On the recordJuly 31, 2014
I rise today to urge support for a successful veterans health care program that will be extended if we pass this bipartisan package of Veterans Affairs reforms. My colleague across the aisle Senator Heller and I have joined to introduce legislation to extend the Assisted Living Program for Veterans with Traumatic Brain Injury, or AL-TBI, and give it the kind of support veterans with these severe brain injuries deserve. I am grateful for the leadership of Senator Heller and his partnership on this very important critical issue. I am proud to work with him, and I am hopeful all of our colleagues will join to pass the bipartisan package of VA reforms which now includes our legislation. I thank Senator Sanders, Ranking Member Burr, along with Senators McCain, Pryor, Murkowski, Landrieu, Johanns, and Baldwin for joining with us in this important effort. This program places veterans suffering from moderate to severe traumatic brain injury, or TBI, in privately run facilities where they receive 24-hour team-based attention. These are our veterans who stood for us, who answered the call to service, who went into harm's way, and have suffered traumatic brain injury, who now need to get the kind of care and attention they deserve. They are immersed in this therapy that helps them with their movement, their memory, their speech, their gradual community integration. That last point is actually the key.…
