Congressional Immigration Caucus

CONGRESSIONAL IMMIGRATION CAUCUS

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Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Thank you, Mr. Altmire. I want to let you get back to the time line because I think it is important for people to understand where this started, and to talk a little bit about where we are going, because so much of the news these days is filled with bad news, bad news for our veterans, bad news for the security of our country. And we talk about that a lot here. Mr. Altmire, as you know, this place focuses on crises often and on bad news.

The good news is that things are changing. The good news is that there is a commitment now to make up for the wrongs of the past. But it is fairly mind-blowing to people out there to think that it took The Washington Post to uncover what was happening in our veterans system. Because, Mr. Altmire, as you know, veterans back in our districts, back in Pennsylvania and in Connecticut and throughout this country, have known what is going on with veterans for years. I mean, they have been down here in Washington, DC, month after month, year after year trying to tell this Congress that there are waiting lines for care; that the conditions are often substandard because of years of neglect in capital improvements; that they simply don't have the access to the funds necessary to pay for the rising premiums and rising copays.

And before this story in The Washington Post broke, you, Mr. Altmire, and those of us in the 30-Something Working Group were yelling about this on the House floor. We got here with that mandate, to change things.

So you are going to run through, I think, some fairly amazing comments from some of the soldiers and staff at Walter Reed Hospital in terms of what they have been dealing with over the past several years. But we just need to remind people out there that you can't absolve this former Congress in the last 12 years from the catastrophes that we are uncovering within our medical system, specifically, in this case, within our veterans medical system simply because The Washington Post didn't get around to writing about it until last month, because if you were back home listening to this, you heard it time after time again.

I mean, here is the thing. We are talking about a substandard level of care for our veterans. We should be talking about the gold standard of care for our veterans. And we shouldn't be talking about just lifting up Walter Reed Hospital so that it meets the standards of dignity that every other hospital in our health care system abides by. We should be talking about raising up veterans care so that this is the highest standard. It is what everyone else in the medical community and the provider community seeks to meet. The people coming home from Afghanistan and Iraq, people coming home from Vietnam and previous engagements should come home to the best care this country can provide, Mr. Altmire.

And I would like to yield back to you so you can continue to tell the story of what we have found at Walter Reed hospital.

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Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Altmire can you yield for a moment? Because I want to talk about, as these revelations were coming out in The Washington Post and in articles that followed, this administration had a choice to make. They could open up this issue and they could allow for a vetting of these problems and put them out in the open air and come together, as Republicans and Democrats, to solve them; or they could try to paper over it and cover it up.

And some of the most disturbing things that have happened in this sequence of events, which are a little bit later on your time line, is what happened after these revelations came into the light. We know that in the days following that article that the soldiers at Walter Reed were told that they couldn't speak to the media about what was happening.

We know that the Government Reform and Oversight Committee, which I sit on, had to subpoena the former head, the fired chief of Walter Reed Army Medical Center after Army officials told him that he couldn't come testify at the hearing.

And so I am so thankful that we have a majority now in charge of this House which is actually going to do the work to uncover, I hope, not too many more abuses that we haven't already seen in the newspaper reports that have come out. But the fact is that right now we don't have an administration that is helping us try to correct this, Mr. Altmire. And it makes our job even harder; but makes me, I think, and I think the American people are in the same position, that they are thankful that there are people here doing that work.

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Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Altmire, you hit it right on the head. It is, fix the problem, hold people accountable, in that order. We need to start holding people accountable here. I think that is a lot of frustration that led to you and I coming here and 40 or so of our fellow new colleagues here. I think a lot of the impetus that brought us here was this sense that nobody was being held accountable for what was happening in the government, whether it be the failure of our military strategy in Iraq or whether it be the failure of many of our domestic programs here at home.

So we have got to keep the focus and the light of this place on finally holding this administration and the people in it and, frankly, even Members of this legislature accountable for their actions. But we have got to fix the problem first because people didn't send us here just to investigate and hold hearings and put out subpoenas. They want that responsibility of Congress to come back. They want us to fulfill that constitutional obligation. But they sent us here to get stuff done. And that is the miracle of what has happened here over the last 2 months is that we are fixing problems. We are not just talking about it. We are actually doing what we are saying.

The first 100 hours was all about that, Mr. Altmire.

It had to be for the two of us one of the proudest moments of our life to be here joining hands with many of our Republican colleagues and for the first time making this place work again. Passing new bills to fund higher education, reforming the Medicare prescription drug law, investing in stem cell research; doing it with Democrats and Republicans, making this place work again.

So here is the thing. We proved we can solve problems. We proved that we can work as Republicans and Democrats to fix things. And maybe we are confronted with our biggest problem; not just what we have uncovered in our veterans' system, what people like you and I have known for years, but the greater quagmire which exists in our military today in the situation we have got ourselves in Iraq. But we need to take both of these on, fix the problems to the extent that we can, and then hold people accountable because what we know is that we weren't ready for this war. We weren't ready for this war with the equipment, the trucks and the kits we needed for our troops. We know that, when this war began, we were $56 billion underfunded within the Army for the equipment that they needed. We know that, after the invasion, it took 18 months for American soldiers to receive body armor; 18 months of being on the front lines before they got the body armor that they needed. And we know the health care system wasn't ready for the legions of troops that came back.

