On the recordJuly 9, 2012
I thank the gentleman from Virginia for his support of this bill and other veterans issues. First of all, I'd like to thank the gentleman from California. Mr. Denham's service in uniform to this Nation is to be commended, and his service to our veterans has been unwavering. He's right, we've worked on this a long time. I had the opportunity on numerous occasions to travel downrange to visit our veterans, the last one with my good friend from California (Mr. Denham), and the care and concern that he showed listening to his veterans of what they need, listening to them talk about this. One of the things on the minds of our veterans, as they're fighting downrange defending our freedoms and doing what's asked of them is how are they going to be able to take care of their family when their service obligation ends. So Mr. Denham came back, and working and reaching across the aisle, and working over in the Senate, crafted a piece of legislation that's not only morally the right thing to do, taking care of our veterans-- you hear a lot about the 99 percent and the 1 percent. There's truth in that: 99 percent of us enjoy the benefits of security and national defense while 1 percent provide it. So the moral obligation of providing this is pretty much unquestioned, but the thing that I think Mr. Denham looked into on this is making sure the economic impact was felt also. And on this, I think this is very important to keep in mind: We spend $140 billion a year training our military.…
