that when you and I travel 
to Landstuhl, Germany, or Fort Bragg or the Hefner Medical Center or 
the Brooke Army Medical Center in Texas, the care that these men and 
women receive from incredibly dedicated, well-trained and committed 
individuals have saved so many lives on the battlefield.

                              {time}  1945

  These are the pilots who have flown the medical evacuations in 
helicopters and C-17 and other aircraft, racing the medical clock back 
to the U.S., Walter Reed, where incredible medical miracles have been 
performed, not just because of the advancement of science, but the 
dedication of the men and women who administer the care.
  As we talk about this, it is appropriate and necessary that we look 
under every nook and cranny. And if any Building 18 situation arises, 
whether it is Walter Reed, Fort Hood, Fort Bragg, whatever the case may 
be, we want to know about it. We have many Members and staff members 
who follow this closely. We will move as quickly as we possibly can. We 
try to stay in front of these situations.
  General Kiley has resigned. I called for his resignation. You hate to 
do those kinds of things, but the appropriate people need to take 
action. Action has been taken. People are aware at different levels 
that maybe weren't as aware as they should have been before. But at the 
end of the process, and thank you for bringing this to everyone's 
attention in a concise and I think important manner, the men and women 
as we speak around the clock and around the world are doing everything 
they can, not only to treat our wounded on the battlefield, but to 
provide preventive care for their wives, children and their parents. 
Everything that can be done, obviously, is not done every day; but it 
is not because the desire is not there.
  When I look at Womack Army Medical Hospital at Fort Bragg, they 
receive tremendous care. I was recently down there with Adam Smith who 
is now chairman of the TUTC, which stands for Terrorism, Unconventional 
Threats and Contingencies, to us Special Forces, and he and I toured 
the medical training facilities where combat medics are trained to 
respond to

[[Page 6106]]