I think I shared this on the floor the other night: A group of veterans came into my office and shared with me a statistic that was as interesting as it was sobering, that in conflicts earlier in this century, on average three wounded soldiers came back for every soldier that died on the battlefield. Today 16 soldiers come back wounded for every soldier that dies on the battlefield. And that is due to some of the advances in armor protection equipment. It is also due to the miracles of modern medicine and the response time that our medics and doctors in the field are able to perform.

But it means that we have more people coming into our hospitals with more complex, more lasting injuries. They need better care, and they need faster care. And it appears that no one at the outset of this war was thinking about this problem ahead of time. They weren't preparing our military for battle. They didn't have a plan to occupy that country. They didn't think, it seems sometimes, more than a few seconds about the political realities that would emerge on the ground as we invaded Iraq. And now it turns out they also didn't think about what to do with the veterans when they come back.

Mr. Altmire, I never served in the military. I never fired a gun. I have never been shot at. I get to serve in this Chamber on a cold night like tonight in Washington, DC, in a nice, heated place indoors because my contemporaries, my classmates made a different decision. They decided to go overseas and protect this Nation. And there isn't a day that I get up that I am not grateful for the decision that my friends and my relatives and my classmates made to allow me to serve this country in a very different manner. So as unfathomable as it is to me to think about what it is like to be on the ground in Baghdad today, to have veterans comparing their experiences in our own domestic veterans' health care system to the situations that they faced on the ground in Iraq is unconscionable to me. Think about what it must be like to come back to this country maimed, injured, perhaps with legs, arms amputated, and to enter a system with flies, with garbage, with syringes. I mean, we know what is happening with soldiers coming back with PTSD and other mental health issues from what they have seen on the battlefield, and to think that we are putting them into a system which not only abuses the sense of honor that we should have for those that come back. We should be celebrating them rather than putting them in these conditions.

But I am sure it aggravates what must be an unbelievably complicated transition back to life here in the United States. We need to start honoring their service again. And God forbid we ever have to engage in another military action in this country again. God forbid we have to send our brave young men and women overseas to fight.

You know that in our lifetimes we will see that moment. We hope we don't. We hope we are wise enough in this Chamber to prevent another foreign engagement from happening, but the chances are that you and I may vote sometime during our service here to do this again.

We better get it right that time. We better make the investment up front to make sure they are safe when they head over to that battlefield, and when they come home, the services are there for them.

We are going to fix it. We are going to fix it and hold people accountable, and we are going to do it in that order. The American people for a long time maybe didn't have confidence when people stood up here and said there is a problem and we are going to do something about it. In this Congress, that is going to be our hallmark. We are going to be able to go home in the coming weeks and months and tell people that what you read about, whether it be in Newsweek or the Washington Post, is going to be taken care of.

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Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Altmire, we have to look at veterans' health care, care for our wounded as part and parcel of the cost of the war. The cost of the war is not just troops on the ground, the equipment, the weapons. The cost of the war is all of that, which, of course, runs into the billions, racking up hour by hour, day by day, but the cost of the war also includes top rate, gold standard care for those troops when they return to this country.

Sometimes you talk about the cost of the war and veterans' health care. They are in kind of different silos in Washington speak, and we are figuring out how Washington talks versus the rest of the world.

Out there, what our veterans and soldiers talk about is a cost of battle, a cost of sending our troops overseas, which includes making sure, when they come back to this country, they get everything they need. That is part of our challenge. We came down here I think, not to speak for both of us, but to sort of change how Washington thinks about this world and start making it match up with the reality out there in our communities. We sat there for the last 2 years campaigning to get here, listening to people screaming and yelling about rising energy prices. We listened to families talk about how they couldn't afford to send their kids to college, and we heard seniors talking about how the Medicare prescription drug bill does not work. And they watch Washington do nothing about it. There is a disconnect that has happened over the past 12 years, and certainly over the last 6 years especially, and how people talk about their problems in the world and how Washington views them. There is no better example than veterans' health care.

To veterans and soldiers, the cost of the war includes taking care of soldiers when they return to the United States. We have to make people understand that again.

We sat for that very long debate about the escalation of the war. We listened to the people on the other side of the aisle make a ridiculously simplistic argument. They said, to support the troops, you must support the commander of the troops. Part of supporting the troops has to be supporting everything he asks you to do. You can't make an independent judgment about whether what he wants is right or wrong; you simply have to line up with him, or we are going to tell you that you are not supporting the men and women who fight for this country.

We know that is wrong. We know that the American people don't believe that, and we know this election was in part about separating what is right for the troops, the country and what the President has asked them to do and has vastly under-equipped them to do.

But you just detailed maybe example number one where what the President's policies are over the past several years has been the exact opposite of what is right for our troops, cuts to veterans' health care, increases in premiums. That is as bold and plain and simple and concise as you can make it.

