Future Forum

Floor Speech

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JARED POLIS: I think that is what brings us here tonight. It is what brings champions of veterans issues like Derek Kilmer and yourself and Seth Moulton here. This is an opportunity for us to talk about what we as Democrats want to do to make sure that we honor and support those who served our country.

I had a wilderness roundtable last week. We had Raúl Grijalva in town. He is the ranking member of the Natural Resources Committee. We are working on designating some of our beautiful public lands in Summit and Eagle Counties as wilderness. We were having a meeting in Vail. Come visit Vail. I want everybody to know that Vail is a wonderful place to visit. We had a roundtable.

We had one of the people at it--in addition to hikers, bikers, a lot of local merchants that sell equipment, we had a veteran who served in the Middle East.

He got up, and he said that, when he was serving overseas in Afghanistan and he went to a visual display and they had the national anthem and what they showed--the images on the screen were not our tall buildings, were not our politicians or our actors; it was our beautiful public lands.

It was the Grand Canyon; it was the mountains of Colorado; it was the great coasts of California, and that was what he and his fellow servicemembers drew their pride from.

He further expressed such an excitement about the wilderness bill we were working on. He said the public lands were a place of healing for veterans. He said: If we don't protect these beautiful lands, what the hell did I fight for?

It really moved everybody at the entire table just to say, do you know what, that is that part of that American spirit that we derive from the spirit of conservation.

It was really one of those moments where it made me and those of us working on some of those public land issues glad to know that we were helping to heal some of the veterans that had served us under difficult circumstances overseas.

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Well, we really need to do a lot more. That is one of the reasons that I recently introduced a post-9/11 conservation corps bill, which would actually help employ some of our post-9/11 veterans to protect our public lands and water, so it can be part of their healing and part of making sure that our public lands are well maintained.

It would help veterans restore and protect our national, State, and tribal forest parks; coastal areas; wildlife refuges; and cemeteries--allowing us to attack the jobless rate among our returning veterans and help address the enormous maintenance backlog at our national parks.

That is the kind of idea which I think a lot of veterans get excited about. They want to see something that shows that we deeply respect the work they did defending our country, that their work is valued here at home.

It is the absolute wrong message to send when we are slashing veterans benefits; when we are not funding, for instance, our new VA hospital that needs to be built in Aurora, Colorado; when we are slashing the benefits that people get beyond the impact of those financial dues that they receive.

It is the message they are getting that somehow, do you know what, instead of returning to a civilian service corps, towards helping job placement, towards the counseling and health support services we need, we are returning to a thankless America.

I think that we Democrats want to do something about that. That is why we have a great package of bills to show that we do honor and respect, and we want to show that in word and deed to those who served us in post-9/11 wars.

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I have not heard that term before, ``ghost veteran,'' but I have met so many veterans that meet that exact definition.

I think it is a combination of things. I think you are right. It is part of the fact that they don't think they are going to get anything anyway because it has all been cut. It is also part of the need that we have and the VA has to adapt our veteran-serving institutions to meet the real-life needs of a new generation of veterans.

The truth is the returning 9/11 veterans are not interested in piles of paperwork and filling it out. That is understandable. They are not interested in beating their head against the wall to try to get some benefit that they may or may not get. They have served our country. They have a lot of great capacity in them to do great work again.

They want our help in enabling them to be able to live great lives, whether it is going back to school under GI Bill--and, of course, we passed the post-9/11 GI Bill--whether it is working on something like the veterans conservation corps that, if my bill passes, it would set up, whether it is making sure they have support to start their own small business as entrepreneurs.

What they don't want is to wait in line down at some facility to fill out more forms that may or may not result in them getting something, someday. That is really what I hear in so many of the returning post-9/11 veterans that in my district really meet the definition of what you are talking about, ghost veterans.

Once they got out, they just didn't want to deal with what they see as a bureaucratic, out-of-touch apparatus that doesn't give them the support they need.

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I am just so excited and honored to represent a district that has two of our State flagship universities: Colorado State University in Fort Collins--go Rams--and University of Colorado Boulder--go Bucks.

We have had interns in our office that were only able to attend those institutions because of the GI Bill, returning post-9/11 veterans who were able to fulfill their dream of getting a higher education at a time where you and I know it is increasingly costly to get that education.

My goodness, you Californians pay $35,000 a year to come to CU; but even our instate folks are paying $9,000 a year just to go to college. Not a lot of families can afford that in discretionary income when you add in food and lodging and everything else.

Those who have served our country are able to avail themselves of this tremendous opportunity, the GI Bill. We need to renew our commitment to those folks. We need to make sure that it is there to fund their education, in an increasingly costly educational environment, that they can have the skills they need.

I would like to see more ways where they can get credit for some of the skills they learned in the military. Some of those convey over and appropriately should be granted credit at institutions of higher education, so there is a lot more we can do.

So many veterans that I have interacted with on both campuses are just so grateful. I want to make sure that we defend and I know Democrats here are standing in the line of defense of the post-9/11 GI Bill.

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Well, I just wanted to add, again, particularly in the West, in districts like mine, many veterans who have settled in Eagle and Summit Counties or in the Boulder area really have seen their experiences and interactions with the outdoors and our environment as an important part of their healing experience.

That is why we see such great support for a number of nonprofits that help get veterans out hiking and biking; why the young veterans, in turn, are strong supporters of wilderness proposals; and why I think so many returning veterans would benefit from a veterans conservation corps that really got them out there working with their hands and their hearts, preserving some of that same natural heritage that, when they saw displayed on the movie screen while our national anthem played in Afghanistan or Iraq, gave them the inspiration that they needed to be able to continue to serve our country so well for another day.

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