[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 7]
[House]
[Page 9495]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    WE MUST DO MORE FOR OUR VETERANS

  (Mr. HIMES asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. HIMES. Mr. Speaker, in my 16 months in Congress, the most 
challenging thing I have had to do has not had to do with energy or 
health care or our economy. The hardest thing I have had to do has been 
to stand in front of 700 Connecticut National Guard troops who are 
deploying to Afghanistan, 18, 19, 20, 21 years old, young people who 
had raised their hand and said, I will serve my country. I will die for 
you and for your freedoms. And I thought, how can we thank a young 
person who will say that and who will do that? The answer is we can't, 
we can't possibly. But we can thank them through our actions. We can do 
what we did in passing the GI Bill to provide college education to our 
troops, to give businesses a $2,400 tax credit for hiring unemployment 
veterans, providing nearly 2 million disabled veterans with a $250 
economic recovery payment.
  I am proud of what this House has done for our veterans in the last 
16 months and, as we approach Memorial Day, remind my colleagues of the 
need to do more for those who say that they will sacrifice for us.

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