[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 2]
[Senate]
[Pages 2826-2828]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             VETERANS CARE

  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, our servicemembers in Iraq are fighting 
under incredibly stressful conditions each and every day. We are on the 
floor today talking about an Iraq resolution. We are focused on the war 
or the surge. I wish to talk today about the soldiers themselves who 
are called on. Many of them, as we know, have come home with terrible 
injuries that need specialized care. Yet there are too many examples 
that show today the Bush administration was caught unprepared to take 
care of these men and women when they have come home.
  So as we continue to talk about Iraq, I think it is important we also 
talk about the toll that this war is taking on our troops and our 
veterans. I wish to focus today on the need to ensure that our injured 
servicemembers and veterans can get the care they need and deserve by 
reminding all of us what happened in the last year and how much we 
still have to do.
  A year ago this month, the Washington Post published a story that 
uncovered the depth of the problems facing our servicemembers who were 
being treated at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The Post reported 
then that servicemembers were living in rooms with moldy walls and 
broken ceilings while they waited, waited to get care. The Post found 
that many of our servicemembers and their families felt trapped at the 
time in a bureaucratic catch-22 as they fought to get the disability 
benefits they had earned.
  The news of the extent of the squalid conditions was a watershed 
moment in the care of our military men and women. It focused the 
attention of the American people on the needs and treatment of our 
injured servicemembers and veterans. It put a spotlight on the 
frustrating redtape that was facing servicemembers as they transitioned 
out of the military and into the VA.
  I am very proud that Congress, led by the Democratic majority, moved 
quickly to investigate the problems, not just at Walter Reed but 
throughout the military and VA systems to take that action.
  Shortly after the Washington Post story ran, the Democratic leaders 
went to Walter Reed and met with our injured servicemembers. The 
Veterans' Affairs Committee and the Armed Services Committee joined in 
a historic partnership to address the problems we saw there and at 
military and VA facilities across the entire country.
  Many of us have continued to go to Walter Reed and other facilities 
on a regular basis, as we had even before those stories ran. In fact, I 
was up at Walter Reed a short time ago to tour the mental health ward 
and learn

[[Page 2827]]

about what efforts are being made to decrease the stigma attached to 
mental health care and to help improve care.
  As a result of the action we took, our country has made a lot of 
changes in its care for our servicemembers and our veterans. One of the 
most significant was the Wounded Warriors Act, which was included in 
last year's Defense authorization bill.
  With the Wounded Warriors Act, we laid out a clear path, directing 
the Defense Department and the VA to address the shortfalls in the care 
of our injured servicemembers. So a year after the Walter Reed report, 
we required the Defense Department and the VA to work together to 
develop a comprehensive plan to prevent, treat, and diagnose traumatic 
brain injury and post-traumatic stress syndrome, and we directed the 
Defense Department to create Centers of Excellence for TBI and PTSD to 
improve our understanding of these devastating injuries that were 
impacting our soldiers.
  We are addressing the frustrating bureaucracy with which our troops 
have struggled. We have now directed the VA and the Defense Department 
to develop a joint electronic health care record. And we are requiring 
the military and the VA to work together, finally, on disability 
ratings.
  The Defense Department is investing in new technology, more 
equipment, and state-of-the-art treatment to better care for injured 
soldiers. Walter Reed and facilities across the entire country are 
making similar improvements. In fact, in my home State of Washington, 
Fort Lewis has taken great strides in its treatment of wounded 
servicemembers who are recovering there. In one example, leaders there 
are working very hard now to help our servicemembers and, critically, 
their families understand the benefits available to them.
  I am optimistic the action we took is changing the way our military 
and the VA operates. But as I stand on the floor today, I must tell you 
we have a lot of work left to be done. Yesterday, the GAO reported to 
Congress the Army has significantly improved its support for 
servicemembers at Walter Reed and our military hospitals.
  According to the Washington Post this morning, there is an article 
today: Army officials say they have transformed the way they care for 
soldiers and their families.
  But the GAO also said, as has been reported this morning, there are 
still shortages of staff and other gaps we have to address. In fact, 
one-third of warrior transition units are still understaffed. And that, 
to me, raises concerns about the progress of a streamlined disability 
ranking system.
  We still have a long ways to go to provide our servicemembers with 
the care they deserve. And some of these changes are actually going to 
require a cultural transformation within the military. We have to keep 
our eye on the ball.