battlefield situations. Let me tell you, these men and women have done 
incredible things.
  As we move forward, and well we must, you and I and everyone here are 
going to do everything possible to make sure that care exceeds 
everyone's expectation. Nothing is more important to this country. They 
are responsible for the past; they are responsible for the future. 
Thank God for the men and women in uniform. We will do everything we 
can to support them. Again, I thank you very much for having this 
Special Order tonight.
  Mr. CARTER. I thank my colleague from North Carolina, Robin Hayes, a 
true friend of the American soldier. He proves it by his actions as 
well as his words, and I thank you on behalf of our soldiers.
  Now I yield to my colleague from Texas, one of my former judge 
colleagues, Judge Poe.
  Mr. POE. Thank you, Judge Carter. Thank you for an opportunity to 
make some comments on this important issue.
  It has taken less than a week for the American public and this 
Congress to find out what was taking place at Walter Reed Hospital. It 
is one of the premier hospitals in the world for treating the injured. 
But yet there were some problems and those problems, rather than being 
overlooked, are being dealt with, and that is very, very good.
  A couple of observations that I would like to make about this whole 
episode. As you mentioned, Judge Carter, American troops if they are 
found after an injury within a few minutes, the likelihood of their 
survival is in the 90 percent range. That is a tremendous percentage of 
recovery for these individuals to live if they are wounded. And they 
live from wounds that just years ago, even back in Vietnam days, they 
would have died from. But because of medical science, expanding as it 
has, they will recover from those wounds, although they will have, many 
of them, lifetime recovery periods. And that is where we must make sure 
that we take care of our military, that the recovery for many of these 
individuals is going to be a long, long time. Sometimes the rest of 
their lives.
  An observation I would like to make about this situation at Walter 
Reed is that the American public expects us to take care of our 
soldiers. I think this is good. I think it is good that the American 
public is upset about the fact that some of our troops are not being 
taken care of the way they should be because our people in this Nation, 
regardless of how they feel about Iraq or Afghanistan, the issue of 
taking care of the wounded is not a political issue. It is an American 
issue, and Americans expect the best care for our troops. And that is 
important that the American public support our military in the recovery 
process.
  To try to illustrate how the American public supports our wounded 
warriors, I had the opportunity to go to Landstuhl Military Base in 
Germany where wounded Americans come from Afghanistan and Iraq, many of 
them with severe injuries, and they are treated there before they are 
even brought back to the United States because of the critical care 
facilities they have at Landstuhl.
  And when I found out I was going to be able to go over for this short 
trip with about 3 days' notice, I notified my two district directors in 
Texas to see if we could get some kids from local schools to make some 
cards to take over and give to the wounded. They met me at the airport 
with two suitcases full of handmade cards from third, fourth, and fifth 
graders of the Second Congressional District of Texas, and a little 
over 6,000 cards. I checked one of the suitcases. The smaller one I 
took on the plane with me, and I started reading them as I was flying 
over. The person next to me wanted to know what I was doing and I told 
him. And so he wanted to see them. He started reading the cards. Next 
thing I knew, the whole plane was reading. The cards were going up and 
down the aisle, and there were a few tears in the background.
  But the point being that the American public supports our military, 
supports our military even when they are wounded, and cares a great 
deal about them, to the tune of 6,000 handmade cards from a bunch of 
kids in Texas. Of course the troops were very grateful for those cards. 
But it is a sign and observation that the American public will always 
support our troops when they are wounded and expect us in the Congress 
to make sure they have the care that they deserve.
  The President acted very decisively and quickly, and I congratulate 
him for that because when things go bad at a hospital like it did at 
Walter Reed, the person in charge of the hospital needs to be removed. 
They need to get somebody over there that will take care of business 
and make sure that we don't have problems with our military.
  How we treat our warriors in aftercare really defines us as who we 
are as a Nation.
  One other comment I would like to make is it goes back to something 
that is tradition with our United States military, has been for a long 
time through many wars. The American fighting man always has the role, 
the obligation, the duty to never leave anyone behind on the 
battlefield. People in other cultures do not understand why Americans 
are so relentless in making sure we take care of not only our wounded 
but those that have fallen on the battlefield. They don't understand 
why we do that. We do that because we are Americans.
  One way that we leave no one behind is to make sure we don't leave 
them behind in the hospitals, we don't leave them behind in aftercare. 
We take care of them for as long as necessary, and if it means taking 
care of them the rest of their lives, so be it, because that is what we 
do in this country: we leave no one behind.
  So I commend you, Judge Carter, for this Special Order and bringing 
awareness of this whole plight of hospital care and the care of our 
warriors to the American public.
  Mr. CARTER. I am very fortunate, Madam Speaker, to have Duncan 
Hunter, somebody if you asked people in this Congress who is a friend 
of the soldier, the first word of their mouth will always be Duncan 
Hunter. He is the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee. He is 
a hero for American soldiers because he never forgets the needs of the 
soldier, both on the battlefield and in the hospital and as a veteran. 
I am honored to have Duncan Hunter join us.
  Mr. HUNTER. I thank my friend for yielding, and with that kind of 
introduction, I will just shut up and sit down. I thank him for that 
very kind introduction.
  I just got back from Iraq with Congressmen Dan Boren and Ken Calvert 
and Randy Neugebauer. We were at Landstuhl Hospital in Germany, which 
is the first place where our wounded soldiers and marines are taken 
after they have been wounded on the battlefields of Afghanistan and 
Iraq. They are stabilized and treated there, and then they are flown 
back to Walter Reed and Bethesda.
  We went over the new technologies that are being utilized right now 
and the new focus being put on our wounded soldiers. Let me tell you, 
that operation is first class.
  One thing, and the gentleman talked about Walter Reed and I thought 
it might be appropriate to bring up an issue that all Members of this 
body can participate in and help in, and it is this: last year I 
started in San Diego in Balboa Hospital, which is where a lot of our 
wounded marines are, and in Walter Reed. We started these forums for 
getting jobs for our guys and ladies who have gone through their 
therapy, they are being separated from the service, they have been 
wounded and they are going to go back into the private sector.
  So one thing that I thought we would do out in Balboa, and we did one 
of them here at Walter Reed, was to bring in people from industry and 
introduce them to our wounded soldiers and marines and try to help get 
them jobs. Hopefully, a young marine would stand up and say I am a 
generator mechanic from such and such a town in Vermont or Maine or 
California or Iowa, and we would be able to match them up with a 
company that might need such a talent in their company.
  So we started doing that, and the first session I had was in the 
dayroom

