Mark Takano: “Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak in hesitant support of H.R. 1969, the No Wrong Door Act, as amended. This bill would…”

“Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak in hesitant support of H.R. 1969, the No Wrong Door Act, as amended. This bill would reauthorize the Staff Sergeant Parker Gordon Fox Suicide Prevention Grant Program, or Fox grants, for fiscal year 2026. As the ranking member of the Veterans' Affairs Committee, one of my top priorities has been and will continue to be veteran suicide prevention. The Fox grant program is an important tool in our arsenal for this work. Community-based programs are a crucial part of a public health approach to suicide prevention. However, I do have significant concerns with this legislation's approach to reauthorizing this program. We must ensure that we reauthorize this program in a way that ensures it is as effective and robust as possible. I would like to take this time to highlight some of those concerns. First, based on congressionally mandated reports that the committee has received, VA has not established enough metrics to allow Congress to monitor the success of the program. Additionally, in our view, grantees are not collecting or reporting complete data for all participants, which further limits Congress' ability to determine whether the program is meeting its intended purposes.”