Political Quotes

“I want to talk just a few minutes about the circumstances we now find ourselves in, in passing what I consider to be one of the most important pieces of legislation--perhaps the most important piece of legislation that is currently pending certainly before the U.S. Senate--and that is what we have been referring to as the PACT Act. It is legislation that we have talked about many times on the Senate floor. It is a piece of legislation that I and Senator Tester introduced. It is a piece of legislation that follows a long line of bills coming from the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee with broad bipartisan support that have consequential outcomes for the veterans of our Nation. We started years ago, several years ago, in regard to the MISSION Act. We followed that with the John Scott Hannon Act. The MISSION Act provided additional opportunities for veterans to access care in settings across the country to bring medical care to veterans closer to home to make it more available. And we followed that with the John Hannon Act, which dealt with mental health and trying to reduce and eliminate the use of suicide in veterans' lives. And then, finally, we have this major piece of legislation that has been a long time coming--way too long--in meeting the needs of those veterans who served, now, a long time ago in Vietnam and in Southeast Asia and our veterans who more recently served in Iraq and Afghanistan.…”