[[Page 6107]]

in Balboa Hospital in San Diego, and we actually had CEOs from major 
corporations in the dayroom and the marines all came in and told us 
what they did and introduced themselves, and we immediately had a 
number of people hired right there at that point in time.
  Well, I got back, and the Armed Services staff told me you may be 
breaking the law.
  I said, What are you talking about?
  They said, We have talked to the ethics lawyers on the Hill and there 
may be a question if a Member of Congress tries to help somebody get a 
job with private industry. There is the implication that reciprocal 
treatment will be required at some point: you are getting a favor and 
you will give a favor back.
  I said, What can we do?
  They said, You need legislation that will end up with the Ethics 
Committee and House Administration Committee expressly permitting 
Members of Congress to help get jobs for our wounded soldiers and 
marines.
  So last year, a month or two before we broke, we passed a resolution 
in the full House urging the Ethics Committee and the House 
Administration Committee to give us express permission to get jobs for 
our wounded folks. Every Member of the House can help us on this. I 
know that Vic Snyder who heads up the Personnel Subcommittee on the 
great Armed Services Committee and John McHugh are very much supportive 
of this.
  Hopefully, we will get this recommendation up before the Ethics 
Committee and the House Administration Committee. At that point I can 
see this entire House of Representatives doing great work because you 
can take a young man or woman from a town in America who has had an 
injury and gone through rehab and is looking to go into the private 
sector. A lot are staying with the service, but the ones that aren't 
staying with the service, we could call up the Congressman from that 
particular district that young person is going back to and find out if 
there is a company that needs that generator mechanic or that young man 
or woman who is interested in law enforcement or some other profession.

