Kendrick Meek: “I just want to make sure, because I was on the floor last night with the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cummings) and the…”

“I just want to make sure, because I was on the floor last night with the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cummings) and the Congressional Black Caucus, and I shared that I was at the World War II memorial with my mother and uncle, who is a Korean War veteran. They asked for all of the veterans to stand up. A number of them stood up. Those individuals that could not stand up, they put their hands up. I could not help but think ``America the Beautiful'' playing in the background, planes flying over, what was going to be their reality on Tuesday, when they go to the VA to try to receive services, the reality of calling for help and having to wait 6 months to see an eye doctor. When we start looking at how we treat our veterans and how we respond to them, the gentleman mentioned the deficit, and I am going to say we had this credit card made up. This is the U.S. Treasury credit card, Republican Congress. That is a big number, $477 billion. That is a lot of money. That is an awful lot of money.”