  I got a personal reminder of this when I reconnected recently with 
Army retired SPC Rory Dunn. He is an amazing young man who comes from 
my home State and lives in Renton, WA. Rory was horribly injured when 
his humvee was hit by a roadside bomb outside Fallujah in 2004. When I 
first saw Rory, he was in front of me with his entire skull crushed in, 
his head crushed from ear to ear. He lost an eye. He lost his sense of 
smell. He lost much of his hearing. He still today, in fact, has 
shrapnel in his brain. Rory, sitting in front of me, had visibly 
sacrificed for our country, nearly losing his life several times as he 
was moved from Fallujah to Germany and finally to Walter Reed. When he 
got to the United States, he was sent to Walter Reed, and there the 
Army tried to discharge him before he completely had recovered.
  He and his mother have struggled to help make sure he gets the 
benefits he needs, not just that, the lack of medical care as he 
progressed. When I saw Rory at one time he was excited. He was being 
sent to Richmond, VA polytrauma center for treatment. Recently he told 
me about the horrific experience he had there. I hope much has improved 
since then, but he told me at the time, even though he could not get 
out of bed because of the tremendous extent of his injuries, he would 
wake up in the morning, ring his call bell, which apparently was not 
plugged in, and wait for a nurse to come and help him with basic 
restroom needs. No one came for hours. Rory was left there. A soldier 
who fought for his country in the Iraq war, had done everything his 
country asked of him, injured horribly, was left to sit in his own 
waste in a polytrauma center in Virginia.
  Thankfully we have come a long way from there. Rory should never have 
had to go through that.
  He was then sent on to Palo Alto for reconstructive surgery. They did 
an amazing job. In fact, when I first talked to Rory after his 
injuries, he asked me to pin his Purple Heart on him when he was 
awarded that. But he wanted to wait until he had his face reconstructed 
because he wanted the picture to look good. So he had to wait many 
months before I finally met him in Seattle and was so proud to pin that 
on his chest as his mother sat and watched with tears running down her 
face.
  That was several years ago. Rory has continued to struggle every 
single day, a young man, barely out of his teenage years, injured 
dramatically in the war in Iraq, 4 years later, still struggling to do 
everything he can to be an American. What is Rory doing with his time? 
He and his mother, who has now spent 4 years helping Rory recover, are 
back at Walter Reed and other VA facilities to make sure no soldier 
goes through what Rory did, advocating for them, making sure they 
understand what they need, making sure they get the help and support 
and, importantly, making sure I continue to understand what is 
happening in the military in our VA system and making sure that no 
soldier goes through what he did when he came home. Rory told me a few 
weeks ago: There is much work left to be done. He still talks to 
soldiers who have been left behind, who are not getting the help they 
need, who feel like second-class citizens, who feel they are still 
fighting their Government when they come home.
  For me, Rory is the face of this war. I think we have to ensure that 
the changes we are making to improve the conditions for all of our 
servicemembers and veterans such as Rory are not a flurry of action 
while the cameras are rolling. We have to work to ensure that action 
doesn't drop off once the media has moved on to the next story. I 
remain firmly convinced that we have to remain vigilant on three 
specific fronts if we are going to talk about real change for our 
troops and our veterans. I believe, first, we have to ensure that we 
cut through the bureaucracy between the military and the VA. It is 
simply unacceptable that after fighting for our country, our 
servicemembers have had to return and fight against the Government for 
the care they deserve. It isn't only from this war. Go back and talk to 
Vietnam-era, Korean-era veterans who have been fighting for years to 
get the disability benefits they deserve.
  Thanks to the Wounded Warrior Act, we have now started a pilot 
project to work out ways to make the Defense Department and the VA 
disability rating systems compatible so our soldiers do not face this, 
but we do have to remember, this is the first step between bridging the 
gap between the VA and the Defense Department. It is only a pilot. We 
have a lot more work we need to do to ensure that those agencies don't 
do a pilot project and put it on the shelf; that they look at how it is 
working, what is working, what is not, what are the challenges in front 
of us, are we making sure that we stay on them every day. Congress has 
to keep a close watch to make sure this isn't because the cameras were 
rolling a year ago or today but something that is effective far into 
the future. We have to work to make sure they meet those goals.
  Secondly, we have to focus our attention on treating the new injuries 
to our servicemembers who are suffering in Iraq and Afghanistan, 
particularly traumatic brain injury. TBI is a significant wound of this 
war, but we have only just begun to understand how we treat it. We have 
to recognize that whenever there is an explosion in Iraq

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or Afghanistan or wherever we have soldiers on the ground, the effects 
of that, not just on the soldiers in the vehicle but even those close 
by and sometimes hundreds of yards away, can have a damaging impact on 
the brain, called traumatic brain injury. We still don't know all we 
need to about how to treat TBI, and we still have soldiers coming home 
every day, every month who have just been diagnosed with TBI or perhaps 
not diagnosed, and we need to make sure they get the correct diagnosis 
and treatment.
