Political Quotes

“I actually rose to speak on several other topics which I will do in turn. First, I wish to say tomorrow we are going to honor generations of veterans who wore the uniform of the United States. As a Member of the House, I worked to help save my congressional district's veterans hospital in north Chicago, IL, after Washington bureaucrats recommended its closure by the Department of Defense, by the Department of Veterans Affairs. We actually arranged to bring the Department of Defense and the VA together in a naval hospital and a VA hospital, to combine them in what became the Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center, building on synergy and seamless care for Active Duty and veterans alike. It became the first combined VA-Navy hospital in the Nation. It is a world-class facility that delivers medical care to about 4,000 Active Duty at Great Lakes and about 42,000 recruits and a equivalent number of veterans in the region. I like to think about the waiting room of this hospital in which grizzled veterans from--one I remember meeting from the battle of Savo Island, 1942, World War II right next to the rawest new recruits to the Navy, in the same waiting room about to receive care from the same nurses and doctors at this now combined Navy-VA hospital. In the Senate, I became the new ranking member of the Military Construction and VA Affairs Appropriations Subcommittee.…”