                              {time}  2200

  So I think there is a lot of opportunities here and I look forward to 
working with you and with the great gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. 
Hayes) and all of our colleagues to try to put this together.
  Mr. CARTER. That is a great idea, wonderful idea. We introduced a 
bill last session, we are going to put it back in this session, that is 
going to encourage employers to hire the spouses of our soldiers. We 
give a tax break to employers who hire ex-cons. We ought to give a tax 
break to employers who hire the spouses of soldiers who have gone to 
war for us because that is the kind of caring we have got to do, caring 
about what happens to them when they get back but caring about the 
worries they carry as they go to battle. That is very popular among 
employers who are interested in doing that.
  There are so many things, and what a great idea you have got, a job 
fair-type, national job fair promoted by the Congress for our wounded 
soldiers. That is a great idea.
  Mr. HUNTER. If the gentleman will yield further, nobody knows the 
companies and the businesses in their district better than a Member of 
Congress, and so I think if we can just pass this little provision in 
the Ethics Committee that will allow us to do it, we will be able to 
call up a Member of Congress from whatever district the young man or 
young woman has a residence in, find out what particular companies have 
disciplines in the area of occupation that this person specializes in. 
I think we can marry them up and get some jobs pretty quick.
  Mr. HAYES. If the gentleman will yield, you just returned from Iraq, 
literally landed moments ago. You visited Landstuhl. You were downtown 
in Fallujah and Ramadi. You were in Landstuhl this time, and you have 
been there before. I just realized that our Speaker tonight, the 
gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Capps), is a wonderful medical 
professional in another life. So it points out again and again that 
care and desire to do the right thing medically, absolutely knows no 
boundaries here.
  I remember being in Landstuhl on another trip with Speaker  Nancy 
Pelosi, and she was particularly intrigued by the facilities for 
premature babies there. So our wounded soldiers are critically 
important, their families, their children.
  You spoke of Dr. Snyder, a Democrat from Arkansas, a doctor from 
Arkansas. Again, my purpose is to reassure people at home, no, we are 
not perfect, and yes, it was a serious, serious issue at Walter Reed 
and there are others, but we are willing, able and anxious and ready to 
deal with those issues.
  Could you relate some of things you saw in your most recent visit to 
Landstuhl, which was this morning?
  Mr. HUNTER. Absolutely. The one thing that we have learned is that 
when people get concussions, there may be a lasting effect on those 
concussions, and we talked to several concussion specialists who now 
are focusing on Landstuhl and when the young people come back, 
especially when they have been attacked by IEDs, by weapons systems 
that have a blast effect, to have a new focus on the after effects of 
having concussions, and so that is something that is being done right 
now.
  Typically, in the old days, it was done, of course, in sports 
medicine, for example, guys that were boxers or played football and 
took numerous hits, and the effect of numerous concussions was studied 
and was followed.
  What we are focusing on here is, you have been in an IED attack or 
you have had a mortar attack that is close and that gives a concussive 
effect, it is important to monitor that individual for an extended 
period of time, not just figure, okay, he was knocked out or she was 
knocked out, but now they are fine. Monitor them for a period of time. 
So we have a new focus there in Landstuhl and that focus, it was 
important to Mr. Neugebauer especially, and Dan Boren and Mr. Calvert, 
who were on the trip with me, were all very interested in making sure 
that the information that is derived from observation of a patient who 
newly comes in, comes in and is stabilized there, that then is sent to 
Walter Reed and to Bethesda so there can be follow-up work so that we 
can treat the entire patient, and maybe that patient has a fragment 
wound, making sure that you take care of that, but at the same time 
make sure that we monitor the effects of concussions, which can in some 
cases have a lasting effect.
  So it is just one example of new focuses and new technologies that 
are being placed on our wounded soldiers, and the folks there do a 
great job.
  To go to Walter Reed for a minute and this problem we have with the 
outpatient, the inpatient care is good at Walter Reed. In fact, I was 
with a wounded Marine and a wounded soldier and it was either the same 
day or day or two before the story in the Washington Post broke. We 
have great inpatient capability there. What we have got to have is we 
have got to have what I would call a family friendly system that is 
consumer friendly and consumer easy, so that that 22-year-old wife of a 
Marine corporal, who is undergoing therapy there at Walter Reed and 
doing rehab there, so that it is easy to walk through the bureaucracy.
  So we build these bureaucracies. We inadvertently build them, like 
the one we built up that says now you cannot get a job for a wounded 
person or you are violating an ethics rule. We get sometimes so twisted 
and tied up in this multiplicity of rules that we end up losing sight 
of the real goals of what we are here for.
  So I think we need to make this a consumer friendly system for a 
person who has got a lot of things on their mind and maybe has some 
kids back home and they are coming several hundred miles to get rehab 
treatment or therapy can easily and quickly walk through the system 
without having to go through a phonebook thick of regulations and sign 
a million dotted lines.
  That is something we can do, one-stop shopping that is easy and 
simple. That is not bad to have throughout the Federal bureaucracy, but 
especially

[[Page 6108]]

