Political Quotes

“I want to take a moment or two to speak about our Nation's veterans. The Presiding Officer and I have the honor of serving together on the Senate Veterans' Affair Committee. I take that responsibility--as does the Presiding Officer--very seriously. There is no other group of people that we should hold in higher regard than those who served our country. Today I want to talk about some of the challenges they are facing as a result of our failure to do that. Who would we expect to get the very best health care in our country? We want everyone to have good quality, affordable health care. But of all the people we would want to make certain received the health care services they were promised, clearly, it would be those who served our country--the men and women of our military who are now veterans. They deserve timely, high-quality health care. That is true whether they live in an urban or suburban setting or a rural place like your State and mine. There are more than 221,000 veterans who call Kansas home, and the vast majority of them live in very rural parts of our State. Before being elected to the Senate, before the honor that Kansans allowed me to serve them here in the Senate, I served in the U.S. House of Representatives. I represented the First District of Kansas, generally known in our State as the Big First. That is a congressional district larger than the State of Illinois, and there isn't a VA hospital in that congressional district.…”