Representative Heather Wilson: “the Democrat leadership has blocked several important amendments on this bill, and I will oppose this rule. But there is…”

“the Democrat leadership has blocked several important amendments on this bill, and I will oppose this rule. But there is one that they block that makes absolutely no sense, and it really calls into question the priorities of the majority on the Rules Committee. There are 2 million women in this country's history who have served in uniform. All of them have been volunteers, and I was one of them. I am the only woman veteran serving in the United States Congress. One in seven Americans serving in Iraq or Afghanistan are women, and the challenges that they face when they come home are often different than their male counterparts, particularly when accessing health care from both DOD facilities and VA facilities. Many women veterans don't even call themselves veterans and don't know that they are eligible for care, and care is not always available that is appropriate for women in the VA system. I offered an amendment that was noncontroversial, and it wasn't even particularly aggressive. All it said was that we should have a bipartisan commission to make some recommendations to us to get a group of people together, including women veterans, to make recommendations to this House on how we can make this system better for women veterans so they can get the health care that they need, and all of us have seen the problems that women veterans are facing. The amendment wasn't made in order.…”