when you have military families that have a lot of problems and a lot 
of things on their mind, we need to have a customer friendly system. 
That is what we need to develop.
  Mr. HAYES. If the gentleman would yield for just a moment, if I 
might.
  Mr. CARTER. All right.
  Mr. HAYES. We have got a good doctor from Texas, Dr. Burgess, going 
to join the discussion, and excuse us for overlooking you. You are the 
most qualified to be here. Duncan and I, I think have been accused of 
being hit in the head too many times before, but the point is on 
traumatic brain injury, this is something that has been very, very 
important.
  Tomorrow, the private sector, which has been very, very active, 
Martin Foil from my district, Traumatic Brain Injury Foundation will be 
here in the foyer of the Rayburn House Office Building, again to help 
further educate Members on the multiplicity of the implications and 
complications of brain injury, and all of us here have worked very, 
very hard for additional funding to do just that.
  Mr. CARTER. I am going to yield to the good doctor, to my colleague 
from Texas (Mr. Burgess), and one of those fine medical professionals 
that we have been talking about that serve here in the United States 
Congress.
  Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I thank 
him for convening this hour this evening. I think it was extremely 
important, extremely timely that we have this discussion on the House 
floor, and I am especially glad that we have been joined by such 
prestigious members on the House Armed Services Committee because I 
think their words certainly add much more than what I would be able to 
bring to the subject.
  I will just have to say I went to Walter Reed this afternoon, asked 
to go last week, because I thought it was important as one of the 
medical professionals in Congress that I go out and just look and see 
is there anything that causes me grief, that causes me concern. I will 
have to say I was not upset about the things that I expected to be 
upset about, and I was upset about things that never would have 
occurred to me to be upset about, and let me elucidate that a little 
bit if I can.
  Of course I read the stories in the newspapers last week, and I 
expected to be upset about the physical condition of the building, and 
the building in question, Building 18, which is just across the street 
from the Commanding General's residence at the Walter Reed Medical 
Garrison there in Northeast Washington.
  Indeed, the building is not the nicest of buildings in Washington, 
D.C., and I am sure there has been some attention to some of the 
problems that had already been rendered to the building in the week 
between the time the story broke and the time that I got out there, but 
in general, if you stop and think about what this housing was designed 
to do, it was obviously to provide a place for soldiers to stay while 
their medical conditions were evaluated, but while they decided do they 
stay in the military, do they get out, if they are able to undergo the 
physical processes for rehabilitation or allowed to stay in the 
military, how much time is going to be required. This location, 
Building 18, being outside the medical garrison of Walter Reed 
Hospital, had some appeal because it was outside the garrison, and as a 
consequence there was perhaps a little more freedom, a little more 
freedom of movement. There is a parking garage underneath it, not quite 
the same level of restriction that you have within the medical garrison 
itself.
  So the actual physical condition of the building, again, I am sure it 
had received some attention between the time the story broke and I got 
out there, was less distressing to me than some of the things that I 
heard that our wounded soldiers have to go through.
  I snapped a picture while I was out there. The gentleman talked about 
the massive amounts of regulation and red tape. Here is a gentleman 
going through his medical records. I do not think this picture does it 
justice, but this is about the size of the Dallas phonebook that he has 
got in front of him. These are his medical records he has got spread 
out on the table, and he is trying to put them in some semblance of 
order so he can make his case for the time he gets out of the military 
to assess his degree of disability if he were to wish to stay in, to be 
able to make the argument that he would be able to stay in the 
military.
  But an individual such as this, and this individual, in fact, was 
part of the Medical corps, you can see on his shoulder patch there. So 
he had some knowledge of the types of record he was reviewing on his 
own behalf. Just imagine someone without any medical expertise having 
to go through these numbers of records, and then what if it all gets 
lost, which unfortunately happens.
  Twenty-four hours total time that he spent in assembling these 
records, and unfortunately, he told me, it is not an infrequent 
occurrence, it is not just that a soldier's appointment would be 
canceled, that they expected for a few weeks time. It is not just that 
the ride to the hospital did not materialize, but this amount of work 
going into essentially what will define his future could be misplaced, 
and in this day and age, when we talk about the computerization of 
medical records, we talk about the VA system being on an electronic 
medical records system, there is no way right now for these medical 
records generated by the Department of Defense to talk to the medical 
records in the VA system.
  So it is a lot of work that we ask these folks to go through on their 
own behalf, and unfortunately, it can occur that after putting all 
those hours in this record ends up on the wrong place on someone's 
desk, and when the time comes to retrieve it, it cannot be found.
  That was a one of the things, again, I never expected to see today 
when I went to the hospital but certainly caught my attention when I 
visited.
  I would stress, and just like the chairman, just like my friend from 
Texas, I too have been to Landstuhl Hospital in Germany, spent a good 
deal of time on two separate occasions at the field hospital in Balad, 
Iraq, and spent some time at the Ebosina Hospital in downtown Baghdad 
last summer. In fact, that is the hospital where the famed Baghdad ER 
show was taped, and I would have to say through all of that exposure to 
the medical care available to our soldiers in the field, the so-called 
down range exposure, their medical care is top notch.
  I had an emergency room physician, an orthopedist in Balad, Iraq, 
tell me he had medicines and treatments at his disposal out in the 
field that he would never have had available to him in downtown 
Cincinnati. It is that training, that expertise that he gains dealing 
with those new treatments and those new therapies that will then make 
him a better physician, and he acknowledged this. I will be a better 
doctor when I go back to take care of the civilians in Cincinnati, 
Ohio, than I was before I left because of my experience here in Balad.
  I have heard other people refer to it, but certainly we have many, 
many dedicated men and women in the medical staff, the nursing staff at 
Walter Reed Hospital and our other fine military hospitals, and it does 
pain me somewhat to think that these individuals are also reading these 
stories. They go to work every day to do their best work. They go to 
work every day to take care of the genuine American hero, and then they 
hear their efforts and their professions demeaned in the press.
  I know how disheartening that can be and I would say to those 
individuals working in the Medical corps in our military hospitals and 
the Nursing corps in our military hospitals, God bless you. Thank you 
for what you do because individuals like this who, in another time and 
another place, might not have had such a happy outcome, he, in fact, is 
looking forward to a return to civilian life and being quite productive 
thanks to the expert care that he received at Walter Reed Hospital.

