Tom Coburn: “this is an amendment about fulfilling our obligations. This is an amendment about the government being truthful with our…”

“this is an amendment about fulfilling our obligations. This is an amendment about the government being truthful with our veterans. This is an amendment about supplying health care to veterans that is equal to what one can get in the private sector. We are going to hear a whole lot of things as we discuss this amendment about where we are getting the money, how it is going to be affected. This past Saturday night, I had the pleasure and also the terrible, gut-wrenching remorse to see a very new movie called ``Saving Private Ryan,'' and I want to tell my colleagues that for the first time in my life, I truly now am understanding what some of the veterans have been telling me for the last 4 years. When we see the price paid by our veterans, the price that they have paid with loss of limb, with loss of health, with loss of life, we can do nothing less than to fulfill our obligation to those men and women of the commitment that we made for them. This is a very simple amendment. It is not complicated. It takes money that was used for a mandatory program last year, and the last 7 years, and moves that money, which has now been moved from a mandatory spending account, to veterans health care. It still will not get us to the point that the Committee on Veterans' Affairs authorizes and states we should be spending on veterans health care.”