You can't stand here and say, in order to support the troops, you have to support the President when the President puts forth a budget, year after year, budgets that don't do justice for the veterans who return.

I think the American people have weighed in on that issue on whether or not we need to support the President on everything he does in order to support the troops, but there is yet another example.

Mr. Altmire, I think we also have to talk about the issue of accountability here. Here is the problem, is that our military is stretched thin right now. This isn't just about supporting the troops; it is about supporting the generals that oversee those troops and supporting the commanders who are struggling to do more with less.

Let me read a quote from General Peter Schoomaker, the Chief of Staff of the Army. He says, ``To meet combatant commanders immediate wartime needs, we pooled equipment from across the force to equip soldiers deploying in harm's way. This practice, which we are continuing today, increases risk for our next-to-deploy units and limits our ability to respond to emerging strategic contingencies.' This was from a Washington Post story.

That is a pretty amazing statement to come from our Nation's top military brass. To come out on the record, flying in the face of what the President is telling the American people and saying that we are endangering the lives of our troops by overextending the limits of our equipment and our machinery within our Armed Forces.

So we also have to force the military commanders who are desperately trying to do the right thing with a very flawed policy and with an administration which pays no attention to the root causes of the insurgency which puts our forces in harm's way and who doesn't give the Army the resources they need to fight this battle and obviously doesn't treat the soldiers the way they need to be treated when they come home.

This is about supporting our troops and about supporting our commanders and about supporting our Armed Forces in general. They are being asked to do so much more with so much less. This is no secret. When we come and vote on the supplemental request from this President, you better believe that Members on this side of the aisle are going to make sure that there is a historic commitment to veterans, just like there was in the continuing resolution. We have to make that a priority in this new authorization of funding because we are beginning to talk like everybody else talks out there. We are beginning to understand that the cost of this war is the money that it takes to fight the battle on the streets of Baghdad, but it is also the cost of taking care of those soldiers when they come home.

Mr. Altmire, you underplay your effect on that discussion. You were a real hero on that issue of making sure that the veterans' care and funding were in that continuing resolution. I hope people back in your district understand what you did on that issue to ensure that those funds were part of that continuing resolution.

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Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Let me highlight one thing before we leave this subject. This is going to be a chart that we might see a few more times on the 30 Something Working Group hour here.

I just want to make sure the people know we are back to business here. This is 81 hearings that have been held on issues related to the Iraq War this year. I mean, you go through the list just the week right after we got back from recess, the last week of February, on Tuesday, the 27th, two hearings; on Wednesday, the 28th, five hearings; on Thursday, the 1st, three hearings.

Now, that may seem like a lot. It seems like, well, what is Congress doing with all these hearings. There was so much work to be done to uncover all of these abuses. I think that is going to kind of level out over time, but right now we needed to get back to the work of starting to do some oversight when it comes to this war, to start uncovering many of these abuses. We will continue this chart going forward.

This idea that you presented that we have got two jobs, fix it and hold people accountable, we are doing both. This continuing resolution that kept the government running had historic levels of funding for veterans care. I think we are going to be able to do something similar with the supplemental authorization that we will vote on in the coming weeks.

But we are also doing that second part, which is holding this administration accountable, to make sure that it does not happen again, because I do not want to be here a year from now just trying to play catch-up and plugging all the holes that this administration creates. I actually want to solve the problems and make sure that competent people get into places that matter in this administration.

I want to make sure that the President starts putting budgets before us that make sense so that these oversight hearings, 81 hearings that have been held already in this Congress, are going to start to get us there.

That is maybe the moment to turn. We have got a few minutes left to talk a little bit about this budget.

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Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I sit on the Government Oversight and Reform Committee, and in that committee, we found out that we sent $9 billion in cash over to Iraq, on pallets, handed it out in duffel bags. We found out that when we were subcontracting to these subcontractors to do security, they subcontracted again, and they subcontracted again, and everybody takes a little money off the top every time. We did not know. We had not heard about any of that until we started doing hearings.

So you are exactly right. Hammer that point home. This is not doing hearings for hearings sake. This is doing hearings to uncover the waste, fraud and abuse that has been happening in this government. This is my taxpayer dollars. This is my neighbor's taxpayer dollars that are going down the drain with some of these programs. This is real stuff.

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Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. First of all, let me say that there is nothing that acts as a tantalizing teaser to whet the appetites of the American people than telling them if they tune in next time, we will talk about foreign-held national debt. That really gets people's blood pumping.

I cannot give the chart without letting people know out there that the clock is ticking. 365 days you have left officially in the 30 Something Working Group. Congratulations. Happy birthday today. I do not know why the rest of the Members are not here to celebrate.

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Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Anything we have talked about today, if people want to get more information about, they can e-mail us at 30somethingdems@mail.house.gov, and you can always visit www.speaker.gov/30something. One of these days when they go to that Web site, they will actually see our faces on there. Technology sometimes does not keep up with the changes in the House, but I am sure that our faces will be on that Web site, sooner rather than later.

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