Statement Of Senator Patrick Leahy
News Conference On Veterans Issues
November 11, 2003
I’m Patrick
Leahy, Senator from Vermont. I co-chair the 83-member U.S. Senate
National Guard Caucus, and I serve on the Defense and Veterans
Affairs Subcommittees of the Appropriations Committee.
The veterans
issues we’ll be discussing today are important not just because it
is Veterans Day but because we have a duty to honor and support
those who have sacrificed to serve this nation. It’s the right
thing to do.
And this is an
especially important time to spot-check Washington’s report card on
veterans issues, because these are watershed times for our defense
structure and for our veterans programs.
Nine-Eleven was
a demarcation point for America in many ways. One of the less
obvious are the changes in our force structure, and, ultimately,
also in the needs of our veterans.
Veterans issues
are important to millions of veterans and their families right now.
And today, we are minting more and more veterans at an accelerating
rate. Many of them have returned from
Iraq
with serious injuries and will need extended medical care. Others
have lifetime disabilities. For now, this is mostly an invisible
legacy of the war on terrorism and of the invasion of
Iraq.
As we approach
the next major round of rotations, those who are enlisted in our
active duty forces and those who are enlisted in the National Guard
and the Reserves are increasingly concerned about how they will be
treated while they serve and when they leave service. Their
concerns are increasingly reflected in headlines like “The Next
Swing Voter,” in the new issue of the Washington Monthly.
Their concerns
are also reflected in the comments of members of the Guard and
Reserves who have been in a medical hold limbo at
Ft. Stewart,
Georgia. While they have spent months awaiting their medical
reviews, they have been living in shoddy conditions, with too little
medical attention. Senator Bond and I each sent investigators to
Ft.
Stewart, and what we found suggests
that there needs to be better planning to accommodate the needs of
our Guardsmen and Reservists.
Much more also
needs to be done to accommodate the needs of our veterans. “Poor
planning” is a polite way of saying that the Administration simply
has higher priorities in its budget than veterans, for things like
tax cuts tilted toward the wealthiest among us.
From their
years of oversight and advocacy on veterans issues, the senators
here today have keen insights about the critical importance of
supporting our nation’s veterans.
They have
refused to succumb to the fatigue of the annual exercise of fighting
just to maintain basic levels of veterans health services.
Someone needs
to blow the whistle on the failure of the Administration and of
their lieutenants in the Congress to rise to the challenges to our
nation’s veterans, and also of the veterans of tomorrow – our active
duty forces and the men and women of the National Guard and the
Reserves.
When you see situations, like down at Ft. Stewart, where thousands
of reservists are not able to deploy because of medical conditions,
you would think that the Administration would at last begin to take
the issue of medical readiness seriously.
In the Senate
we formed a bipartisan coalition to tackle this problem. Our
legislation, which, after we overcame opposition from the White
House and the Pentagon, we included in the Iraq spending bill, will
provide for additional health screening for activated reservists and
provide fully-reimbursable health insurance to reservists as soon as
they receive their orders and for six months after demobilization.
Most
importantly, reservists and their families who do not have access to
health insurance will be able to buy into TRICARE. This means that
more than 160,000 reservists and their families will have access to
health insurance.
The
Administration opposed our bipartisan coalition at every turn,
tossing out veto threats like Halloween candy. The Administration
also called the shots in defeating other good proposals offered for
that bill. Legislation sponsored by Senator Durbin would have
allowed the federal government to make up lost salaries for
activated reservists who are federal employees. That was knocked
out in conference on a party-line vote.
Our veterans
deserve more than words that show the nation’s appreciation for what
they have done for us. The White House and the Congress need to do
more than talk the talk. We also need to walk the walk, and
Democrats are fighting to do that. We have a whole series of
proposals that will address the turbulence created by the thousands
of activations. Our proposals range from allowing families to
maintain civilian health insurance while a loved one is activated,
to tax-credits to employers for helping reservists make up lost
pay. All are bottled up in committees or are dropping out of
conference packages, because of fervent Administration opposition.
We are
depending on our Guard and Reserves in
Iraq,
and our reliance on them is not winding down, it is winding upward.
More than 30,000 members of the Guard and Reserve are already in the
country, and more are on the way. If we don’t do more to help
increase their readiness and provide adequate support to their
families, we are going to start losing reservists when they are
asked to reenlist.
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