John Kerry: “I regret to come to the floor today with a concern that I find absolutely extraordinary--even shocking. This is a…”

“I regret to come to the floor today with a concern that I find absolutely extraordinary--even shocking. This is a memorandum which represents an extraordinary broken promise to the veterans of our country. I want to share it with my colleagues who I think would share with me a sense of outrage over what is contained in this memorandum. This is a memorandum from Laura Miller, Under Secretary of Veterans Affairs for Health for Operations and Management, which she circulated on July 18. It orders the directors of the Veterans Health Care Network in the country to end their veterans outreach activities. Let me read from the memorandum. It says specifically: In this environment, marketing the VA services with such activities as health fairs, and veteran open houses to invite new veterans to the facilities, or enrollment displays at VSO meetings are inappropriate. Therefore, I am directing each network director to ensure that no marketing activities to enroll new veterans occur within your networks. In other words, the promise made to veterans and their families that these services will be available to them--and many of them don't know exactly what all the services are--that is why we put into place the outreach efforts in order to guarantee that people aren't denied those services which they might have forthcoming. Those services are not now going to be provided. They are not going to be reaching out to veterans to make them aware of them.”