21st Century Cures Bill

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I want to thank my colleagues who are very gracious for yielding to me, and I thank the Presiding Officer for recognizing me.

Veterans Health Care and Benefits Legislation

Mr. President, there is welcome news today, which is that the Senate has received from the House H.R. 6416, a bipartisan comprehensive measure that keeps faith with our veterans and makes sure that we continue our progress toward leaving no veteran behind.

I want to emphasize at the very start that this measure is a down payment. It is far from a final or even fully acceptable solution to many of the problems that it addresses. It has more than 70 provisions.

It is broad and comprehensive in scope and scale. More vets, many at risk and homeless, will receive the care and benefits they need and deserve. VA hospitals will have better management and more mental health caregivers and emergency room doctors. Families of veterans will be helped by extending critical education benefits to surviving members of those families. Work will finally begin to help descendants of veterans exposed to toxic substances. But again, on those issues and so many more, we are only taking another step in what must be a journey toward helping our veterans with services that they need, deserve, and have earned.

One example that is long awaited is a landmark move that will commence research on descendants of veterans who have been exposed to toxic substances and address the painful residual wounds. It is all the more important today because we know the modern field of combat is ridden with nerve gas and other toxic and poisonous substances that all too often may endanger not only the brave men and women engaged on the battlefield but also their descendants. This measure expands the definition of homeless veterans to include individuals--perhaps women fleeing domestic violence--and it broadens the eligibility for critical homeless prevention programs. Many of those women fleeing brutality and violence deserve this kind of help.

Under this legislation, the Veterans Health Administration will be given the flexibility it needs in scheduling physician workloads to bring them in line with the common practice that prevails in most medical centers. It is past time that we adjust the 1950s schedules, practices, and policies to work regulations within the VA hospitals and the need of today's veterans.

One extraordinarily important provision relates to mental health, long a priority for me. We will make it easier to hire mental health counselors and access mental health treatment, significantly overhauling VA construction practices and authorize major medical construction projects in Reno, NV, and Long Beach, CA.

On the issue of accountability that is so critically important and needs so much work, a provision in this measure would limit the ability of the VA to place an employee who is under investigation for misconduct on paid administrative leave for more than 14 days. This limitation would end the current practice of placing problematic employees on long periods of paid administrative leave and the provision would force the VA leaders to address issues when they arise to impose accountability.

I want to thank my colleague Senator Isakson for his leadership, his dedication, his attention to detail, and his flexibility in the best traditions of this body. He clearly has put veterans first by sharing their ideas. They have come to us from many of the veterans service organizations, and I want to acknowledge all of them as well because they have been such a positive force.

I want to thank my staff on the Veterans' Affairs Committee for their work on this bill and others that we passed, such as the Clay Hunt Suicide Prevention for American Veterans Act, which I did in partnership with Senator Kaine and Senator Isakson.

We need to do more to help veterans cope with opioid addiction, combat homelessness, protect veterans against identity theft, and make sure that our health care system for veterans continues to improve. It is still clearly a work in progress and still fails to meet the demands of access for thousands and tens of thousands of our veterans, even as it provides quality health care to many others.

Many of the current challenges faced by veterans are directly attributable to management failures, and that is why accountability needs to improve. I want to thank Senators Burr and Tester for their bipartisan agreement to move forward on these challenges, and, hopefully, we will continue their work in the next session. Likewise, I have worked with Senator Moran and Chairman Isakson on numerous accountability reforms in the Veterans First Act, which was before this Chamber, again, providing goals and measures that we must achieve in the next Congress.

Our bipartisan efforts to pass, hopefully within the next few days, H.R. 6416 is a crucial test of whether there is the necessary will and determination in this body to move ahead on the enormous challenges yet unmet and the enormous obligations that we have.

Just as critical as the health care challenges, so too are the chronic problems in providing veterans the benefits they have earned-- benefits that are denied them in decisions they appeal. Today, over 450,000 veterans' appeals await a decision. That is why I introduced the Department of Veterans Affairs Appeals Modernization Act of 2016.

The present veterans' appeals process is a travesty. It is a mockery of justice. It must be reformed. It must be given the resources to make it effective. Even when veterans earn benefits, there are too many examples of unequal application. I joined Senator Murray in her efforts to ensure that all caregivers for severely wounded and disabled veterans, regardless of when the veterans have served, have access to caregiver support services. These caregivers are moms and dads, spouses, and children who provide care day after day after day at great expense and burden to them with very little support from the Nation that should be as grateful to them as to the veterans themselves.

Simply put, veterans deserve better, and they deserve more. Even when they have grievances, often they are denied a day in court. They are forced into arbitration agreements concerning their reemployment rights and workplace protections. That is why I introduced the Justice for Servicemembers Act in June--to clarify that servicemembers cannot be denied access to the courthouse and forced into arbitration and that servicemembers cannot be forced to sacrifice those rights as a condition of future or continued employment. It is about basic American justice. Who deserves that justice more than our veterans who fought for it and died for it and should never be denied it?

I want to thank again all of my colleagues who have worked with me over these past 2 years. We owe every veteran--regardless of the war or the conflict, regardless of the era--the basic guarantee that they will never be left behind, that this Nation will keep faith with them. This body owes them the obligation to summon the political will to cross partisan lines to make sure that we keep faith with them.

As I yield the floor today, I want to express my gratitude again to Chairman Isakson and say that I yield the floor today but none of us should ever yield in the fight to help our veterans.

Thank you, Mr. President.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source