Bruce L. Braley: “I was sitting at home over the holiday recess spending time with my family when I became aware of the fact that the…”

“I was sitting at home over the holiday recess spending time with my family when I became aware of the fact that the President had vetoed the Defense Authorization bill that we passed in this body shortly before we adjourned. And like most of my colleagues, I was surprised by that veto and I wanted to learn more about the basis, the reasoning behind the decision of the President to withhold pay increases to our men and women in uniform who are serving us in very heavily conflicted areas around the world, and why the President would veto a bill that would increase funding for Veterans' Administration health care benefits to our Nation's aging veterans and our most recent veterans who are in serious need of those medical services. And so I got a copy of the President's veto statement and I read it, and, quite frankly, I was shocked. I was shocked, Madam Speaker, because, as I saw the President's basis for the veto, I was taken back to a time several years ago when I was watching a 60 Minutes story about tortured U.S. prisoners of war from our first Gulf War. And when I learned that the basis for the President's veto was to keep U.S. POWs who had been brutally beaten and tortured by Saddam Hussein's thugs in the first Gulf War from receiving compensation for those injuries, I was ashamed for my country.…”