Jon Tester

Public education is the foundation of that.

Exactly. So you zip down to the local gun store, wherever it might be in your town, do the background check. Then you do not have to worry about if, in fact, that person has a criminal past or is severely, violently mentally ill. It will…

I would love to have a recommendation since you are in the business.

In that bill was a provision to establish a rural veterans' coordination pilot so that OIF and OEF veterans could get care from community-based providers for mental health in cases where the VA did not have capacity.

I think you have done a great job considering the conditions that you are faced with in this position.

This is a $152.7 billion budget. It is a fair chunk of change that invests significantly in our veterans.

Housing is important, there are no ifs, ands or buts about it.

We need to know what to do to be able to improve that law, to make sure that we are doing the right thing from a policy level to empower you on the ground.

We need to deal with it, we have dealt with it in a couple of ways, with the HEARTH Act.

I wish to engage my colleague, Chairwoman Mikulski, in a colloquy. I thank the Senator for her important work in bringing this bill to the Senate. However, I would like clarification on Section 735 of Division A of the bill. This provision…

Is it possible we could look at them as a Committee, because I hear a lot of requests for reports and quite frankly I do not get them.

But I think the Department of Defense has a responsibility here to train people of what they are going into so that they understand what to expect as they go through their military service.

We are seeing unacceptable levels quite frankly; and we do not do a good job as a society

Veteran suicide is a huge issue and an incredible worry and something we have got to improve.

We cannot help the people you do not have access to; and that is what I want to see

The people that are under mental health care in the VA have a lower and declining suicide rate than those veterans who are not in contact with the VA.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I do not think this issue is going to be solved tomorrow. It is going to take some time but if we work at it and we work at it together and we do not call for people's resignations but rather work with them, I think that we can get a lot…

I think the folks that are working at the VA need to think outside the box and we do need to get more medical professionals on the ground, especially in rural places like Montana.

If we knew how to treat mental illness in a way that was very, very effective in this country, this issue would not even be on the radar; but we have run from it for decades.

I just want to thank you all for your testimony. I have about 15 pages of questions.

To be able to enable that?

So you feel confident that the legislation is complete enough that the lines of responsibility are clear?

It has only been 80 years. What the heck. Government works deliberately, I guess. That is code for slow.

I got you. There are people from soup to nuts that work in the insurance industry as far as size goes.