Political Quotes

“It would appear that the chairman has resigned himself to keeping the government shut down for 30 days so that the VA will run out of money in that 30 days' time. The way to ensure that the VA doesn't run out of money in 30 days is to pass a clean CR to reopen all of government. Mr. Speaker, I have spent every moment since waking up in my hospital bed at Walter Reed defending our military and serving our veterans. I know when they're being exploited. Mr. Speaker, the bill we are debating isn't a serious or respectful attempt to support our Nation's heroes. It will not help veterans; in fact, it does just the opposite. It cuts more than $6 billion in funds for the Department of Veterans Affairs from the same bill that my colleagues and I passed, 421-4, just earlier this year. I can't support this bill because it pits one veteran against another. It would continue paying out pension benefits at the cost of cutting medical and prosthetic research for wounded veterans. It would give veterans in the VA their health care and needed mental health services, which I applaud, but it leaves 800,000 of their brothers and sisters--my brothers and sisters--caught in the backlog where they would have to wait even longer to get a decision on their benefits. It would allow our troops with posttraumatic stress to access the Veterans Crisis Line, but at the expense of not laying our heroes to rest in our national cemeteries on a timely basis.…”