[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 11]
[House]
[Page 15491]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    DENYING MILITARY DEATH BENEFITS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania (Mr. Fitzpatrick) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. FITZPATRICK. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of the 
legislation that will be considered on the floor of the House today, 
legislation that would address the unacceptable wrong of denying death 
benefits to the families of fallen soldiers during the budget impasse.
  While I, no doubt, expect our Chamber to pass this critical funding 
bill that the American people have a right to expect--I hope it's 
passed not just in a bipartisan fashion, but I hope it's passed 
unanimously in the House--we must consider what has led us to even have 
to legislatively fix such an obvious injustice.
  The Department of Defense, even during the current impasse, is 
spending sums in the billions of dollars.
  How is the debt payment for members of the military not considered 
essential, Mr. President? What was the decision-making process to deem 
the death benefits nonessential, Mr. President? Who made the final call 
in this decision, and why are you not firing that person?
  This follows the same pattern that we saw earlier this year when the 
President cut military tuition assistance. We were able to restore 
those needless cuts and have introduced a bill to ensure the President 
does not continue to play games with the tuition assistance as early 
reports indicate that military tuition is again being held back from 
families. Simply put, we made promises to our fighting men and women 
and their families.
  Mr. Speaker, the House is ready to keep those promises, but the 
President is demonstrating, at best, a failure to lead and, at worst, 
bare knuckle partisanship.

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