                              {time}  2015

  One thing that I do want to bring up because it is terribly 
important, the

[[Page 6109]]

Wounded Warrior Transition Brigade, which was just announced last week 
and has been formed this week. Major General Eric Schoomaker, who is 
the new command at Walter Reed Hospital, this establishes essentially a 
patient advocate in uniform, patient advocacy within a military 
context.
  This is one of the things, when we hear about the failures of 
leadership that resulted in some of the problems that have surfaced at 
Walter Reed Hospital, this was the type of leadership that was lacking. 
So these small brigades, which will now be composed of one leader with 
17 men or women under his command in those units who are awaiting a 
medical decision on their military future, certainly tightening up that 
ratio between leader and the number of men and women in the cohort will 
significantly improve things, I think, as far as the advocacy for our 
heroes.
  So the gentleman from Texas was very kind to call me down and let me 
participate in this. I thank you very much for your leadership on this. 
It is extremely timely and extremely important.
  Mr. CARTER. I thank my colleague from Texas for his comments and his 
expertise as a doctor. He is invaluable to this House, and we are very, 
very proud to have him as a Member of this House. I am proud to have 
him as a friend.
  Does the gentleman from North Carolina wish to be recognized?
  Mr. HAYES. Congressman Carter, after listening to Dr. Burgess, I just 
had a couple of more things I wanted to relate because they were so 
important.
  Mr. CARTER. Take all the time you need.
  Mr. HAYES. I was telling former Chairman Hunter, Ranking Member 
Hunter now, that when he and Randy Neugebauer return, we have our 
Congressional Prayer Caucus that meets every Monday or Tuesday night, 
just at the beginning of votes, and three young men who were just 
wounded and brought back from Iraq, we were able to pray for them and 
will contact their families tonight.
  Prayer still goes on here in the Halls of Congress, as you well know. 
We will meet on Wednesday morning. There are a number of organizations, 
Semper Fi Fund, Fallen Heroes Fund, but there are numerous others where 
men, women and children are working around the clock again to assist 
with these wounded veterans. They are doing a fabulous job. As part of 
this discussion, I wanted to call attention to them.
  Last but not least, I met a young man at Landstuhl a couple of years 
ago, Sergeant Danny Metzdorf, 82nd Airborne, all the way, and walked 
into that room, and you have had the same experience, he looked just 
like my son. That was what really caught my attention. He had just been 
wounded there, and I struck up a conversation with him and he hardly 
remembered that night. But when he got back to Walter Reed, went to 
visit him a couple of times, got to know his family, had a prosthetic 
leg, 25, 30 surgeries, just, really, all he thought about, I want to 
get back with my buddies, back with my unit.
  Well, that outstanding young soldier, Airborne guy, is now the 
coordinator and jump master for the Golden Knights. So with that new 
artificial leg, and these stories are, so, so, many, I want people 
again to be encouraged, not satisfied, but encouraged that medical 
treatment is not only available but it is something that is so 
critically important to us.
  I was here one day and some contentious issue was going on in the 
people's House, and I got an emergency, I thought, call. Dan Metzdorf 
is calling you. Oh my gosh, something has gone wrong, surgery, he had a 
complication. I immediately left the floor and called him. He said, 
gosh, there was so much going on, are you doing okay? That is the way 
our young people are today. They are for America. God bless them all.
  Mr. CARTER. Thank you so much for being here tonight. Let me tell a 
story about an 82nd airborne soldier. This is an 82nd Airborne soldier 
from my hometown. My son and daughter-in-law are a high school teacher 
and coach, and they knew this young man; we knew his family. He, in the 