  Congress has authorized millions of new dollars for research, but we 
have to ensure that we get the results from that research. Then we have 
to make sure we take action based on what we have learned.
  I am extremely disappointed that the President seems to have lost 
sight of that already. He has proposed to this Congress an 8-percent 
cut for VA medical and prosthetic research in his fiscal year 2009 
budget. That is incredibly shortsighted, and he can be sure--and every 
Member of this body can be sure--I am going to fight that every step of 
the way. We need to find out how to better treat TBI, how to diagnosis 
it, how to deal with PTSD and how to diagnose and treat it effectively. 
That takes research, and we have to stay on top of it.
  Finally, and most difficult, we have to change a military culture in 
which servicemembers are told that mental illness is an excuse for 
their pain and which fails to recognize that psychological wounds can 
be more serious than some of their physical injuries. Congress again 
has given the military hundreds of millions of dollars to improve its 
mental health care system. We have pushed through legislation this past 
year requiring the military and the VA to destigmatize mental health 
treatment, to increase awareness of the symptoms of post-traumatic 
stress syndrome, and to do further research on traumatic brain injury. 
But recent reports show that the Army's suicide prevention efforts need 
a lot more work. The numbers of suicides have risen since the wars in 
Iraq and Afghanistan began, and last year as many as 121 soldiers 
committed suicide. That is a 20-percent increase over the year before.
  I was struck by a recent report by the Associated Press which was a 
stark reminder of how serious this issue is. That article reported on a 
VA study which found that more than half of the veterans who took their 
own lives from 2001 to 2005 were members of the National Guard or 
Reserve, even though the Guard and Reserve have made up less than a 
third of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
  Prolonged deployments are stretching our troops to the breaking 
point. Earlier this week General Casey acknowledged his concern about 
the strain on the military. He told the Senate Armed Services Committee 
that the Army is under so much stress from extended deployments that we 
must reduce the length of combat tours as soon as possible. Many of our 
servicemembers have seen their best friends killed. They have seen 
other untold horrors. Yet somehow we expect them to come back from the 
battlefield, come back home unaffected by what they have seen, or their 
experience. We have to ensure that the military takes action to ensure 
that our troops are getting the psychological care they need. We need 
to see a change in the culture. That change has to be more than a 
talking point. Senior military leaders have pledged to do more, but 
they have to ensure that their words and their programs are being 
executed in the field. They have to work to break down the stigma that 
is, unfortunately, associated with seeking mental health treatment. 
They have to ensure that troops have psychiatrists and psychologists to 
talk to, and they have to ensure that those who seek help aren't then 
penalized. We have to find ways to reach out to servicemembers who are 
discharged and are not seeking care from the VA. This is especially 
important for our Guard and Reserves who oftentimes, when they come 
home, don't think of themselves as veterans. They return from the war 
and go back to their civilian jobs without ever getting help.
  In my State of Washington, over 10,200 Guard and Reserve members have 
now served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our troops and veterans are heroes 
who are sacrificing for our Nation. It is time for our Government to 
wake up and provide them with the care they need.
  I voted against going to war in Iraq. But I have said consistently 
that no matter how anyone feels about the war, we have an obligation as 
leaders to make sure our men and women who fight for us get the care 
they deserve. I am proud of the way this Congress, led by the 
Democratic majority, moved to address the problems facing our returning 
servicemembers, which clearly wasn't a priority for the Bush 
administration. Here in Congress, we said: Not on our watch, not 
anymore.
  A year after the Walter Reed story drew attention to the treatment of 
servicemembers, we have made progress. But we cannot let this issue 
fade away. After examining the President's VA budget proposal, I have 
to tell my colleagues, I am disappointed that the administration still 
doesn't seem to get it. In his State of the Union Address this year, 
President Bush said he was dedicated to providing for our Nation's 
veterans. But at a time when thousands of new veterans are entering the 
VA system with serious medical needs as a result of the wars in Iraq 
and Afghanistan, the administration is underestimating the cost of 
medical care and is cutting funding for construction and medical and 
prosthetic research. At a time when our older veterans are seeking care 
in record numbers, the President is proposing fees for them and copays 
that are essentially going to shut the door of the VA to thousands of 
people who served our country. That is wrong. I am going to be working 
very hard this year to ensure that those misguided proposals do not 
become reality.
  The same is true as we address the budget for caring for our troops. 
Our servicemembers risk their lives for our security every single day. 
They have done everything we have asked. We have to live up to our 
commitment to them.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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