Daniel Akaka: “I am pleased to stand here with my colleagues who join me in offering this veterans health care amendment which adds…”

“I am pleased to stand here with my colleagues who join me in offering this veterans health care amendment which adds $1.5 billion for health care. What we have before us are two different approaches, similar to what we had last year. I want to take my colleagues back a year when we offered a similar amendment to the budget resolution at that time. We argued that more attention must be given to mental health, prosthetics, and to keeping veterans from being homeless. The opposition questioned our number, as there was the belief that the VA could continue providing quality care with fewer resources. And that belief prevailed. Our amendment was rejected at that time, virtually along party lines. The prevailing votes were misled to believe that the budget year was too tight and that a much smaller amount of funding was needed. Unfortunately, this turned out to be the wrong course. Four months and two supplemental requests later we finally ended up with more funding, nearly the exact amount we advocated for earlier in the year. We must not repeat this mistake and we must get it right the first time. I want to say at the outset that the President's budget is much more robust than his budget last year. The veterans called last year's budget ``tight-fisted'' and ``miserly.'' I view this budget as a much better starting point. What is again missing--in dollars and in deed--is this administration still does not count caring for veterans as part of the cost of war.…”