invasion of Baghdad, he charged out on a bridge in the open to pull one 
of the fallen, he was a medic in the paratroopers, 19-year-old medic, 
and he charged out on his bridge and pulled one of his fellow 
paratroopers to safety. In the process of going back for others, he 
received a round through his abdomen.
  Now, I told this House earlier that this is a joint effort, and Alan 
Babin is a perfect example of the joint effort. He was immediately 
treated on the battlefield by a fellow medic, immediately evacuated and 
flown to the Navy ship offshore, I have forgotten the name of it now, 
to a mercy ship off the shore, where they treated him. From there he 
was flown by the Air Force, air evac medical team to Landstuhl in 
Germany, where he was stabilized and then he was flown to Walter Reed 
Hospital and had hundreds of surgeries, and for 7 months laid with an 
open, exposed abdominal cavity which had to be scrubbed clean every 
day. That boy would have died on any other battlefield, anywhere else 
in the world; but he was an American soldier, given American medical 
care.
  Today, he is recovering. While in the process of being treated, Alan 
suffered a stroke. His wounds are healed now, and he is rehabilitating 
himself with help from the Army on the damage that he received from the 
stroke while being treated for his wound.
  We expect all of us in Round Rock, Texas, Alan Babin, to be back and 
functioning and doing well and heal completely because his spirits are 
great and he is working hard like every soldier and every Airborne 
trooper would; and he is the pride of Round Rock, Texas. He won the 
Bronze Star with valor for his treatment of his fellow soldiers, fellow 
paratrooper.
  Those stories, there are a million of them. We see them every day in 
Landstuhl. I wanted to tell that story, because I want the American 
people to know that is the kind of medical care that our medical 
doctors are giving. This week, when I was at Darnall Hospital in Fort 
Hood, they told me about the fact that we couldn't make it if it wasn't 
for the doctors who were willing to serve in the Reserve.
  In this Reserve, we sent 11 doctors downrange to Iraq in our last 
deployment. Someone has to fill in for those 11 doctors back at Fort 
Hood. It is the Army Reserve doctors that come in there and do that and 
the Army Reserve nurses. I visited with a nurse, I believe, from 
Jamaica, New York, who was filling in as a Reserve nurse who had been 
called up, or maybe she was a National Guard nurse.
  So not only are the heroes in the war but the heroes in the Reserve 
and the Guard, they are doing a great job. It is abominable that we had 
this condition at Walter Reed. We will address it, we will fix it, but 
let's not take away our doubt that these doctors and nurses and medical 
professionals are doing everything they can to make sure our soldiers 
are getting the best care they can.
  My friend Mr. King, Steve King, has joined us. I want to recognize 
him and allow him to say a few things here.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Texas for organizing 
this Special Order hour and for gathering together a lot of patriotic 
Americans and shedding some objective light on the health care 
situation with our men and women; and like many of the Members who have 
spoken earlier in this hour, I am one who has also made consistent 
trips over to Iraq, Afghanistan, the hospital, Landstuhl in Germany, 
and, also, I make it a point to be one place or another to visit our 
wounded, at either Walter Reed or Bethesda or Landstuhl. So I have been 
to Walter Reed a number of times, and saw nothing like I saw described 
here on the floor of the House of Representatives, and make no excuses 
for that. In fact, like everyone else, I believe we needed to fix it 
and we did fix it as quickly as possible.
  The people that come down here to the floor night after night after 
night with the same poster that had the words cockroach, mold and mice 
on it have been repeating the same mantra, but they have not seen 
anything like we are describing here night after

