On the recordNovember 16, 2015
The gentleman mentioned 5 years that he has put into his bill. His party has been in power the past 5 years. As far as I know, he never asked for a hearing so that these issues could be clarified. I am sure that, if he had, we might have been able to iron this out. Even without a hearing, based on what the Supreme Court has said, we have no choice but to oppose the bill as he has offered it, in not differentiating among the veterans he is speaking about, but putting in a global group, which has never been done or approved. We have barely been able to get the Supreme Court to agree to let such programs prevail, but we have always succeeded in getting the Court to understand that past discrimination has been shown through disparity studies. Without any disparity studies, the gentleman from Pennsylvania means to march straight up to the Supreme Court and say: We are veterans. Approve us anyway. Nobody opposes veterans, particularly at this time, following what we have seen in Paris. The way to make sure that veterans are not left out is to sit down with us and figure it out, not to barnstorm the floor in the hope that, since you are in the majority, it will pass. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