[[Page 6110]]

night after night. This was, as I understand it, two rooms out of 300 
and some altogether in a place where no one goes. The people that were 
there were ambulatory patients that liked it there because they were a 
little off campus, they had a little more freedom. So those were the 
circumstances. They have been fixed.
  But I will say what this needs to be: this needs to be a message to 
us, a kind of reminder, a wake-up call, because what I saw here 
demonstrated by Mr. Burgess, which is that there are patients there 
whose care is too bureaucratic, we can use this as a launching pad to 
bring software into place and to put into place a patient tracking 
system that will compare the tracking of these patients and the 
timeliness of their care with that in the private sector and have red 
flags come up on those files if there is a time they are not being 
dealt with in a fashion they should be. We can get this set up. It 
needs to be managed in that fashion.
  I will also say that the VA hospitals have taken a fair amount of 
criticism on this. The ones that I go visit have modern health care and 
a modern tracking system and a bar code that goes on the wrist of the 
patient. When they go in there, they read that bar code and within 
seconds their full medical record is there; any pharmaceuticals that 
have been prescribed by them are all right there. It reduces and almost 
eliminates mistakes for prescriptions, for example.
  There are a lot of modern pieces that have been put together. Most of 
our VA hospitals, and the ones I know, do a good job. They shouldn't be 
dragged into this, and the Walter Reed piece of this, we can do a 
better job. More of it has to do with patient management and timeliness 
of care and modernizing the recordkeeping system. Little of it has to 
do with putting plaster up on the wall and putting carpet into place. 
Let's use the need to do this to get this place, put Walter Reed back 
into the 21st century and give these men and women the very best top-
notch care that is possible.
  We can do that. The people doing the work, we need to applaud them, 
not criticize them. They give their hearts and their minds and their 
energy to our brave men and women who have given their life and limb 
for our freedom and for our liberty.
  The only thing that they are short of is they suffer from compassion 
fatigue, and they get burned out on these jobs. But what I see, 
selfless Americans are doing the best job they can. We can give them 
some better tools to work with, which has to do with tracking the 
patients and being more timely in the service we provide.
  Mr. CARTER. I thank the gentleman for joining us here today. On that 
issue of electronic records, when I was at Darnall on Saturday, we were 
talking about them implementing the electronic recordkeeping. I said, 
well, now, I need to know, are the electronic records that you are 
working on here, are they interoperable with the VA's electronic 
records? They said, well, they are so far ahead of us, we will 
certainly work to have interoperability, but we are way behind the VA.
  Most Americans wouldn't expect that to be heard. The VA is getting a 
reputation on their electronic records of having a state-of-the-art 
electronic records system. People are coming in from the private sector 
to look at what the VA has done. The Army is using it as a model to 
bring Army electronic records up to par. It is important, it is one of 
the missions we need to have here in Congress to make sure we provide 
the support and the funds to make sure we have an electronic record 
system which will take our soldier and track him from the minute he 
raises his right hand to serve our Nation, until, at the point we all 
get there, he is buried in one of our veterans cemeteries, until we 
have accurate records for him that are electronic, easily found, so we 
can get him the care, he or she the care, that they need.
  Madam Speaker, this is an issue that has concerned every American, 
Democrat and Republican, since it broke. We are all concerned. We all 
want the American people to know that whatever differences we may have 
on the issues concerning the war, this is an issue of the lives of the 
American soldier; and all Americans care for our American soldiers.

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